# Quantum information processing in localized modes of light within a photonic band-gap material

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## Abstract

The single photon occupation of a localized field mode within an engineered network of defects in a photonic band-gap (PBG) material is proposed as a unit of quantum information (qubit). Qubit operations are mediated by optically-excited atoms interacting with these localized states of light as the atoms traverse the connected void network of the PBG structure. We describe conditions under which this system can have independent qubits with controllable interactions and very low decoherence, as required for quantum computation.

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The field of quantum information has experienced an explosion of interest due in large part to the creation of quantum algorithms that are far more efficient at solving certain computational problems than their classical counterparts . However, despite the development of error correction protocols designed to preserve a desired quantum state  and several promising proposals for the implementation of quantum information processing , experimental progress to date has been limited to systems of only 2 or 3 quantum bits (qubits). This is due to the difficulties associated with the precise preparation and manipulation of a quantum state, as well as decoherence; that is, the degradation of a quantum state brought about by its inevitable coupling to the degrees of freedom available in its environment.

In this Letter, we propose a scheme for quantum information processing in which our qubit is the single photon occupation of a localized defect mode in a three–dimensional photonic crystal exhibiting a full photonic band-gap (PBG). The occupation and entanglement of multiple qubits is mediated by the interaction between these localized states and an atom with a radiative transition that is nearly resonant with the localized modes. The atom passes between defects through a matter–waveguide channel in the extensive void network of the PBG material. We argue that such materials may provide independent qubit states, low error qubit (quantum gate) operations, a long decoherence time relative to the time for a gate operation, the potential for scalability to a large number of qubits, and considerable flexibility in the means of controlling the quantum state of the system. 

PBG materials have themselves been an area of intensive research over the past decade . These are highly porous, three–dimensionally periodic materials of high refractive index with pore periodicity on the length scale of the relevant wavelength of light. The combination of Bragg scattering from the dielectric backbone and Mie scattering resonances of individual voids leads to the complete exclusion of electromagnetic modes over a continuous range of frequencies. A PBG material amenable to fabrication at microwave and optical wavelengths is the stacked wafer or “woodpile” structure, constructed in analogy with the arrangement of atoms in crystalline silicon . An optical PBG material is the inverse opal structure , which is a self–organizing FCC array of connected air spheres in a high index material such as Si, Ge, or GaP (Fig. 1). The void regions in both of these structures allow line of sight propagation of an atomic beam through the crystal. For example, the Si inverse opal consists of approximately $`75\%`$ connected void regions, can be readily grown on the scale of hundreds of lattice constants, and can exhibit a PBG spanning $`10\%`$ of the gap center frequency.

An atom with a transition in a PBG will be unable to spontaneously emit a photon; instead, a long–lived photon–atom bound state is formed . By introducing isolated voids that are larger (air defect) or smaller (dielectric defect) than the rest of the array, strongly localized single mode states of light can be engineered within the otherwise optically empty PBG . For isolated defect modes in a high quality dielectric material, Q-factors of $`10^{10}`$ or higher should be attainable (see below). Excited atoms passing through or near a defect can exchange energy coherently with this localized state, thus preparing the state of our qubit. Furthermore, such “point defects” in PBG materials can give rise to modal confinement to within the wavelength of the mode , giving an enhancement of the cavity Rabi frequency of $`550`$ times over conventional microcavities. These facts make localized modes in PBG materials excellent candidates for the strong coupling regime of cavity quantum electrodynamics (CQED) .

Along with the point defects described above, line defects (waveguides) can be engineered within a PBG material. This can be accomplished by modifying the initial templating mold of a single inverted opal crystal , or by removing or modifying selected dielectric rods in a woodpile crystal. Such extended defects can be used to inject a coherent light field into the PBG of the system, thereby controllably altering the Bloch vector of a two–level atom that passes through the illuminated region without the generation of unwanted quantum correlations in the system. The information thereby input to the system can then be transferred from the atom to the localized modes. Our qubits are protected from the narrowly confined externally injected fields by the surrounding dielectric lattice.

