Velocity Scanning Tomography for Room-Temperature Quantum Simulation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a velocity scanning tomography technique that enables room-temperature quantum simulation by resolving atomic responses at different velocities, allowing the study of topological properties in superradiance lattices without ultracold conditions.

Contribution

The authors develop and validate a novel velocity scanning tomography method to measure topological properties in room-temperature superradiance lattices, overcoming thermal motion challenges.

Findings

Successfully measured Wannier-Stark ladders at room temperature.

Extracted the Zak phase demonstrating topological winding.

Validated room-temperature quantum simulation feasibility.

Abstract

Quantum simulation offers an analog approach for exploring exotic quantum phenomena using controllable platforms, typically necessitating ultracold temperatures to maintain the quantum coherence. Superradiance lattices (SLs) have been harnessed to simulate coherent topological physics at room temperature, but the thermal motion of atoms remains a notable challenge in accurately measuring the physical quantities. To overcome this obstacle, we invent and validate a velocity scanning tomography technique to discern the responses of atoms with different velocities, allowing cold-atom spectroscopic resolution within room-temperature SLs. By comparing absorption spectra with and without atoms moving at specific velocities, we can derive the Wannier-Stark ladders of the SL across various effective static electric fields, their strengths being proportional to the atomic velocities. We extract the Zak phase of the SL by monitoring the ladder frequency shift as a function of the atomic velocity, effectively demonstrating the topological winding of the energy bands. Our research signifies the feasibility of room-temperature quantum simulation and facilitates their applications in quantum information processing.