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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 109 records · Page 6
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Spin-optomechanical cavity interfaces by deep subwavelength phonon-photon confinement

A central goal of quantum information science is transferring qubits between space, time, and modality. Spin-based systems in solids are promising quantum memories, but high-fidelity transfer of their quantum states to telecom optical fields remains challenging. Here, we introduce a phonon-mediated interface between spins in a diamond nanobeam optomechanical crystal and telecom optical fields by a simultaneous deep-subwavelength confinement of optical and acoustic fields with mode volumes $V_{\textrm{mech}}$$/Λ^3_\textrm{p} ~ 10^{-5}$ and $V_{\textrm{opt}}$$/λ^3 ~ 10^{−3}$, respectively. This confinement boosts the spin-mechanical coupling rate of Group-IV silicon vacancy (SiV − ) centers by an order of magnitude to ~ 32 MHz while retaining high acousto-optical couplings. The optical cavity couples to the spin irrespective of the emitter’s native excited states, avoiding spectral diffusion. Using Quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we estimate heralded entanglement fidelities exceeding 0.96 between two such interfaces. We anticipate broad utility beyond diamond emitter-telecom systems to most solid-state quantum memories.

Raniwala, Hamza [Massachusetts Inst. of Technology↗
DOE OSTI2024

Stroboscopic x-ray diffraction microscopy of dynamic strain in diamond thin-film bulk acoustic resonators for quantum control of nitrogen-vacancy centers

Bulk-mode acoustic waves in a crystalline material exert lattice strain through the thickness of the sample, which couples to the spin Hamiltonian of defect-based qubits such as the nitrogen-vacancy (N-V) center defect in diamond. This mechanism has previously been harnessed for unconventional quantum spin control, spin decoherence protection, and quantum sensing. Bulk-mode acoustic wave devices are also important in the microelectronics industry as microwave filters. A key challenge in both applications is a lack of appropriate operando microscopy tools for quantifying and visualizing gigahertz-frequency dynamic strain. Here, in this work, we directly image acoustic strain within N-V center-coupled diamond thin-film bulk acoustic wave resonators using stroboscopic scanning hard x-ray diffraction microscopy at the Advanced Photon Source. The far-field scattering patterns of the nanofocused x-ray diffraction encode strain information entirely through the illuminated thickness of the resonator. These patterns have a real-space spatial variation that is consistent with the bulk strain’s expected modal distribution and a momentum-space angular variation from which the strain amplitude can be quantitatively deduced. We also perform optical measurements of strain-driven Rabi precession of of the N-V center spin ensemble, providing an additional quantitative measurement of the strain amplitude. As a result, we directly measure one of the six N-V spin-stress coupling parameters, 𝑏 =2.73⁢(2) MHz/GPa, by correlating these measurements at the same spatial position and applied microwave power. Our results demonstrate a unique technique for directly imaging ac lattice strain in micromechanical structures and provide a direct measurement of a fundamental constant for the N-V center defect spin Hamiltonian.

acoustic techniques↗
NASA NTRS2001

Endo-Fullerenes and Doped Diamond Nanocrystallite Based Solid-State Qubits

This viewgraph presentation provides information on the use of endo-fullerenes and doped diamond nanocrystallites in the development of a solid state quantum computer. Arrays of qubits, which have 1/2 nuclear spin, are more easily fabricated than arrays of similar bare atoms. H-1 can be encapsulated in a C20D20 fullerene, while P-31 can be encapsulated in a diamond nanocrystallite.