Our basic scheme for the entanglement of localized modes is shown in Fig. 1. A two–level atom of excited state $`|e`$ and ground state $`|g`$ is prepared in an initial state $`|\psi =c_e|e+c_g|g`$ in an illuminated line defect as it passes through the crystal with velocity $`v`$ (path A). It then successively interacts with localized states $`p`$, $`q`$, and $`p^{}`$. The state of the atom may be further modified in mid-flight as it passes though additional line defects. Due to the absence of spontaneous emission in a PBG, the coherence of the atom mediating the entanglement may be maintained over many defect spacings. This allows for the entanglement of more than two defects or of pairs of more distant defects with lower gate error than is possible with conventional microcavity arrays. The lack of spontaneous emission may also enable the use of atomic or molecular excitations that would be too short–lived for use in conventional CQED. Measurements of the states of defect modes can be made via ionization measurements of the state of a probe atom after it has interacted with individual defects (e.g. path B).

In principle, our proposal applies to systems with atomic transitions in the microwave or in the optical/near-IR. However, to perform a precise sequence of many gate operations will require that single atoms of known velocities be sent through the crystal with known trajectories at well–defined times. In a microwave PBG material, the void channels are sufficiently large ($`3\mathrm{m}\mathrm{m}`$) that experiments involving small numbers of qubits can be performed with atoms velocity selected from a thermal source which initially emits atoms with a Poissonian velocity distribution . The outcome of these simple quantum algorithms can then be evaluated by statistical measures on an ensemble of appropriately prepared atoms passing through the defect network. Because optical PBG materials have micron–sized void channels, atomic waveguiding may be necessary in order to prevent the van der Waals adhesion of the atoms to the dielectric surfaces of the crystal. To this end, a field mode excited from the lower photonic band edge resides almost exclusively in the dielectric fraction of the crystal, producing an evanescent field at the void–dielectric interface. This field acts as a repulsive atomic potential if blue–shifted from an atomic transition . Similarly, one may guide atoms with such evanescent waves through engineered line defects which support only field modes far detuned from the qubit atomic transition, in a manner analogous to atomic waveguiding in hollow optical fibers . Using such techniques, optical CQED and atom interferometry experiments using thermally excited atoms or atoms dropped into a PBG material from a magneto–optical trap should currently be possible. We note that long–lived localized modes may also be used to entangle the electronic states of ions in ion traps  . Unlike with atomic beams, trapped ions may be precisely manipulated into and out of a defect mode in a PBG material. This may make the ionic system more amenable to large scale implementations of quantum information.

We first consider the dynamics of a two–level atom passing through a point defect. In the dipole and rotating wave approximations, the evolution of an atom at position $`𝐫`$ in a localized defect mode is given by a position dependent Jaynes–Cummings Hamiltonian ,

$$H(𝐫)=\frac{\mathrm{}\omega _a}{2}\sigma _z+\mathrm{}\omega _da^{}a+\mathrm{}G(𝐫)\left(a\sigma _++a^{}\sigma _{}\right),$$
(1)   
where $`\sigma _z`$, $`\sigma _\pm =\sigma _x\pm i\sigma _y`$ are the usual Pauli spin matrices for a two–level atom with transition frequency $`\omega _a`$, and $`a`$, $`a^{}`$ are respectively the annihilation and creation operators for a photon in a defect mode of frequency $`\omega _d`$. The atom–field coupling strength may be expressed as $`G(𝐫)=\mathrm{\Omega }_0\left(\widehat{𝐝}_{21}\widehat{𝐞}(𝐫)\right)f(𝐫)`$ , where $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ is the peak atomic Rabi frequency over the defect mode, $`\widehat{𝐝}_{21}`$ is the orientation of the atomic dipole moment, and $`\widehat{𝐞}(𝐫)`$ is the direction of the electric field vector at the position of the atom. In general, the three-dimensional mode structure will be a complicated function of the size and shape of the defect . However, we need only consider the one–dimensional mode profile that intersects the atom’s linear path, i.e. $`G(𝐫)G(r)`$. The profile $`f(r)`$ will have an exponential envelope centered about the point in the atom’s trajectory that is nearest to the center of the defect mode, $`r_0`$. Within this envelope, the field intensity will oscillate sinusoidally, and for fixed dipole orientation, variations in the relative orientation of the dipole and the electric field will also give a sinusoidal contribution . For a PBG material with lattice constant $`a`$, we can thus set $`\widehat{𝐝}_{21}\widehat{𝐞}(r)=1`$ and write $`f(r)=e^{\left|rr_0\right|/R_{\mathrm{def}}}\mathrm{cos}\left[\frac{\pi }{a}(rr_0)+\varphi \right]`$ (see Fig. 2). Because we want to transfer energy between the atom and the localized mode, we wish to use modes that are highly symmetric about the atom’s path. We therefore set $`\varphi =0`$. $`R_{\mathrm{def}}`$ defines the spatial extent of the mode, and is at most a few lattice constants for a strongly confined mode deep in a PBG .

