Communications of the ACM
Pivotal Discovery in Quantum and Classical Information Processing
The team's microwave-magnonic device with on-demand tunability opens up new directions for magnon-based coherent signal processing.
Credit: Argonne National Laboratory
Working with theorists in the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, researchers in the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory have achieved a scientific control that is a first of its kind. They demonstrated a novel approach that allows real-time control of the interactions between microwave photons and magnons, potentially leading to advances in electronic devices and quantum signal processing.
Microwave photons are elementary particles forming the electromagnetic waves that we use for wireless communications. On the other hand, magnons are the elementary particles forming what scientists call "spin waves" — wave-like disturbances in an ordered array of microscopic aligned spins that can occur in certain magnetic materials.
Microwave photon-magnon interaction has emerged in recent years as a promising platform for both classical and quantum information processing. Yet, this interaction had proved impossible to manipulate in real time, until now.
"Before our discovery, controlling the photon-magnon interaction was like shooting an arrow into the air," says Xufeng Zhang, an assistant scientist in the Center for Nanoscale Materials, a DOE User Facility at Argonne, and the corresponding author of this work. "One has no control at all over that arrow once in flight."
The team describes its work in "Floquet Cavity Electromagnonics," published in Physical Review Letters.
The team employed an electrical signal to periodically alter the magnon vibrational frequency and thereby induce effective magnon-photon interaction. The result is a first-ever microwave-magnonic device with on-demand tunability.
Aside from Zhang, authors include Jing Xu, Xu Han, and Dafei Jin at Argonne, plus Changchun Zhong and Liang Jiang at the University of Chicago.
From Argonne National Laboratory
View Full Article
No entries found