Park, Seongjun↗
DOE OSTI2024

Exactly solvable model of light-scattering errors in quantum simulations with metastable trapped-ion qubits

Here, we analytically solve a model for light scattering in Ising dynamics of metastable atomic qubits, generalizing the approach of Foss-Feig et al. to include leakage outside the qubit manifold. We analyze the influence of these fundamental errors in simulations of proposed experiments with metastable levels of 40 Ca + ions in a Penning trap. We find that “effective magnetic fields” generated by leaked qubits have significant impacts on spin-spin correlation functions for Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state preparation or for quantum simulations with strong coupling, while spin squeezing uses a much weaker coupling and is largely insensitive to the simulated leakage errors, even with a few hundred ions. Our theory and results are expected to be useful in modeling a variety of metastable qubit experiments in the future.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2024

Entanglement and Bell inequalities with boosted t t ¯

The Large Hadron Collider provides a unique opportunity to study quantum entanglement and violation of Bell inequalities at the highest energy available today. In this paper, we will investigate these quantum correlations with top quark pair production, which represents a system of two-qubits. The semileptonic top pair channel has a factor of 6 increase in statistics and easier reconstruction with respect to the dileptonic channel. Although measuring the spin polarization of the hadronic top quark is known to be challenging, our study indicates that it is feasible to reconstruct the spin density matrix of the two-qubit system using an optimal hadronic polarimeter. This is achieved with the aid of jet substructure techniques and NN-inspired reconstruction methods, which improve the mapping between subjets and quarks. We find that entanglement can already be observed at more than the 5 σ level with existing data, and violation of Bell inequalities may be probed above the 4 σ level at the HL-LHC with 3 ab − 1 of data. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗
DOE OSTI2024

Hamiltonian switching control of noisy bipartite qubit systems

Abstract We develop a Hamiltonian switching ansatz for bipartite control that is inspired by the quantum approximate optimization algorithm, to mitigate environmental noise on qubits. We demonstrate the control for a central spin coupled to bath spins via isotropic Heisenberg interactions, and then make physical applications to the protection of quantum gates performed on superconducting transmon qubits coupling to environmental two-level-systems (TLSs) through dipole-dipole interactions, as well as on such qubits coupled to both TLSs and a Lindblad bath. The control field is classical and acts only on the system qubits. We use reinforcement learning with policy gradient to optimize the Hamiltonian switching control protocols, using a fidelity objective for specific target quantum gates. We use this approach to demonstrate effective suppression of both coherent and dissipative noise, with numerical studies achieving target gate implementations with fidelities over 0.9999 (four nines) in the majority of our test cases and showing improvement beyond this to values of 0.999 999 999 (nine nines) upon a subsequent optimization by GRadient Ascent Pulse Engineering (GRAPE). We analyze how the control depth, total evolution time, number of environmental TLS, and choice of optimization method affect the fidelity achieved by the optimal protocols and reveal some critical behaviors of bipartite control of quantum gates.

Physics↗
DOE OSTI2025

ZnO quantum dot–molecule conjugates: Chemical interactions, charge dynamics, and spin polarization

Conjugates between molecules and quantum dots (QDs) have been explored for a range of potential applications from photocatalysis and photovoltaics to quantum information science technologies. A particularly ubiquitous material in many of these applications are ZnO QDs since they can accept and transport electrons and can also act as hosts for unique spin states. Conjugates between molecular light absorbers and ZnO QDs have been explored for decades as components in dye-sensitized solar cells. Recently, these materials have also attracted interest for their ability to produce spin-polarized states upon photoexcitation. The current paper employs a series of light absorbing perylene molecules with different ZnO QD sizes to explore key features of these QD–molecule conjugates: (1) chemical interactions, (2) charge dynamics, and (3) spin polarization. The chemical interactions between the molecules and QDs are determined with binding equilibria and reveal dramatic impact of ligand size. The charge transfer dynamics from photoexcited perylenes to ZnO QDs were found to depend exponentially on the linker length. Finally, time-resolved electron paramagnetic resonance experiments reveal that these conjugates generate spin-polarized states in the form of radical pairs and triplets. These spin states hold promise as potential qubits and also offer an avenue to efficiently sensitize molecular triplets.

