This book provides the building blocks for continued exploration of quantum optics in previously inaccessible regimes and more complex simulations of natural phenomena at the quantum frontier. Sebastian Saner carried out ground-breaking experimental research in quantum optics, with important applications to quantum computing and simulation. The story of quantum technology, now the subject of multi-billion dollar government and private investments around the globe, is one of ever more exquisite control over quantum systems such as individual spins and quantum harmonic oscillators. Typically, such systems are controlled individually, or one is used to mediate interactions in another. Instead, Sebastian Saner demonstrated a new regime of control that puts both quantum systems on an equal footing, using systems of one or two individual trapped atomic ions whose internal states represent qubits, and whose motion is an harmonic oscillator. The author used this hybrid system to perform an astonishingly diverse range of world-first demonstrations: the first quantum logic gates driven by a standing-wave laser field (which can potentially be much faster than previous gates); the first achievement of arbitrary superposition states of “squeezed” harmonic oscillator states; and the first observation of real-time dynamics of a simple lattice gauge theory, including Aharonov-Bohm interference.

Dr. Sebastian Saner is a quantum physicist specialising in quantum computing with hybrid qubit–oscillator systems. He completed his DPhil at the University of Oxford, where he developed novel quantum control techniques for such hybrid systems. His research enables versatile quantum operations, the generation of a new family of non-classical superposition states, and the simulation of previously inaccessible quantum phenomena.