Over the past decade, precision measurements of the helium $2^{3}P$ fine-structure intervals have been performed using a variety of experimental techniques. We have shown in previous work [Phys. Rev. A 89, 043403 (2014), and references therein] that these measurements can be significantly shifted by quantum interference with neighboring transitions, despite the fact that the neighboring transitions are more than a thousand natural widths away from the transition being measured. The shifts depend on the experimental technique used, since different techniques allow for different quantum-mechanical interference paths. Here we consider measurements using the saturated absorption technique, and find that quantum interference effects cause substantial shifts for the $2^3{P}_1–2^3{P}_2$ interval. We find that four independent measurements for this interval are now in agreement when interference shifts are taken into account.

We study the Anderson localization of atomic gases exposed to three-dimensional optical speckles by analyzing the statistics of the energy-level spacings. This method allows us to consider realistic models of the speckle patterns, taking into account the strongly anisotropic correlations which are realized in concrete experimental configurations. We first compute the mobility edge $E_c$ of a speckle pattern created using a single laser beam. We find that $E_c$ drifts when we vary the anisotropy of the speckle grains, going from higher values when the speckles are squeezed along the beam propagation axis to lower values when they are elongated. We also consider the case where two speckle patterns are superimposed, forming interference fringes, and we find that $E_c$ is increased compared to the case of idealized isotropic disorder. We discuss the important implications of our findings for cold-atom experiments.

We investigate quantum synchronization theoretically in a system consisting of two cold ions in microtraps. The ions' motion is damped by a standing-wave laser while also being driven by a blue-detuned laser which results in self-oscillation. Working in a nonclassical regime, where these oscillations contain only a few phonons and have a sub-Poissonian number variance, we explore how synchronization occurs when the two ions are weakly coupled using a probability distribution for the relative phase. We show that strong correlations arise between the spin and vibrational degrees of freedom within each ion and find that when two ions synchronize their spin degrees of freedom in turn become correlated. This allows one to indirectly infer the presence of synchronization by measuring the ions' internal state.

We present a multimode laser-linewidth theory for arbitrary cavity structures and geometries that contains nearly all previously known effects and also finds new nonlinear and multimode corrections, e.g., a correction to the $\alpha$ factor due to openness of the cavity and a multimode Schawlow-Townes relation (each linewidth is proportional to a sum of inverse powers of all lasing modes). Our theory produces a quantitatively accurate formula for the linewidth, with no free parameters, including the full spatial degrees of freedom of the system. Starting with the Maxwell-Bloch equations, we handle quantum and thermal noise by introducing random currents whose correlations are given by the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. We derive coupled-mode equations for the lasing-mode amplitudes and obtain a formula for the linewidths in terms of simple integrals over the steady-state lasing modes.

We study entanglement creation over global distances based on a quantum repeater architecture that uses low-Earth-orbit satellites equipped with entangled photon sources, as well as ground stations equipped with quantum nondemolition detectors and quantum memories. We show that this approach allows entanglement creation at viable rates over distances that are inaccessible via direct transmission through optical fibers or even from very distant satellites.

Optically levitated mechanical sensors promise isolation from thermal noise far beyond what is possible using flexible materials alone. One way to access this potential is to apply a strong optical trap to a minimally supported mechanical element, thereby increasing its quality factor $Q_m$. Current schemes, however, require prohibitively high laser power ($\sim 10$ W), and the $Q_m$ enhancement is ultimately limited to a factor of $\sim 50$ by hybridization between the trapped mode and the dissipative modes of the supporting structure. Here we propose a levitation scheme taking full advantage of an optical resonator to reduce the circulating power requirements by many orders of magnitude. Applying this scheme to the case of a dielectric disk in a Fabry-Perot cavity, we find a tilt-based tuning mechanism for optimizing both center-of-mass and torsional-mode traps. Notably, the two modes are trapped with comparable efficiency, and we estimate that a $10-\mu$m-diameter, 100-nm-thick Si disk could be trapped to a frequency of $\sim 10$ MHz with only 30 mW circulating in a cavity of (modest) finesse 1500. Finally, we simulate the effect that such a strong trap would have on a realistic doubly tethered disc. Of central importance, we find torsional motion is comparatively immune to $Q_m$-limiting hybridization, allowing a $Q_m$-enhancement factor of $\sim 1500$. This opens the possibility of realizing a laser-tuned 10 MHz mechanical system with a quality factor on the order of ${10}^9$.

