Encoding quantum information in the photon temporal mode (TM) offers a robust platform for high-dimensional quantum protocols. The main practical challenge, however, is to design a device that operates on single photons in specific TMs and all coherent superpositions. The quantum pulse gate (QPG) is a mode-selective sum-frequency generation designed for this task. Here, we perform a full modal characterization of a QPG using weak coherent states in well-defined TMs. We reconstruct a full set of measurement operators, which show an average fidelity of 0.85 to a theoretically ideal device when operating on a seven-dimensional space. Then we use these characterized measurement operators of the QPG to calibrate the device. Using the calibrated device and a tomographically complete set of measurements, we show that the QPG can perform high-dimensional TM state tomography with 0.99 fidelity.

We theoretically analyze the ground-state cooling of an optically levitated nanosphere in the unresolved-sideband regime by introducing a coupled high-quality-factor cavity. On account of the quantum interference stemming from the presence of the coupled cavity, the spectral density of the optical force exerting on the nanosphere gets changed and then the symmetry between the heating and the cooling processes is broken. Through adjusting the detuning of a strong-dissipative cavity mode, one obtains an enhanced net cooling rate for the nanosphere. It is illustrated that the ground-state cooling can be realized in the unresolved sideband regime even if the effective optomechanical coupling is weaker than the frequency of the nanosphere, which can be understood by the picture that the effective interplay of the nanosphere and the auxiliary cavity mode brings the system back to an effective resolved regime. Besides, the coupled cavity refines the dynamical stability of the system.

We propose a protocol to simulate the evolution of a non-Markovian open quantum system by considering a collisional process with a many-body system, which plays the role of an environment. As a result of our protocol, the environment spatial correlations are mapped into the time correlations of a noise that drives the dynamics of the open system. Considering the weak coupling limit, the open system can also be considered as a probe of the environment properties. In this regard, when preparing the environment in its ground state, a measurement of the dynamics of the open system allows to determine the length of the environment spatial correlations and therefore its critical properties. To illustrate our proposal we simulate the full system dynamics with matrix-product-states and compare this to the reduced dynamics obtained with an approximated variational master equation.

Calculating the degree of non-Markovianity of a quantum process, for a high-dimensional system, is a difficult task given complex maximization problems. Focusing on the entanglement-based measure of non-Markovianity we propose a numerically feasible quantifier for finite-dimensional systems. We define the non-Markovianity measure in terms of a class of entanglement quantifiers named witnessed entanglement which allow us to write several entanglement based measures of non-Markovianity in a unique formalism. In this formalism, we show that the non-Markovianity, in a given time interval, can be witnessed by calculating the expectation value of an observable, making it attractive for experimental investigations. Following this property we introduce a quantifier base on the entanglement witness in an interval of time; we show that measure is a bonafide measure of non-Markovianity. In our example, we use the generalized robustness of entanglement, an entanglement measure that can be readily calculated by a semidefinite programming method, to study impurity atoms coupled to a Bose-Einstein condensate.

We study how the entanglement dynamics between two-level atoms is impacted by random fluctuations of the light cone. In our model the two-atom system is envisaged as an open system coupled with an electromagnetic field in the vacuum state. We employ the quantum master equation in the Born-Markov approximation in order to describe the completely positive time evolution of the atomic system. We restrict our investigations to the situation in which the atoms are coupled individually to two spatially separated cavities, one of which displays the emergence of light-cone fluctuations. In such a disordered cavity, we assume that the coefficients of the Klein-Gordon equation are random functions of the spatial coordinates. The disordered medium is modeled by a centered, stationary, and Gaussian process. We demonstrate that disorder has the effect of slowing down the entanglement decay. We conjecture that in a strong-disorder environment the mean life of entangled states can be enhanced in such a way as to almost completely suppress quantum nonlocal decoherence.

We present an analytical compact solution for the density matrix and all correlation functions of two collective-macroscopic spins evolving via an Ising-like Hamiltonian in the presence of particle losses. The losses introduce nonlocal phase noise which destroys highly entangled states arising in the evolution. On the other hand, the states appearing at relatively short time scales, possessing Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR)-like entanglement, will survive. Applying our solutions to the recently proposed scheme to entangle two Bose-Einstein condensates, we estimate the optimal number of atoms for EPR correlations.

