NSF-AFRL REFLEQTS: Floquet-engineered polaritonic quantum states for infrared single photon detection and sensing

The University Of Central Florida Board Of Trustees, Orlando FL

Investigators

Abstract

A Nontechnical Description: This award supports an ambitious cross-institutional team effort with the objective of disruptively advancing quantum science and engineering research by conceiving, exploring, designing and realizing a new class of devices based on an emergent quantum physics of periodically driven materials. These efforts will aim at establishing a new paradigm of Floquet-enabled quantum detection and sensing and will open unprecedented opportunities for technology by offering advances in integrated quantum sensors, facilitating chip-scale manufacturing, and enabling nanoscale materials integration, all of which will benefit several national grand challenges for our society and will secure US leadership in chip manufacturing and quantum technologies. The outcomes of this project, specifically, the development of integrated sensing devices towards a fully integrated and deployable quantum photonic platform, will establish a novel approach for sensing for secure civil resource management and the defense industry. Other areas that may benefit from the progress in this program include improved nano-scale integration of diverse quantum and optical materials and devices in a single chip, and improvements in fabrication tolerance for communication, on-chip computations, and overall improved device efficiency for the photonic industry. This program will engage researchers from DoD and will be carried out in strong synergy with scientists from AFRL, which will ensure transfer of knowledge and knowhow developed in this project to be applied in defense-related missions. Novelty, scientific and technological breadth of this project, its interdisciplinary and highly collaborative nature, will also provide unique opportunities for training the next generation of scientists. A Technical Description: Floquet-engineered systems represent a paradigm shift in fundamental materials sciences and physics, bringing the possibility of leveraging both space and time and to engineer Floquet orders in both momentum and frequency, and exploit them as additional degrees of freedom while operating in controllable out-of-equilibrium regimes. This project will establish tight collaborations through quantum science and engineering research to apply to advance this new paradigm into the area of Floquet-enabled quantum detection and sensing. While there has been significant progress in experimental realization of Floquet systems, these were restricted to the domain of fundamental science, without any clear benefits for practical applications. This project will fill that gap by developing approaches and technical knowhow on how Floquet engineered photonic system can be leveraged for the implementation of integrated sensing devices towards a fully integrated and deployable quantum photonic platform. Our approach consists in: (i) developing, for the first time, a fundamental understanding of light-matter interactions in quantum Floquet systems to enable sensing, (ii) applying this understanding to prepare out-of-equilibrium and multi-dimensional quantum cluster Floquet states, (iii) utilizing such states to demonstrate efficient single-photon detection and single-photon imaging in near- and mid-IR, and (iv) implementing enhanced sensing with squeezed multi-dimensional polaritonic quantum Floquet states. By the end of this project, we will achieve two goals. First, we will create revolutionary efficient photon detector that operates based on the interaction between thermal photons and optomechanical resonators and where the out-of-equilibrium nature of our optomechanical oscillators significantly amplifies the detector’s responsivity, Second, based on an array of integrated sensing devices on a single chip, we will realize a fully integrated platform of a scalable quantum-enhanced sensor network, with each sensor probed by an independent squeezed light source or one of the frequency modes of a Floquet-engineered squeezed frequency combs. Our approach will facilitate novel applications and will allow demonstrating for the first time devices for sensing at the single-quanta level and at elevated temperatures. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.