Abstract
The vibrations of a single atom, or of a multitude of atoms in a solid, are both a source of decoherence that must be overcome, and a fully-fledged quantum system that can be manipulated. This lecture will introduce these two facets of vibrations or phonons in emerging quantum technologies. We will see, for example, how to strongly reduce the coupling of a solid-state qubit to phonons in order to preserve quantum coherence. We will also introduce the field of quantum optomechanics, where the motion of macroscopic systems is optically controlled until the quantum regime is reached. These systems can now be used to produce highly sensitive sensors, couple different quantum systems and explore fundamental questions of physics.