The atom–field state function after an initially excited atom has passed through a defect can be written in the form

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_f=u|e,0+w|g,1.$$
(2)   
$`u`$ and $`w`$ are obtained by replacing $`rr_0`$ by $`vtb`$ in the Hamiltonian (1) and integrating the corresponding Schrödinger equation from $`t=0`$ to $`2b/v`$. $`b`$ is chosen so that the interaction is negligible at $`t=0`$; we set $`b=10R_{\mathrm{def}}`$. Fig. 2 plots $`\left|u\right|^2`$ for the $`\lambda =780\mathrm{n}\mathrm{m}`$ transition of an initially excited Rb atom traveling through a defect in an optical PBG material (e.g., GaP) at thermally–accessible velocities ($`v100600\mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}`$) for various detunings of the atomic transition frequency from a defect resonance, $`\delta \omega _a\omega _d`$. Such a detuning can be achieved by applying an external field to Stark shift the atomic transition as the atom passes through selected defects. The final state of the atom is seen to be a sensitive function of $`\delta `$ and $`v`$. Similar velocity–dependent atomic inversions are obtained for the above system with the atom in free fall ($`v.1\mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}`$), and for the $`5.9\mathrm{mm}`$ Rydberg transition of Rb using a thermal beam of atoms passing through an appropriate microwave PBG material. At thermal velocities, the inversion can be finely tuned within the $`1\mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}`$ resolution of thermally generated atomic beams.

To show that our system is capable of encoding quantum algorithms for realistic values of system parameters, we demonstrate the viability of producing a maximally entangled state of two defect modes after an atom prepared in its excited state has passed through both defects. The final state of this system after the two defect entanglement can be written as

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }=\alpha |g,1,0+\beta |g,0,1+\gamma |e,0,0,$$
(3)   
where $`|i,j,k`$ refers to the state of the atom and the photon occupation number of the first and second defect modes respectively. $`\alpha `$, $`\beta `$ and $`\gamma `$ can be expressed in terms of the probability amplitudes for an atom that has passed through only defect 1 or 2; in the notation of Eq. (2), $`\alpha =w(1)`$, $`\beta =u(1)w(2)`$, and $`\gamma =u(1)u(2)`$. Maximal defect entanglement is obtained for $`\left|\alpha \right|=\left|\beta \right|=1/\sqrt{2}`$, $`\left|\gamma \right|=0`$, which leaves the atom disentangled from the defect modes. As an example, using the system of Fig. 2 with $`v=278\mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}`$ and with the atom on resonance with the first defect, maximally entangled states are obtained for atomic detunings of $`\delta _2/\mathrm{\Omega }_0=.07`$, $`.13`$ and $`.31`$ from the second defect mode.

As discussed, by passing a 2–level atom through an externally illuminated line defect, the atom’s Bloch vector can be initialized or modified in–flight without becoming correlated with the state of a defect mode . For simplicity, we assume that an atom sees a uniform mode profile as it crosses such an optical waveguide mode of width $`2\lambda `$. For an injected single–mode field resonant with the atomic transition, the Bloch vector will then rotate at the semi–classical Rabi frequency, $`_0𝐝_{21}𝐄/2\mathrm{}`$, where $`𝐄`$ is the amplitude of the applied electric field . At a thermal velocity of $`100\mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}`$, the minimum field strength, $`E`$, required to fully rotate the Bloch vector for the $`\lambda =5.9\mathrm{mm}`$ transition in Rb ($`d_{21}=2.0\times 10^{26}\mathrm{C}\mathrm{m}`$) is $`E1\mathrm{m}\mathrm{V}/\mathrm{m}`$. For the $`\lambda =780\mathrm{n}\mathrm{m}`$ optical transition of Rb ($`d_{21}=1.0\times 10^{29}\mathrm{C}\mathrm{m}`$), $`E9\mathrm{k}\mathrm{V}/\mathrm{m}`$ at $`v=100\mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}`$, whereas in free fall ($`v=.3\mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}`$), $`E30\mathrm{V}/\mathrm{m}`$. The weak RF field required in the microwave system implies that such experiments must be conducted at low temperatures ($`.6\mathrm{K}`$) in order to prevent the modification of the atomic state by thermal photons. In the optical, the required field strengths are attainable using a cw laser whose output is coupled into waveguide channels of $`\lambda ^2`$ cross section, and are well below the ionization field strengths of both the messenger atoms and the PBG material.

