On the basis of the quantum Zeno effect, it has been recently shown [D. K. Burgarth et al., Nat. Commun. 5, 5173 (2014)] that a strong-amplitude-damping process applied locally on a part of a quantum system can have a beneficial effect on the dynamics of the remaining part of the system. Quantum operations that cannot be implemented without the dissipation become achievable by the action of the strong dissipative process. Here we generalize this idea by identifying decoherence-free subspaces (DFSs) as the subspaces in which the dynamics becomes more complex. Applying methods from quantum control theory, we characterize the set of reachable operations within the DFSs. We provide three examples that become fully controllable within the DFSs while the control over the original Hilbert space in the absence of dissipation is trivial. In particular, we show that the (classical) Ising Hamiltonian is turned into a Heisenberg Hamiltonian by strong collective decoherence, which provides universal quantum computation within the DFSs. Moreover, we perform numerical gate optimization to study how the process fidelity scales with the noise strength. As a by-product, a subsystem fidelity that can be applied in other optimization problems for open quantum systems is developed.

We investigate an atomic ensemble of interacting bosons trapped in a symmetric double-well potential in contact with a single tightly trapped ion which has been recently proposed [R. Gerritsma et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 080402 (2012)] as a source of entanglement between a Bose-Einstein condensate and an ion. Compared to the previous study, the present work aims at performing a detailed and accurate many-body analysis of such a combined atomic quantum system by means of the ab initio multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree method for bosons, which allows us to take into account all correlations in the system. The analysis elucidates the importance of quantum correlations in the bosonic ensemble and reveals that entanglement generation between an ion and a condensate is indeed possible, as previously predicted. Moreover, we provide an intuitive picture of the impact of the correlations on the out-of-equilibrium dynamics by employing a natural orbital analysis which we show to be indeed experimentally verifiable.

We rigorously establish an Arrhenius law for the mixing time of quantum doubles based on any Abelian group ${\mathbb{Z}}_d$. We have made the concept of the energy barrier therein mathematically well defined; it is related to the minimum energy cost the environment has to provide to the system in order to produce a generalized Pauli error, maximized for any generalized Pauli errors, not only logical operators. We evaluate this generalized energy barrier in Abelian quantum double models and find it to be a constant independent of system size. Thus, we rule out the possibility of entropic protection for this broad group of models.

The resource theory of asymmetry is a framework for classifying and quantifying the symmetry-breaking properties of both states and operations relative to a given symmetry. In the special case where the symmetry is the set of translations generated by a fixed observable, asymmetry can be interpreted as coherence relative to the observable eigenbasis, and the resource theory of asymmetry provides a framework to study this notion of coherence. We here show that this notion of coherence naturally arises in the context of quantum speed limits. Indeed, the very concept of speed of evolution, i.e., the inverse of the minimum time it takes the system to evolve to another (partially) distinguishable state, is a measure of asymmetry relative to the time translations generated by the system Hamiltonian. Furthermore, the celebrated Mandelstam-Tamm and Margolus-Levitin speed limits can be interpreted as upper bounds on this measure of asymmetry by functions which are themselves measures of asymmetry in the special case of pure states. Using measures of asymmetry that are not restricted to pure states, such as the Wigner-Yanase skew information, we obtain extensions of the Mandelstam-Tamm bound which are significantly tighter in the case of mixed states. We also clarify some confusions in the literature about coherence and asymmetry, and show that measures of coherence are a proper subset of measures of asymmetry.

The observation of quantum nonlocality, i.e., quantum correlations violating a Bell inequality, implies the use of incompatible local quantum measurements. Here we consider the converse question. That is, can any set of incompatible measurements be used in order to demonstrate Bell inequality violation? Our main result is to construct a local hidden variable model for an incompatible set of qubit measurements. Specifically, we show that if Alice uses this set of measurements, then for any possible shared entangled state and any possible dichotomic measurements performed by Bob, the resulting statistics are local. This represents significant progress towards proving that measurement incompatibility does not imply Bell nonlocality in general.