Particle delocalization is a common feature of quantum random walks in arbitrary lattices. However, in the typical scenario a particle spreads over multiple sites and its evolution is not directly useful for controlled quantum interferometry, as may be required for technological applications. In this paper we devise a strategy to perfectly split the wave packet of an incoming particle into two components, each propagating in opposite directions, which reconstruct the shape of the initial wavefunction after a particular time $t^{*}$. Therefore, a particle in a $\delta$-like initial state becomes exactly delocalized between two distant sites after $t^{*}$. We find the mathematical conditions to achieve the perfect splitting, which are satisfied by viable example Hamiltonians with static site-dependent interaction strengths. Our results pave the way for the generation of peculiar many-body interference patterns in a many-site atomic chain (such as the Hanbury Brown and Twiss and quantum Talbot effects) as well as for the distribution of entanglement between remote sites. Thus, as for the case of perfect state transfer, the perfect wave-packet splitting can be a new tool for varied applications.

Due to electronic many-body effects, the ionization of a molecule can trigger ultrafast electron dynamics appearing as a migration of the created hole charge throughout the system. Here we propose a scheme to control the charge-migration dynamics with a single ultrashort laser pulse. We demonstrate by fully ab initio calculations on a molecule containing a chromophore and amine moieties that simple pulses can be used to stop the charge-migration oscillations and localize the charge on the desired site of the system. We argue that this control may be used to predetermine the follow-up nuclear rearrangement and thus the molecular reactivity.

We investigate fluorescence detection using a standing wave of blue-detuned light of one or more atoms held in a deep, microscopic dipole trap. The blue-detuned standing wave realizes a Sisyphus laser cooling mechanism so that an atom can scatter many photons while remaining trapped. When imaging more than one atom, the blue detuning limits loss due to inelastic light-assisted collisions. Using this standing-wave probe beam, we demonstrate that we can count from 1 to the order of 100 atoms in the microtrap with sub-Poissonian precision.

The amplitude and phase noises of a dual-frequency vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting laser (DF-VECSEL) operating at telecom wavelength are theoretically and experimentally investigated in detail. In particular, the spectral behavior of the correlation between the intensity noises of the two modes of the DF-VECSEL is measured. Moreover, the correlation between the phase noise of the radio-frequency beat note generated by optical mixing of the two laser modes with the intensity noises of the two modes is investigated. All these spectral behaviors of noise correlations are analyzed for two different values of the nonlinear coupling between the laser modes. We find that to describe the spectral behavior of noise correlations between the laser modes, it is of utmost importance to have precise knowledge about the spectral behavior of the pump noise, which is the dominant source of noise in the frequency range of interest (10 kHz to 35 MHz). Moreover, it is found that the noise correlation also depends on how the spatially separated laser modes of the DF-VECSEL intercept the noise from a multimode fiber-coupled laser diode used for pumping both the laser modes. To this aim, a specific experiment is reported which aims at measuring the correlations between different spatial regions of the pump beam. The experimental results are in excellent agreement with a theoretical model based on modified rate equations.

We investigate ways to optimize adiabaticity and diabaticity in the Landau-Zener model with nonuniform sweeps. We show how diabaticity can be engineered with a pulse consisting of a linear sweep augmented by an oscillating term. We show that the oscillation leads to jumps in populations whose value can be accurately modeled using a model of multiple, photon-assisted Landau-Zener transitions, which generalizes work by Wubs et al. [New J. Phys. 7, 218 (2005)]. We extend the study on diabaticity using methods derived from optimal control. We also show how to preserve adiabaticity with optimal pulses at limited time, finding a nonuniform quantum speed limit.

We derive analytically the Lévy-like steady-state distribution with exponential tempering of emission intensities in random lasers. Our approach is based on the Langevin and associated Fokker-Planck equations describing the dynamics of the amplitudes of the resonance modes in a cavity with a disordered nonlinear dielectric medium. The reported results fully agree with the experimental characterization of the prelasing, Lévy-like, and self-averaged Gaussian lasing regimes in a random laser system as a function of the pump energy and disorder strength, as well as with the recent suggestion of the Lévy exponent $\alpha$ as a universal identifier of the random lasing threshold.