Hernandez, Frida S. [Amherst College, MA (United S↗
NASA NTRS2001

Endo-Fullerene and Doped Diamond Nanocrystallite Based Models of Qubits for Solid-State Quantum Computers

Models of encapsulated 1/2 nuclear spin H-1 and P-31 atoms in fullerene and diamond nanocrystallite, respectively, are proposed and examined with ab-initio local density functional method for possible applications as single quantum bits (qubits) in solid-state quantum computers. A H-1 atom encapsulated in a fully deuterated fullerene, C(sub 20)D(sub 20), forms the first model system and ab-initio calculation shows that H-1 atom is stable in atomic state at the center of the fullerene with a barrier of about 1 eV to escape. A P-31 atom positioned at the center of a diamond nanocrystallite is the second model system, and 3 1P atom is found to be stable at the substitutional site relative to interstitial sites by 15 eV, Vacancy formation energy is 6 eV in diamond so that substitutional P-31 atom will be stable against diffusion during the formation mechanisms within the nanocrystallite. The coupling between the nuclear spin and weakly bound (valance) donor electron coupling in both systems is found to be suitable for single qubit applications, where as the spatial distributions of (valance) donor electron wave functions are found to be preferentially spread along certain lattice directions facilitating two or more qubit applications. The feasibility of the fabrication pathways for both model solid-state qubit systems within practical quantum computers is discussed with in the context of our proposed solid-state qubits.

Park, Seongjun↗
DOE OSTI2024

Controlled Spalling of 4H Silicon Carbide with Investigated Spin Coherence for Quantum Engineering Integration

We detail scientific and engineering advances which enable the controlled spalling and layer transfer of single crystal 4H silicon carbide (4H-SiC) from bulk substrates. 4HSiC’s properties, including high thermal conductivity and a wide bandgap, make it an ideal semiconductor for power electronics. Moreover, 4H-SiC is an excellent host of solid-state atomic defect qubits for quantum computing and quantum networking. Because 4H-SiC substrates are expensive (due to long growth times and limited yield), techniques for removal and transfer of bulk-quality films are desirable for substrate reuse and integration of the separated films. In this work, we utilize updated approaches for stressor layer thickness control and spalling crack initiation to demonstrate controlled spalling of 4H-SiC, the highest fracture toughness crystal spalled to date. We achieve coherent spin control of neutral divacancy (VV 0 ) qubit ensembles and measure a quasi-bulk spin T 2 of 79.7 μs in the spalled films.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2026

Simulating fermions with a digital quantum computer

Quantum computers are expected to become a powerful tool for studying physical quantum systems. Consequently, a number of quantum algorithms to determine the physical properties of such systems have been developed. Although qubit-based quantum computers are naturally suited to the study of spin-1/2 systems, systems containing other degrees of freedom must first be encoded into qubits. Transformations to and from fermionic degrees of freedom have long been an important tool in physics and chemistry, which is now finding another application in the simulation of fermionic systems on quantum computers based on qubits. In this work, we discuss methods for encoding fermionic degrees of freedom into qubits.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2024

Quantum tensor network algorithms for evaluation of spectral functions on quantum computers

We investigate quantum algorithms derived from tensor networks to simulate the static and dynamic properties of quantum many-body systems. Using a sequentially prepared quantum circuit representation of a matrix product state (MPS) that we call a quantum tensor network (QTN), we demonstrate algorithms to prepare ground and excited states on a quantum computer and apply them to molecular nanomagnets (MNMs) as a paradigmatic example. In this setting, we develop two approaches for extracting the spectral correlation functions measured in neutron-scattering experiments: (a) a generalization of the SWAP test for computing wave function overlaps and, (b) a generalization of the notion of matrix product operators to the QTN setting which generates a linear combination of unitaries. The latter method is discussed in detail for translationally invariant spin-half systems, where it is shown to reduce the qubit resource requirements compared with the SWAP method and may be generalized to other systems. We demonstrate the versatility of our approaches by simulating spin-1/2 and spin-3/2 MNMs, with the latter being an experimentally relevant model of a Cr$^{3+}_{8}$ ring. Here, our approach has qubit requirements that are independent of the number of constituents of the many-body system and scale only logarithmically with the bond dimension of the MPS representation, making them appealing for implementation on near-term quantum hardware with mid-circuit measurement and reset.