We present a method for creating a quantum degenerate gas of metastable alkaline-earth-metal atoms. This has yet to be achieved due to inelastic collisions that limit evaporative cooling in the metastable states. Quantum degenerate samples prepared in the ${}^1{S}_0$ ground state can be rapidly transferred to either the ${}^3{P}_2$ or ${}^3{P}_0$ state via a coherent three-photon process. Numerical integration of the density-matrix evolution for the fine structure of bosonic alkaline-earth-metal atoms shows that transfer efficiencies of $\simeq 90$% can be achieved with experimentally feasible laser parameters in both Sr and Yb. Importantly, the three-photon process can be set up such that it imparts no net momentum to the degenerate gas during the excitation, which will allow for studies of metastable samples outside the Lamb-Dicke regime. We discuss several experimental challenges to successfully realizing our scheme, including the minimization of differential ac Stark shifts between the four states connected by the three-photon transition.

Experimental searches for the electron electric-dipole moment (EDM) probe new physics beyond the standard model. The current best EDM limit was set by the ACME Collaboration [Science 343, 269 (2014)], constraining time-reversal symmetry $\left(T\right)$ violating physics at the TeV energy scale. ACME used optical pumping to prepare a coherent superposition of ThO $H^3{\mathrm{\Delta }}_1$ states that have aligned electron spins. Spin precession due to the molecule's internal electric field was measured to extract the EDM. We report here on an improved method for preparing this spin-aligned state of the electron by using stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP). We demonstrate a transfer efficiency of $75\%\pm 5\%$, representing a significant gain in signal for a next-generation EDM experiment. We discuss the particularities of implementing STIRAP in systems such as ours, where molecular ensembles with large phase-space distributions are transferred via weak molecular transitions with limited laser power and limited optical access.

In this work, we report experimental and theoretical ionization and electron-capture cross sections for single-, double- and triple-electron removal from ${\mathrm{H}}_2\mathrm{O}$ by ${\mathrm{Li}}^{3+}$ impact at energies ranging from 0.75 to 5.8 MeV. The experiment was carried out by selecting both the final charge state of the projectile and the ejected fragments in coincidence to obtain cross sections associated with ionization and electron-capture channels. The ionic fragments and the emitted electrons produced under single-collision conditions were collected by a time-of-flight spectrometer with single-hit (e.g., ${\mathrm{OH}}^{+}+{\mathrm{H}}^0)$ and double-hit events (e.g., ${\mathrm{OH}}^{+}+{\mathrm{H}}^{+})$ properly discriminated. For the one- and two-electron removal cases, the calculations based on the basis generator method for orbital propagation agree well with the experiment for most of the collision channels studied. Auger-electron emission after vacancy production in the inner $2a_1$ orbital of ${\mathrm{H}}_2\mathrm{O}$ is shown to have a substantial effect on the final charge-state distributions over the entire impact-energy interval.

Ab initio theoretical studies and momentum-imaging experiments are combined to provide a consistent picture of the dynamics of dissociative electron attachment to ammonia through its 5.5- and 10.5-eV resonance channels. The present study clarifies the character and symmetry of the anion states involved and the dynamics that leads to the observed fragment-ion channels, their branching ratios, and angular distributions.

We introduce an optical tool—a “two-dimensional optical centrifuge”—capable of aligning molecules in extreme rotational states. The alignment is studied in oxygen under ambient conditions, and in a cold jet of nitrogen. Unlike the conventional centrifuge, which confines the molecules in the plane of their rotation, its two-dimensional version aligns the molecules along a well-defined axis, similar to the effect of a single linearly polarized laser pulse, but at a much higher level of rotational excitation. We observe long lifetimes of the created alignment due to the increased robustness of ultrahigh rotational states with respect to collisions. The adiabatic nature of the centrifuge excitation provides a means of generating stationary aligned states.