For quantum computation, a universal 2 qubit gate can be constructed in analogy with conventional CQED . We outline the construction of the associated controlled-NOT (CNOT) gate, which flips the occupation state of a target defect $`p`$ only if a second control defect $`q`$ is occupied (Fig. 1b). The state of defect $`p`$ is first transferred to an incident atom via a near–resonant atom–defect interaction, such that $`(\alpha |1_p+\beta |0_p)|g(i\alpha |e+\beta |g)|0_p`$. This is analogous to an integrated $`\pi /2`$ interaction in a spatially uniform cavity, i.e., one for which $`G(𝐫)\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$. The atomic Bloch vector is then rotated by $`_0t=\pi /4`$ by applying a classical field in line defect $`R_1`$, thus generating the transformation $`|e=(|e+i|g)/\sqrt{2}`$, $`|g=(i|e+|g)/\sqrt{2}`$. Next, a dispersive interaction  is created by detuning the atom far from the defect resonance (but still within the PBG) as it passes through $`q`$. This is used to produce a phase rotation of $`\pi `$ on the excited state, conditioned on the presence of a photon in $`q`$, thus causing the amplitude of $`|e`$ to change sign if $`q`$ is occupied. The Bloch vector rotation $`^1`$ is then performed in $`R_2`$, which switches states $`|e`$ and $`|g`$ relative to their initial values only if a photon was present in $`q`$. Finally, the state of the atom is transferred to defect $`p^{}`$ by a near–resonant $`3\pi /2`$ interaction, leaving the atom in its ground state. $`p^{}`$ then carries the result of the CNOT operation.

We now turn to the crucial issue of the decoherence and energy loss of a photon in a defect mode. In general, these processes can have very different time scales, as the former is a result of the entanglement of a quantum state with its environment, which can occur well before the dissipation of energy . It has however been shown that for the (linear) coupling between a photon and a non–absorbing linear dielectric, the coherence of a small number of photons in a given mode is not destroyed by the interaction . Therefore, the coherence of excited defect modes in a high quality PBG material is essentially limited by energy loss. We note that phonon mediated spontaneous Raman and Brillouin scattering of photons out of a defect mode are ineffective loss mechanisms due to the vanishing overlap between a localized field mode and the extended states of the electromagnetic continuum . Unlike most qubit elements, photons do not interact significantly with one another, preventing the propagation of single bit errors through a network of defect modes. However, a photon may “hop” from one defect to another either via direct tunneling or through phonon–assisted hopping . The likelihood of both of these processes decreases exponentially with the spatial separation of the defects, and is negligible for a defect separation of $`10`$ lattice constants for a strongly confined mode.

For an isolated point defect engineered well inside a large–scale PBG material, the Q–factor will then be limited by absorption and impurity scattering from the dielectric backbone of the crystal . In the optical and microwave frequency regimes, away from the electronic gap and the restrahlen absorption frequencies of a high quality semiconductor material, $`ϵ_2`$ can be as low as $`10^9`$ at room temperature, and may be reduced at lower temperatures . One can further reduce absorptive losses by minimizing the fraction of the mode in the dielectric (e.g., a strongly localized mode in an air defect). Judicious defect fabrication in a high quality dielectric material should then give Q–factors of $`10^{10}`$ (assuming 10% of the mode is in the dielectric) or higher, which corresponds to photon lifetimes of $`10^1\mathrm{sec}`$ and $`10^4\mathrm{sec}`$ at microwave and optical frequencies respectively. This Q–value is comparable with present microwave CQED experiments, and is in excess of that currently used in optical CQED. Assuming defects are separated by 10 lattice constants, we obtain a decoherence to gate time ratio of $`200`$ even at room temperature, showing that our system is potentially capable of encoding complex quantum algorithms.

We thank K. Busch, H.M. van Driel, and J.M. Raimond for valuable discussions. N.V. acknowledges support from the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program. This work was sponsored in part by the Killam Foundation, the New Energy and Industrial Technology Organization (NEDO) of Japan, Photonics Research Ontario, and the NSERC of Canada.