Tunable photon-mediated interactions between spin-1 systems

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how multi-level quantum emitters can be used to engineer photon-mediated interactions between spin-1 systems, expanding quantum simulation capabilities beyond traditional two-level systems.

Contribution

It introduces a method to harness multi-level emitters for creating interactions between spin-1 systems, with analytical and numerical analysis and specific atomic implementations.

Findings

Engineered photon-mediated interactions for spin-1 systems.

Provided atomic-level structure implementations for Alkali atoms.

Expanded quantum simulation tools for cavity QED and nanophotonics.

Abstract

The exchange of virtual photons between quantum optical emitters in cavity QED or quantum nanophotonic setups induces interactions between them which can be harnessed for quantum information and simulation purposes. So far, these interactions have been mostly characterized for two-level emitters, which restrict their application to engineering quantum gates among qubits or simulating spin-1/2 quantum many-body models. Here, we show how to harness multi-level emitters with several optical transitions to engineer a wide class of photon-mediated interactions between effective spin-1 systems. We characterize their performance through analytical and numerical techniques, and provide specific implementations based on the atomic level structure of Alkali atoms. Our results expand the quantum simulation toolbox available in such cavity QED and quantum nanophotonic setups, and open up new ways of engineering entangling gates among qutrits.