Magnon squeezing in an antiferromagnet: reducing the spin noise below the standard quantum limit

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates magnon squeezing in an antiferromagnetic insulator using femtosecond optical pulses, reducing quantum noise below the standard quantum limit, with implications for spintronics and quantum computing.

Contribution

First experimental demonstration of magnon squeezing in an antiferromagnet using optical pulses to generate correlated magnon pairs.

Findings

Quantum squeezing reduces magnetization fluctuations below ground state noise.

Stimulated second order Raman scattering causes the magnon pair correlations.

Time-varying quantum noise in magnetization observed in MnF2.

Abstract

At absolute zero temperature, thermal noise vanishes when a physical system is in its ground state, but quantum noise remains as a fundamental limit to the accuracy of experimental measurements. Such a limitation, however, can be mitigated by the formation of squeezed states. Quantum mechanically, a squeezed state is a time-varying superposition of states for which the noise of a particular observable is reduced below that of the ground state at certain times. Quantum squeezing has been achieved for a variety of systems, including the electromagnetic field, atomic vibrations in solids and molecules, and atomic spins, but not so far for magnetic systems. Here we report on an experimental demonstration of spin wave (i.e., magnon) squeezing. Our method uses femtosecond optical pulses to generate correlations involving pairs of magnons in an antiferromagnetic insulator, MnF2. These correlations lead to quantum squeezing in which the fluctuations of the magnetization of a crystallographic unit cell vary periodically in time and are reduced below that of the ground state quantum noise. The mechanism responsible for this squeezing is stimulated second order Raman scattering by magnon pairs. Such squeezed states have important ramifications in the emerging fields of spintronics and quantum computing involving magnetic spin states or the spin-orbit coupling mechanism.