Physics
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Item Many-Body Dephasing in a Cryogenic Trapped Ion Quantum Simulator(2019) Kaplan, Harvey B.; Monroe, Christopher R; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)While realizing a fully functional quantum computer presents a long term technical goal, in the present, there are small to mid-sized quantum simulators (up to $\sim 100$ qubits), that are capable of approaching specialized problems. The quantum simulator discussed here uses trapped ions to act as qubits and is housed in a cryogenically cooled vacuum chamber in order to reduce the background pressure, thereby increasing ion chain length and life-time. The details of performance and characterization of this cryogenic apparatus are discussed, and this system is used to study many-body dephasing in a finite-sized quantum spin system. How a closed quantum many-body system relaxes and dephases as a function of time is important to understand when dealing with many-body spin systems. In this work, the first experimental observation of persistent temporal fluctuations after a quantum quench is presented with a tunable long-range interacting transverse-field Ising Hamiltonian. The fluctuations in the average magnetization of a finite-size system of spin-$1/2$ particles are measured presenting a direct measurement of relaxation dynamics in a non-integrable system. This experiment is in the regime where the properties of the system are closely related to the integrable Hamiltonian with global coupling. The system size is varied in order to investigate the dependence on finite-size scaling, and the system size scaling exponent extracted from the measured fluctuations is consistent with theoretical prediction.Item Development of a dual-tip millikelvin Josephson scanning tunneling microscope(2014) Roychowdhury, Anita; Lobb, Christopher J; Wellstood, Frederick C; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this thesis, I first describe the design and construction of a dual-tip millikelvin STM system. The STM is mounted on a dilution refrigerator and the setup includes vibration isolation, rf-filtered wiring, an ultra high vacuum (UHV) sample preparation chamber and sample transfer mechanism.
Next I describe a novel superconducting tip fabrication technique. My technique involves dry-etching sections of 250 μm diameter Nb wire with an SF6 plasma in a reactive ion etcher. I present data taken with these tips on various samples at temperatures ranging from 30 mK to 9 K. My results demonstrate that the tips are superconducting, achieve good spectroscopic energy resolution, are mechanically robust over long time periods, and are atomically sharp.
I also show data characterizing the performance of our system. This data is in the form of atomic resolution images, spectroscopy, noise spectra and simultaneous scans taken with both tips of the STM. I used these to examine the tip-sample stability, cross talk between the two tips, and to extract the effective noise temperature (∼185 mK) of the sample by fitting the spectroscopy data to a voltage noise model.
Finally, I present spectroscopy data taken with a Nb tip on a Nb(100) sample at 30 mK. The enhanced spectroscopic resolution at this temperature allowed me to resolve peaks in the fluctuation-dominated supercurrent at sub-gap voltages. My analysis indicates that these peaks are due to the incoherent tunneling of Cooper pairs at resonant frequencies of the STM's electromagnetic environment. By measuring the response of the STM junction to microwaves, I identified the charge carriers in this regime as Cooper pairs with charge 2e. The amplitude of the response current scales as the square of the Bessel functions, indicating that the pair tunneling originates from photon assisted tunneling in the incoherent regime, rather than the more conventionally observed Shapiro steps in the coherent regime.Item Cryogenic test of gravitational inverse square law below 100-micrometer length scales(2010) Yethadka Venkateswara, Krishna Raj; Paik, Ho Jung; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The inverse-square law is a hallmark of theories of gravity, impressively demonstrated from astronomical scales to sub-millimeter scales, yet we do not have a complete quantized theory of gravity applicable at the shortest distance scale. Problems within modern physics such as the hierarchy problem, the cosmological constant problem, and the strong CP problem in the Standard Model motivate a search for new physics. Theories such as large extra dimensions, ‘fat gravitons,’ and the axion, proposed to solve these problems, can result in a deviation from the gravitational inverse-square law below 100 μm and are thus testable in the laboratory. We have conducted a sub-millimeter test of the inverse-square law at 4.2 K. To minimize Newtonian errors, the experiment employed a near-null source, a disk of large diameter-to-thickness ratio. Two test masses, also disk-shaped, were positioned on the two sides of the source mass at a nominal distance of 280 μm. As the source was driven sinusoidally, the response of the test masses was sensed through a superconducting differential accelerometer. Any deviations from the inverse-square law would appear as a violation signal at the second harmonic of the source frequency, due to symmetry. We improved the design of the experiment significantly over an earlier version, by separating the source mass suspension from the detector housing and making the detector a true differential accelerometer. We identified the residual gas pressure as an error source, and developed ways to overcome the problem. During the experiment we further identified the two dominant sources of error - magnetic cross-talk and electrostatic coupling. Using cross-talk cancellation and residual balance, these were reduced to the level of the limiting random noise. No deviations from the inverse-square law were found within the experimental error (2σ) down to a length scale λ = 100 μm at the level of coupling constant |α|≤2. Extra dimensions were searched down to a length scale of 78 μm (|α|≤4). We have also proposed modifications to the current experimental design in the form of new tantalum source mass and installing additional accelerometers, to achieve an amplifier noise limited sensitivity.