Neutron scattering↗
DOE OSTI2026

Magnetic hysteresis experiments performed on quantum annealers

While quantum annealers have emerged as versatile and controllable platforms for experimenting on correlated spin systems, the important phenomenology of magnetic memory and hysteresis remain unexplored on hardware designed to escape metastable states via quantum tunneling. Here, we present the first general protocol to experiment on magnetic hysteresis on programmable quantum annealers and implement it on three D-Wave superconducting qubit quantum annealers, using up to thousands of spins, for both ferromagnetic and disordered Ising models, and across different graph topologies. We observe hysteresis loops whose area depends nonmonotonically on quantum fluctuations, exhibiting both expected and unexpected features, such as disorder-induced steps and nonmonotonicities. Our work establishes quantum annealers as a platform for probing nonequilibrium emergent magnetic phenomena, thereby broadening the role of analog quantum computers into foundational questions in condensed matter physics.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2026

Atomic-scale imaging and charge state manipulation of NV centers by scanning tunneling microscopy

Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are among the most promising solid-state qubit candidates, owing to their exceptionally long spin coherence times, efficient spin-photon coupling, room-temperature operation, and steadily advancing fabrication and integration techniques. Despite significant progress in the field, atomic-scale characterization and control of individual NV centers have remained elusive. In this work, we utilize a conductive graphene capping layer to enable direct imaging and manipulation of NV - defects via scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). By investigating over 40 individual NV - centers, we identify their spectroscopic signatures and spatial configurations. Our dI/dV conductance spectra reveal the ground state resonance approximately 300 meV below the Fermi level and density-of-states maps uncover a two-lobed wavefunction aligned along the [111] crystallographic direction. Remarkably, we demonstrate the ability to manipulate the charge state of the NV centers from NV - to NV 0 through STM tip-induced gating. This work represents a significant advance in the atomic-scale imaging, spectroscopic characterization, and charge-state manipulation of NV centers, potentially paving the way for future quantum device development.

Raghavan, Arjun [Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champ↗
NASA NTRS2018

Learning Model Structural Uncertainty with Gaussian Processes

The advent of commercially available quantum computers has marked the beginning of quantum computing as a reality. Both quantum gate and annealing computers have been released by major computer hardware companies. In this work, the D-Wave 2XTM quantum annealing computer housed at the NASA Advanced Systems computational facility is investigated to accelerate Machine Learning (ML) for image registration. NASA collects large amounts of images over the globe remotely using space-based monitoring. Images of a fixed areas of the land surface are taken over time. Due to the orbit of the sensors, the viewing angles deviate slightly, and it is necessary to align or register the images precisely to create image time series over the land surface. Unaligned images can lead to substantial analysis errors. These time-series are then used in modeling Earth Systems models such as hydrological, weather, and carbon monitoring models. In this work, we consider the Moderate Resolution Image Spectrometer (MODIS) data collected by the NASA's terra satellite. Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) is a natural fit for ML modelling of images. Several successes have been reported using machine learning related to image processing. We investigate the use of ML to register MODIS images. ANNs are investigated in combination with a Restricted Boltzmann Machines (RBM) as an auto-encoder. We will present results showing the accuracy and efficiency of this approach.The D-Wave 2XTM quantum annealer samples the ground-state wave-function of a spin-Ising systems with quadratic interactions between qubits and a Chimera connectivity. The system sits in a ~15 mK thermal bath. One can think of the system as being placed in the ground state initially and subject to thermal excitations governed by Boltzmann statistics. If this is assumed true, one can use the statistics from the D-Wave 2XTM to train RBMs. Generating statistics for training Boltzmann machines is an NP-hard problem and constitutes the largest compute cost. We investigate the use of the D-Wave 2XTM to accelerate the training of the RBMs in our ANNs and report on the results.

