On-chip cavity quantum phonodynamics with an acceptor qubit in silicon

TL;DR

This paper proposes a solid-state cavity-QED system using silicon nanomechanical cavities and acceptor impurity states to control and read out single phonons, enabling quantum phononics on a chip.

Contribution

It introduces a novel on-chip phononic cavity-QED platform using acceptor impurities in silicon, demonstrating strong and dispersive coupling regimes for quantum phononics.

Findings

Achieves strong coupling with ~100 Rabi oscillations.

Demonstrates tunable phonon-phonon interactions.

Predicts experimental signatures of the acceptor-cavity system.

Abstract

We describe a chip-based, solid-state analogue of cavity-QED utilizing acoustic phonons instead of photons. We show how long-lived and tunable acceptor impurity states in silicon nanomechanical cavities can play the role of a matter non-linearity for coherent phonons just as, e.g., the Josephson qubit plays in circuit-QED. Both strong coupling (number of Rabi oscillations ~ 100) and strong dispersive coupling (0.1-2 MHz) regimes can be reached in cavities in the 1-20 GHz range, enabling the control of single phonons, phonon-phonon interactions, dispersive phonon readout of the acceptor qubit, and compatibility with other optomechanical components such as phonon-photon translators. We predict explicit experimental signatures of the acceptor-cavity system.