Quantum Research Opportunities

Graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms with honeycomb lattice structure, shows many exotic physics and promising properties for device applications. Stacking different layers together provides a degree of freedom to change electronic properties of graphene, such as electronic band structures. In this project, the successful applicant will work with a team from QED group from School of Phyiscs at UNSW to explore effect of different stacking order on electronic properties of ABA- and ABC- stacked trilayer graphene. The successful applicant will participate in fabrication of van der Waals heterostructure and measuring their electronic properties in an environment of ultracold temperatures and high magnetic fields.

Complex light fields used in optical tweezers require advanced optical manipulation and control of the laser beam. The project focusses on the design, experimental setup and characterization of a beam auto-aligner system on a Raspberry Pi controlled stepper motor. The system will be used for maintaining and manipulating the intensity distribution of the laser beam and precise optical beamshaping by a spatial light modulator patterned optical trap for cold atoms. The work involves developing a machine learning algorithm for optimization of the “walking the beam” technique, used in most quantum optics experiments and control of structured light for advanced optical manipulation. The algorithm can be used to optimize the laser power into optical fibers, better modulation of the amplitude and phase of light and for controlling of the overlapping beams in a pump-probe experimental setup. The precise control of the laser beam intensity distribution enables the fine tuning of configurable potential wells for future optimized optical trapping experiments.

In this project you will work at the frontiers of superconducting qubit development, exploring the relatively new field of ‘protected’ superconducting qubits to design, build and characterise novel qubits. Superconducting circuits are a mature technology used extensively in academic and industrial efforts to build quantum processors and simulators. In traditional superconducting qubits, there is a fundamental trade-off between minimising different types of errors – one type of error is minimised at the expense of increasing another. Fortunately, the versatility of superconducting circuits gives us incredible flexibility to design and engineer new, multi-mode qubits that are intrinsically robust against multiple types of error – these qubits are known as ‘protected’ qubits.

Graphene is a wonder material made of a single layer of carbon atoms in a honeycomb lattice. The study of graphene and other atomically thin (2D) materials has exploded into one of the hottest topics in modern physics, resulting in the Nobel Prize in 2010. Graphene has remarkable electrical properties: electrons in graphene behave as massless Dirac particles, like photons or neutrinos, and can travel for long distances without scattering. This makes graphene an ideal candidate for post silicon electronics. Symmetry arguments show that these properties are not just limited to graphene, but appear naturally in a variety of 2D lattice structures.

Recently hole spin qubits have been at the forefront of experimental and theoretical quantum computing research, as their strong spin-orbit coupling makes them ideal for all-electrical spin manipulation. This has been demonstrated for holes in both Ge and Si, and the community is seeking ways to entangle adjacent qubits. This is a complex theoretical problem, rendered even more challenging by the fact that holes have an effective spin-3/2.