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Updated: Oct 13, 2025

Quantum State Engineering of Light with Continuous-wave Optical Parametric Oscillators
Published on: May 30, 2014
Rapid Quantum Squeezing by Jumping the Harmonic Oscillator Frequency
Mingjie Xin1, Wui Seng Leong1, Zilong Chen1
1Division of Physics and Applied Physics, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 637371, Singapore.
Abstract:
Quantum sensing and quantum information processing use quantum advantages such as squeezed states that encode a quantity of interest with higher precision and generate quantum correlations to outperform classical methods. In harmonic oscillators, the rate of generating squeezing is set by a quantum speed limit. Therefore, the degree to which a quantum advantage can be used in practice is limited by the time needed to create the state relative to the rate of unavoidable decoherence. Alternatively, a sudden change of harmonic oscillator's frequency projects a ground state into a squeezed state which can circumvent the time constraint. Here, we create squeezed states of atomic motion by sudden changes of the harmonic oscillation frequency of atoms in an optical lattice. Building on this protocol, we demonstrate rapid quantum amplification of a displacement operator that could be used for detecting motion. Our results can speed up quantum gates and enable quantum sensing and quantum information processing in noisy environments.
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