Coherently controlled logic device based on cavity magnon polariton dynamics

The emerging field of 'cavity magnon polariton (CMP)' deals with the interaction between photons and magnons, particularly using microwave cavity photons and a collective excitation of the electrons' spin. This field is developing rapidly, showing promising platform for advancing towards quantum technologies.

Magnons are ideal information carriers for quantum devices since they are long lived, extremely low damping and tunable in frequency. Photons possess long coherent time with a high speed in information transferring. Via strong interaction, cavity magnon polariton thereby combines the best features from both photonic and magnonic systems, stimulating the ideas for novel coherent information processing. To further advance such information processing by utilizing CMPs, a device with three fundamental functions of switching, transport, and basic logic operations is highly required.

Recently, Dr. Bimu Yao from State Key Laboratory of Infrared Physics, Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, teaming up with Prof. Can-Ming Hu from University of Manitoba as well as researchers from Lanzhou University and National Institute of Standards and Technology, takes advantage of strongly coupled magnon-photon system to achieve controllable polariton transport which can be potentially applied as logic devices.

Distinguished with traditional semiconductor logic devices, the proposed new type of logic device composes of all passive components and works in linear dynamics without any bias voltage. Therefore, in this work Rao et.al. provide an attractive platform for future CMP-based computation techniques with all “Zero-energy” logic gates.

Figure: Imply gate logic operations based on building cavity magnon-polariton dynamics in a cross cavity.

This work shed light on harnessing coherent information contained in spatially distributed polariton states, enabling the CMP to coherently function the basic logic operation, as we have demonstrated.

The study was published in nature communications titled " Analogue of dynamic Hall effect in cavity magnon polariton system and coherently controlled logic device". It was supported by the funding from National Natural Science Foundation of China and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.