IQUIST Seminar Series

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The Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology Center hosts a series of talks about topics related to Quantum Information Sciences in its various forms, including (but not limiting to): Quantum computers, Quantum simulation, Measuring the elusive Majorana fermion, and Photons. Talks will be given by senior researchers as well as students and postdocs.

IQUIST Seminar Series, Dr. Yiwen Chu, February 28 at 11am in 190 Engineering Sciences Building

IQUIST Seminar: "Schrödinger cat states of a 16-microgram mechanical oscillator," Yiwen Chu, ETH Zürich

Event Type: Seminar/Symposium
Sponsor: IQUIST
Location: 190 Engineering Sciences Building, 1101 W Springfield Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
Date: Feb 28, 2023 11:00 - 11:50 am
Speaker: Yiwen Chu, Professor, Department of Physics, ETH Zürich
Contact: Hannah Stites
E-Mail: hstites2@illinois.edu
Phone: 217-300-4072
Views: 195; Schrödinger cat states of a 16-microgram mechanical oscillator

One of the fundamental unanswered questions in quantum physics is why we do not observe macroscopic objects to be in superpositions of states that can be distinguished by some classical property. Various experiments have tried to explore this question by creating so-called "Schrödinger cat states" in systems ranging from SQUIDs to atom interferometers. I will present our recent work that demonstrates the preparation of a mechanical resonator with an effective mass of 16 micrograms in Schrodinger cat states of motion, where the constituent atoms oscillate in a superposition of two opposite phases. By using the resonant Jaynes-Cummings interaction between the resonator mode and a superconducting qubit, we are able to demonstrate the evolution of an initial mechanical coherent state into a superposition of distinct states in phase space. Our results may have applications in continuous variable quantum information processing and in fundamental investigations of quantum mechanics in massive systems.

Bio: Yiwen Chu is currently an Assistant Professor in the Physics Department at ETH Zürich. She leads the Hybrid Quantum Systems Group, which was established in 2019. The group focuses on using mechanical resonators in combination with other quantum systems for a variety of purposes ranging from quantum information processing to studies of fundamental physics. Yiwen did her bachelor studies at MIT and her PhD in the group of Prof. Mikhail Lukin at Harvard. She was then at Yale for a postdoc in the group of Prof. Rob Schoelkopf before moving to Zürich.

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