Atom- and site-resolved experiments with ultracold atoms in optical lattices provide a powerful platform for the simulation of strongly correlated materials. In this Rapid Communication, we present a toolbox for the preparation, control, and site-resolved detection of a tunnel-coupled bilayer degenerate quantum gas. Using a collisional blockade, we engineer occupation-dependent interplane transport which enables us to circumvent light-assisted pair loss during imaging and count $n=0$ to $n=3$ atoms per site. We obtain the first number- and site-resolved images of the Mott insulator “wedding cake” structure and observe the emergence of antiferromagnetic ordering across a magnetic quantum phase transition. We are further able to employ the bilayer system for spin-resolved readout of a mixture of two hyperfine states. This work opens the door to direct detection of entanglement and Kosterlitz-Thouless-type phase dynamics, as well as studies of coupled planar quantum materials.

We study the driven-dissipative dynamics of a network of spin-1/2 systems coupled to one or more chiral 1D bosonic waveguides within the framework of a Markovian master equation. We determine how the interplay between a coherent drive and collective decay processes can lead to the formation of pure multipartite entangled steady states. The key ingredient for the emergence of these many-body dark states is an asymmetric coupling of the spins to left and right propagating guided modes. Such systems are motivated by experimental possibilities with internal states of atoms coupled to optical fibers, or motional states of trapped atoms coupled to a spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensate. We discuss the characterization of the emerging multipartite entanglement in this system in terms of the Fisher information.

In leading fault-tolerant quantum-computing schemes, accurate transformations are obtained by a two-stage process. In a first stage, a discrete universal set of fault-tolerant operations is obtained by error-correcting noisy transformations and distilling resource states. In a second stage, arbitrary transformations are synthesized to desired accuracy by combining elements of this set into a circuit. Here we present a scheme that merges these two stages into a single one, directly distilling complex transformations. We find that our scheme can reduce the total overhead to realize certain gates by up to a few orders of magnitude. In contrast to other schemes, this efficient gate synthesis does not require computationally intensive compilation algorithms and a straightforward generalization of our scheme circumvents compilation and synthesis altogether.

BosonSampling is a restricted model of quantum computation proposed recently, where a nonadaptive linear-optical network is used to solve a sampling problem that seems to be hard for classical computers. Here we show that, even if the linear-optical network has a constant number (greater than four) of beam splitter layers, the exact version of the BosonSampling problem is still classically hard, unless the polynomial hierarchy collapses to its third level. This is based on a similar result known for constant-depth quantum circuits and circuits of 2-local commuting gates (IQP).

We introduce a class of light field that angularly accelerates during propagation. We show that the acceleration (deceleration) may be controlled by adjustment of a single parameter, and tuned continuously, down to no acceleration at all. As the angular acceleration takes place in a bounded space, the azimuthal degree of freedom, such fields accelerate periodically as they propagate. Notably, the amount of angular acceleration is not limited by paraxial considerations, may be tailored for large accelerations over arbitrarily long distances, and can be engineered independently of the beam's spatial extent. We discuss how such angularly accelerating light fields can maintain the conservation of angular momentum through an energy exchange mechanism across the field.

Magic wavelengths, for which there is no differential ac Stark shift for the ground and excited state of the atom, allow trapping of excited Rydberg atoms without broadening the optical transition. This is an important tool for implementing quantum gates and other quantum information protocols with Rydberg atoms, and reliable theoretical methods to find such magic wavelengths are thus extremely useful. We use a high-precision all-order method to calculate magic wavelengths for the $5s\text{−}18s$ transition of rubidium, and compare the calculation to experiment by measuring the light shift for atoms held in an optical dipole trap at a range of wavelengths near a calculated magic value.

We study nonlinear interactions in a strongly driven optomechanical cavity, in regimes where the interactions give rise to resonant scattering between optomechanical polaritons and are thus strongly enhanced. We use a Keldysh formulation and self-consistent perturbation theory, allowing us to include self-energy diagrams at all orders in the interaction. Our main focus is understanding how nonequilibrium effects are modified by the polariton interactions, in particular the generation of nonzero effective polariton temperatures from vacuum fluctuations (both in the incident cavity drive and in the mechanical dissipation). We discuss how these effects could be observed in the output spectrum of the cavity. Our work also provides a technical toolkit that will be useful for studies of more complex optomechanical systems.

Detection of entanglement in bipartite states is a fundamental task in quantum information. The first method to verify entanglement in mixed states was the partial-transpose criterion. Subsequently, numerous quantifiers for bipartite entanglement were introduced, among them concurrence and negativity. Surprisingly, these quantities are often treated as distinct or independent of each other. The aim of this contribution is to highlight the close relations between these concepts, to show the connections between seemingly independent results, and to present various estimates for the mixed-state concurrence within the same framework.