Numerous accidental near degeneracies exist between the $2{\nu }_2$ and ${\nu }_4$ rotation-vibration energy levels of ammonia. Transitions between these two states possess significantly enhanced sensitivity to a possible variation of the proton-to-electron mass ratio $\mu$. Using a robust variational approach to determine the mass sensitivity of the energy levels along with accurate experimental values for the energies, sensitivity coefficients have been calculated for over 350 microwave, submillimeter, and far-infrared transitions up to $J=15$ for ${}^{14}\mathrm{NH}_3$. The sensitivities are the largest found in ammonia to date. One particular transition, although extremely weak, has a sensitivity of $T=-16738$ and illustrates the huge enhancement that can occur between close-lying energy levels. More promising however are a set of previously measured transitions with $T=-32$ to 28. Given the astrophysical importance of ammonia, the sensitivities presented here confirm that ${}^{14}\mathrm{NH}_3$ can be used exclusively to constrain a spatial or temporal variation of $\mu$. Thus certain systematic errors which affect the ammonia method can be eliminated. For all transitions analyzed we provide frequency data and Einstein A coefficients to guide future laboratory and astronomical observations.

High-harmonic generation driven by two-color counter-rotating circularly polarized laser fields was recently demonstrated experimentally as a breakthrough source of bright, coherent, circularly polarized beams in the extreme ultraviolet and soft-x-ray regions. However, the conditions for optimizing the single-atom yield are significantly more complex than for linearly polarized driving lasers and are not fully understood. Here we present a comprehensive study of strong-field ionization—the complementary process to high-harmonic generation—driven by two-color circularly polarized fields. We uncover the conditions that lead to enhanced electron-ion rescattering, which should correspond to the highest single-atom harmonic flux. Using a velocity map imaging photoelectron spectrometer and tomographic reconstruction techniques, we record three-dimensional photoelectron distributions resulting from the strong-field ionization of argon atoms across a broad range of driving laser intensity ratios. In combination with analytical predictions and advanced numerical simulations, we show that “hard” electron-ion rescattering is optimized when the second-harmonic field has an intensity approximately four times higher than that of the fundamental driving field. We also investigate electron-ion rescattering with co-rotating fields, and find that rescattering is significantly suppressed when compared with counter-rotating fields.

We construct an amplifier that interpolates between a nondeterministic, immaculate linear amplifier and a deterministic, ideal linear amplifier and beyond to nonideal linear amplifiers. The construction involves cascading an immaculate linear amplifier that has amplitude gain $g_1$ with a (possibly) nonideal linear amplifier that has gain $g_2$. With respect to normally ordered moments, the device has output noise ${\mu }^2(G^2-1)$ where $G=g_1{g}_2$ is the overall amplitude gain and ${\mu }^2$ is a noise parameter. When ${\mu }^2\ge 1$, our devices realize ideal $\left({\mu }^2=1\right)$ and nonideal $\left({\mu }^2>1\right)$ linear amplifiers. When $0\le {\mu }^2<1$, these devices work effectively only over a restricted region of phase space and with some subunity success probability $p_{✓}$. We investigate the performance of our ${\mu }^2$ amplifiers in terms of a gain-corrected probability-fidelity product and the ratio of input to output signal-to-noise ratios corrected for success probability.

Nonlinear single Compton scattering has been thoroughly investigated in the literature under the assumption that the electron initially has a definite momentum. Here, we study a more general initial state and consider the electron as a wave packet. In particular, we investigate the energy spectrum of the emitted radiation and show that, in typical experimental situations, some features of the spectra shown in previous works are almost completely washed out. Moreover, we show that, at comparable relative uncertainties, the one in the momentum of the incoming electron has a larger impact on the photon spectra at a fixed observation direction than the one on the laser frequency.

We propose and analyze two schemes capable of generating isolated attosecond pulses of pure circular polarization, based on results of numerical simulations. Both schemes utilize the generation of circularly polarized high-order-harmonics by crossing two circularly polarized counter-rotating pulses in a noncollinear geometry. Our results show that in this setup isolation of a single attosecond pulse can be achieved either by restricting the driver pulse duration to a few cycles or by temporally delaying the two crossed driver pulses. We further propose to compensate the temporal walk-off between the pulses across the focal spot and increasing the conversion efficiency by using angular spatial chirp to provide perfectly matched pulse fronts. The isolation of pure circularly polarized attosecond pulses, along with the opportunity to select their central energy and helicity in the noncollinear technique, opens new perspectives from which to study ultrafast dynamics in chiral systems and magnetic materials.

