A qubit was designed that can be fabricated with conventional electron beam lithography and is suited for integration into a large quantum computer. The qubit consists of a micrometer-sized loop with three or four Josephson junctions; the two qubit states have persistent currents of opposite direction. Quantum superpositions of these states are obtained by pulsed microwave modulation of the enclosed magnetic flux by currents in control lines. A superconducting flux transporter allows for controlled transfer between qubits of the flux that is generated by the persistent currents, leading to entanglement of qubit information.

We present the design of a superconducting qubit that has circulating currents of opposite sign as its two states. The circuit consists of three nanoscale aluminum Josephson junctions connected in a superconducting loop and controlled by magnetic fields. The advantages of this qubit are that it can be made insensitive to background charges in the substrate, the flux in the two states can be detected with a superconducting quantum interference device, and the states can be manipulated with magnetic fields. Coupled systems of qubits are also discussed as well as sources of decoherence. ͓S0163-1829͑99͒00746-8͔

Optomechanical systems with strong coupling can be a powerful medium for quantum state engineering of the cavity modes. Here, we show that quantum state conversion between cavity modes of distinctively different wavelengths can be realized with high fidelity by adiabatically varying the effective optomechanical couplings. The conversion fidelity for gaussian states is derived by solving the Langevin equation in the adiabatic limit. Meanwhile, we also show that traveling photon pulses can be transmitted between different input and output channels with high fidelity and the output pulse can be engineered via the optomechanical couplings.

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We report the experimental demonstration of optomechanical light storage in a silica resonator. We use writing and readout laser pulses tuned to one mechanical frequency below an optical cavity resonance to control the coupling between the mechanical displacement and the optical field at the cavity resonance. The writing pulse maps a signal pulse at the cavity resonance to a mechanical excitation. The readout pulse later converts the mechanical excitation back to an optical pulse. The light storage lifetime is determined by the relatively long damping time of the mechanical excitation.-1 -

We propose an application of a single Cooper pair box (Josephson qubit) for active cooling of nanomechanical resonators. Latest experiments with Josephson qubits demonstrated that long coherence time of the order of microsecond can be achieved in special symmetry points. Here we show that this level of coherence is sufficient to perform an analog of the well known in quantum optics "laser" cooling of a nanomechanical resonator capacitively coupled to the qubit. By applying an AC driving to the qubit or the resonator, resonators with frequency of order 100 MHz and quality factors higher than 10 3 can be efficiently cooled down to their ground state, while lower frequency resonators can be cooled down to micro-Kelvin temperatures. We also consider an alternative setup where DC-voltage-induced Josephson oscillations play the role of the AC driving and show that cooling is possible in this case as well.

Hyperfine interactions with randomly oriented nuclear spins present a fundamental decoherence mechanism for electron spin in a quantum dot, that can be suppressed by polarizing the nuclear spins. Here, we analyze an all-optical scheme that uses hyperfine interactions to implement laser cooling of quantum-dot nuclear spins. The limitation imposed on spin cooling by the dark states for collective spin relaxation can be overcome by modulating the electron wave function.

An optomechanical interface that converts quantum states between optical fields with distinct wavelengths is proposed. A mechanical mode couples to two optical modes via radiation pressure and mediates the quantum state mapping between the two optical modes. A sequence of optomechanical $\pi/2$ pulses enables state-swapping between optical and mechanical states as well as the cooling of the mechanical mode. Theoretical analysis shows that high fidelity conversion can be realized for states with small photon numbers in systems with experimentally achievable parameters. The pulsed conversion process also makes it possible to maintain high conversion fidelity at elevated bath temperatures.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, Fig. 4 looks weird (possible latex style problem