On August 22, 2023 LHQS member Joe Kitzman successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation entitled "Engineered Dissipation in Open Quantum Acoustic Systems".
Joe's Ph.D. work has focused on experiments with superconducting circuit based quantum bits (qubits) coupled to quantum acoustic devices based on surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonators. Because of the ability to fine-tune the interaction between the qubit and the mechanical modes as well as phononic excitation spectra, the field of quantum acoustics is an ideal candidate for quantum simulation of both non-Markovian and open quantum systems, and Joe's thesis work breaks the foundational ground in this effort. In particular, Joe and his collaborators were able to reveal a number of exciting phenomena in these open quantum acoustic systems, including the phononic bath engineering of a superconducting qubit and the Fano interference of surface phonons in the quantum regime, just to name two.
After graduating Joe will now be taking on a new challenge as an industry physicist working at Northrop Grumman. Congratulations Joe on a truly fantastic Ph.D.!
Joe Kitzman on his way to a successful thesis defense.
Schematic of various quantum acoustics architectures. A superconducting qubit (center) is used as a tool for investigating the quantum mechanical behavior of phononic systems such as surface acoustic waves (SAWs), bulk phonons, phononic crystal resonators, and suspended membranes, just to name a few.