We provide a method of designing protocols for implementing multipartite quantum measurements when the parties are restricted to local operations and classical communication (LOCC). For each finite integer number of rounds $r$, the method succeeds in every case for which an $r$-round protocol exists for the measurement under consideration, and failure of the method has the immediate implication that the measurement under consideration cannot be implemented by LOCC no matter how many rounds of communication are allowed, including when the number of rounds is allowed to be infinite. It turns out that this method shows—often with relative ease—the impossibility by LOCC for a number of examples, including cases where this was not previously known, as well as the example that demonstrated what has famously become known as nonlocality without entanglement.

We propose and examine the use of biphoton pairs, such as those created in parametric down-conversion or four-wave mixing, to enhance the precision and the resolution of measuring optical displacements by position-sensitive detection. We show that the precision of measuring a small optical beam displacement with this method can be significantly enhanced by the correlation between the two photons, given the same optical mode. The improvement is largest if the correlations between the photons are strong, and falls off as the biphoton correlation weakens. More surprisingly, we find that the smallest resolvable parameter of a simple split detector scales as the inverse of the number of biphotons for small biphoton number (“Heisenberg scaling”), because the Fisher information diverges as the parameter to be estimated decreases in value. One usually sees this scaling only for systems with many entangled degrees of freedom. We discuss the transition for the split-detection scheme to the standard quantum limit scaling for imperfect correlations as the biphoton number is increased. An analysis of an $N$-pixel detector is also given to investigate the benefit of using a higher resolution detector. The physical limit of these metrology schemes is determined by the uncertainty in the birth zone of the biphoton in the nonlinear crystal.

We demonstrate experimentally and theoretically a controllable way of shifting the frequency of an optical pulse by using a combination of spectral hole burning, slow light effect, and linear Stark effect in a rare-earth-ion-doped crystal. We claim that the solid angle of acceptance of a frequency shift structure can be close to $2\pi$, which means that the frequency shifter could work not only for optical pulses propagating in a specific spatial mode but also for randomly scattered light. As the frequency shift is controlled solely by an external electric field, it works also for weak coherent light fields and can be used, for example, as a frequency shifter for quantum memory devices in quantum communication.

We theoretically study the generation of optical frequency combs and corresponding pulse trains in doubly resonant intracavity second-harmonic generation (SHG). We find that, despite the large temporal walk-off characteristic of realistic cavity systems, the nonlinear dynamics can be accurately and efficiently modeled using a pair of coupled mean-field equations. Through rigorous stability analysis of the system's steady-state continuous-wave solutions, we demonstrate that walk-off can give rise to an unexplored regime of temporal modulation instability. Numerical simulations performed in this regime reveal rich dynamical behaviors, including the emergence of temporal patterns that correspond to coherent optical frequency combs. We also demonstrate that the two coupled equations that govern the doubly resonant cavity behavior can, under typical conditions, be reduced to a single mean-field equation akin to that describing the dynamics of singly-resonant-cavity SHG [F. Leo et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 033901 (2016)]. This reduced approach allows us to derive a simple expression for the modulation instability gain, thus permitting us to acquire significant insight into the underlying physics. We anticipate that our work will have a wide impact on the study of frequency combs in emerging doubly resonant cavity SHG platforms, including quadratically nonlinear microresonators.

We employ a rotating frame of reference to elucidate high-order-harmonic generation of circularly polarized light by bicircular driving fields. In particular, we show how the experimentally observed circular components of the high-order-harmonic spectrum can be directly related to the corresponding quantities in the rotating frame. Supported by numerical simulations of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation, we deduce an optimal strategy for maximizing the cutoff in the high-order-harmonic plateau while keeping the two circular components of the emitted light spectrally distinct. Moreover, we show how the rotating-frame picture can be more generally employed for elliptical drivers. Finally, we point out how circular and elliptical driving fields show a near-duality to static electric and magnetic fields in a rotating-frame description. This demonstrates how high-order-harmonic generation of circularly polarized light under static electromagnetic fields can be emulated in practice even at static field strengths beyond current experimental capabilities.