Spin-guides and spin-splitters: Waveguide analogies in one-dimensional spin chains

TL;DR

This paper establishes a novel analogy between optical waveguide theory and spin chain transport, enabling new methods for quantum information transfer through controllable spin-guides.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of spin-guides and spin-splitters by mapping waveguide principles to spin chains, facilitating scalable quantum control.

Findings

Demonstrates the mapping between waveguide concepts and spin chain transport.

Shows how to design virtual waveguides for spin excitations.

Highlights scalability through large-scale control pulses.

Abstract

Here we show a direct mapping between waveguide theory and spin chain transport, opening an alternative approach to quantum information transport in the solid-state. By applying temporally varying control profiles to a spin chain, we design a virtual waveguide or 'spin-guide' to conduct individual spin excitations along defined space-time trajectories of the chain. We explicitly show that the concepts of confinement, adiabatic bend loss and beamsplitting can be mapped from optical waveguide theory to spin-guides (and hence 'spin-splitters'). Importantly, the spatial scale of applied control pulses is required to be large compared to the inter-spin spacing, and thereby allowing the design of scalable control architectures.