Kouatchou, Jules↗
DOE OSTI2025

Engineering long-lived entanglement through dissipation in quantum hybrid solid-state platforms

Spin squeezing, a form of many-body entanglement, is a crucial resource in quantum metrology and information processing. While experimentally viable protocols for generating stable spin squeezing have been proposed in quantum optics setups, there is growing interest in quantum hybrid solid-state systems as alternative platforms for both engineering and exploring many-body quantum phenomena. In this work, we propose a scheme to generate long-lived spin squeezing in an ensemble of solid-state qubits interacting with electromagnetic noise emitted by a squeezed solid-state bath. We identify the conditions under which quantum correlations within the bath can be transferred to the qubit array, driving it into an entangled state independently of its initial configuration. To assess the experimental feasibility of our approach, we analyze the dynamics of an array of solid-state spin defects coupled to a common ferromagnetic bath, which is driven into a non-equilibrium squeezed state through its interaction with a surface acoustic wave mode. Our results demonstrate that the ensemble can exhibit steady-state spin squeezing under suitable conditions, opening new pathways for the generation of robust many-body entanglement in solid-state spin ensembles.

NV centers↗
DOE OSTI2026

Three-Qubit Encoding in Ytterbium-171 Atoms for Simulating 1+1D Quantum Chromodynamics

Simulating nuclear matter described by quantum chromodynamics using quantum computers is notoriously inefficient because of the assortment of quark degrees of freedom such as matter/antimatter, flavor, color, and spin. Here, we propose to address this resource efficiency challenge by encoding three qubits within individual ytterbium-171 atoms of a neutral atom quantum processor. The three qubits are encoded in three distinct sectors: an electronic “clock” transition, the spin-1/2 nucleus, and the lowest two motional states in one radial direction of the harmonic trapping potential. We develop a family of composite sideband pulses and demonstrate a universal gate set and readout protocol for this three-qubit system. We then apply it to single-flavor quantum chromodynamics in 1+1D axial gauge for which the three qubits directly represent the occupancy of quarks in the three colors. We show that two atoms are sufficient to simulate both vacuum persistence oscillations and a screened hadron-number transition. We consider resource requirements and connections to error detection/correction. Our work is a step toward resource-efficient digital simulation of nuclear matter and opens new opportunities for versatile qubit encoding in neutral atom quantum processors.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Computationally guided experimental validation of divacancy defect formation in 4H-SiC

Recent research into solid-state qubits for quantum information science has focused on optically addressable spin defects such as the negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond and the neutrally charged divacancy (VV) in 4H-SiC as scalable quantum sensors and networking qubits. Within this context, direct investigations of the structural origin and defect formation dynamics of a sub-set of the VV center in 4H-SiC remain lacking. Here, we take a systematic experimental approach guided by predictions from first-principles simulations to gain a thorough mechanistic understanding of the VV defect formation and control in 4H-SiC. We study the effect of annealing time and temperature on VV formation in high-purity semi-insulating 4H-SiC samples following electron irradiation. Three different temperatures (1123, 1273, and 1473 K) and annealing duration (from 0.5 to 72 h) are chosen to explore VV formation in different regions. We find that samples annealed at 1273 K give the highest VV-related photoluminescence (PL) intensities, in agreement with the prediction from first-principles calculations. Furthermore, the logarithmic dependence of VV-related PL intensities on the annealing duration at 1273 K indicates that 1273 K provides sufficient thermal energy for silicon vacancy migration but not for VV migration. Together, these results suggest that efficient VV formation occurs above the V Si migration temperature and below the VV migration threshold.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