Nonlinear cooling and control of a mechanical quantum harmonic oscillator
Nonlinearities are a key feature allowing nonclassical control of quantum harmonic oscillators. However, when nonlinearities are strong, designing protocols for control is often difficult, placing a barrier to exploiting these properties fully. In this work, using a single trapped-ion oscillator operated in the strongly nonlinear regime of the atom-light interaction, we show how to generate localized multi (two, three, four, and five)–component Schrödinger’s cat manifolds using a novel form of nonlinear reservoir engineering. We then specifically select Hamiltonians which allow us to perform measurements on these state manifolds. Our work demonstrates the experimental use of high-order nonlinear processes for control of nonclassical states of a quantum harmonic oscillator, opening up a new toolbox which can be applied to bosonic quantum error correction, computation, and sensing.
Authors
- Tobias Sägesser (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6895-9096)
- Matteo Simoni (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-2528-7866)
- Jonathan Home (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4093-1550)
- M. Mazzanti (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2780-2954)
- Shreyans Jain (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7338-1666)
- Daniel Kienzler (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2557-6589)
- Pavel Hrmo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1507-0637)
- Ivan Rojkov (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7164-0265)
- A. Ferk (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-7924-1816)
- Wojciech Adamczyk (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6732-2413)
Institutions
- ETH Zurich (CH)
- Institute for Quantum Electronics (CH)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Science Advances
- Published
- 2026-11-11
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aee5380
- Citations
- 8
- Primary Topic
- Quantum Information and Cryptography
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 9.62
Funders
- Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung
- Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek
- Staatssekretariat für Bildung, Forschung und Innovation