Rapid Quantum Squeezing by Jumping the Harmonic Oscillator Frequency

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method to rapidly generate squeezed states of atomic motion by sudden frequency changes, enabling faster quantum operations and improved sensing in noisy environments.

Contribution

It introduces a protocol for quickly creating squeezed states via frequency jumps, surpassing traditional speed limits in quantum state generation.

Findings

Successfully created squeezed states through sudden frequency changes.

Demonstrated rapid quantum amplification of displacement operators.

Potential to accelerate quantum gates and enhance sensing capabilities.

Abstract

Quantum sensing and quantum information processing use quantum advantages such as squeezed states that encode a quantity of interest with higher precision and generate quantum correlations to outperform classical methods. In harmonic oscillators, the rate of generating squeezing is set by a quantum speed limit. Therefore, the degree to which a quantum advantage can be used in practice is limited by the time needed to create the state relative to the rate of unavoidable decoherence. Alternatively, a sudden change of harmonic oscillator's frequency projects a ground state into a squeezed state which can circumvent the time constraint. Here, we create squeezed states of atomic motion by sudden changes of the harmonic oscillation frequency of atoms in an optical lattice. Building on this protocol, we demonstrate rapid quantum amplification of a displacement operator that could be used for detecting motion. Our results can speed up quantum gates and enable quantum sensing and quantum information processing in noisy environments.