Evading quantum mechanics: Engineering a classical subsystem within a quantum environment

Abstract

Quantum mechanics is potentially advantageous for certain information-processing tasks, but its probabilistic nature and requirement of measurement backaction often limit the precision of conventional classical information-processing devices, such as sensors and atomic clocks. Here we show that, by engineering the dynamics of coupled quantum systems, it is possible to construct a subsystem that evades the measurement backaction of quantum mechanics, at all times of interest, and obeys any classical dynamics, linear or nonlinear, that we choose. We call such a system a quantum-mechanics-free subsystem (QMFS). All of the observables of a QMFS are quantum-nondemolition (QND) observables; moreover, they are dynamical QND observables, thus demolishing the widely held belief that QND observables are constants of motion. QMFSs point to a new strategy for designing classical information-processing devices in regimes where quantum noise is detrimental, unifying previous approaches that employ QND observables, backaction evasion, and quantum noise cancellation. Potential applications include gravitational-w]ave detection, optomechanical-force sensing, atomic magnetometry, and classical computing. Demonstrations of dynamical QMFSs include the generation of broadband squeezed light for use in interferometric gravitational-wave detection, experiments using entangled atomic-spin ensembles, and implementations of the quantum Toffoli gate.