We have systematically investigated the ground-state hyperfine structure for alkali-metal atoms ${}^{87}\mathrm{Rb},{}^{133}\mathrm{Cs}$, and ${}^{211}\mathrm{Fr}$ and alkali-metal-like ions ${}^{135}\mathrm{Ba}^{+}$ and ${}^{225}\mathrm{Ra}^{+}$, which are of particular interest for parity violation studies. The quantum electrodynamic one-loop radiative corrections have been rigorously evaluated within an extended Furry picture employing core-Hartree and Kohn-Sham atomic potentials. Moreover, the effect of the nuclear magnetization distribution on the hyperfine structure intervals has been studied in detail and its uncertainty has been estimated. Finally, the theoretical description of the hyperfine structure has been completed with full many-body calculations performed in the all-orders correlation potential method.

The effective Hamiltonian for the linear $E\otimes e$ Jahn-Teller model describes the coupling between two electronic states and two vibrational modes in molecules or bulk crystal impurities. While in the Born-Oppenheimer approximation the Berry curvature has a delta function singularity at the conical intersection of the potential energy surfaces, the exact Berry curvature is a smooth peaked function. Numerical calculations revealed that the characteristic width of the peak is $\hslash {\mathcal{K}}^{1/2}/g{\mathcal{M}}^{1/2}$, where $\mathcal{M}$ is the mass associated with the relevant nuclear coordinates, $\mathcal{K}$ is the effective internuclear spring constant, and $g$ is the electronic-vibrational coupling. This result is confirmed here by an asymptotic analysis of the $\mathcal{M}\to \infty$ limit, an interesting outcome of which is the emergence of a separation of length scales. Being based on the exact electron-nuclear factorization, our analysis does not make any reference to adiabatic potential energy surfaces or nonadiabatic couplings. It is also shown that the Ham reduction factors for the model can be derived from the exact geometric phase.

We systematically studied the two-body loss in a two-component Fermi gas of ${}^6\mathrm{Li}$ atoms near a $p$-wave Feshbach resonance. The two-body loss rate constants were measured for various temperatures and magnetic fields using atoms trapped in three-dimensional and quasi-two-dimensional traps. Our results were nicely reproduced by a theoretical model that incorporates the two-body loss as an imaginary part to the inverse of the scattering volume in the scattering amplitude expression. The observed loss suppression in quasi-two-dimensional traps may provide a promising strategy to realize a $p$-wave superfluid in a system of ultracold atoms.

Kinetic-energy spectra of a single electron from strong-field nonsequential double ionization are investigated in a high-intensity regime with a quantum mechanical model. We find interference fringes with large energy spacings, which increases with the electron kinetic energy. These interference fringes originate from the electronic wave packets born in the recollision by the returning electronic wave packets from the “short” and the “long” quantum paths. Since the recollision happens in a fraction of a near-infrared (NIR) optical cycle, i.e., in an attosecond time interval, the resulting interference fringes exhibit energy spacings much larger than the NIR photon energy. The comparison of the quantum mechanical results with a classical collision model suggests a near-equal energy sharing between two electrons during the recollision process at very high intensities, in contrast to the extremely unequal energy sharing at low intensities.

We investigate universal properties of one-dimensional multicomponent systems composed of fermions, bosons, or an arbitrary mixture, with contact interactions and subjected to an external potential. The masses and the coupling strengths between different types of particles are allowed to be different and we also take into account the presence of an arbitrary magnetic field. We show that the momentum distribution of these systems exhibits a universal $n_{\sigma }\left(k\right)\sim C_{\sigma }/k^4$ decay with $C_{\sigma }$ being the contact of species $\sigma$ which can be computed from the derivatives of an appropriate thermodynamic potential with respect to the scattering lengths. In the case of integrable fermionic systems, we argue that at fixed density and repulsive interactions the total contact reaches its maximum in the balanced system and monotonically decreases to zero as we increase the magnetic field. The converse effect is present in integrable bosonic systems: the contact is largest in the fully polarized state and reaches its minimum when all states are equally populated. We obtain short distance expansions for the Green's function and pair distribution function and show that the coefficients of these expansions can be expressed in terms of the density, kinetic energy, and contact. In addition, we derive universal thermodynamic identities relating the total energy of the system, pressure, trapping energy, and contact. Our results are valid at zero and finite temperature for homogeneous or trapped systems and for few-body or many-body states.

Bloch oscillations in a tilted ladder lattice are studied in the presence of artificial magnetic flux. The oscillations exhibit chiral characteristics which may be used to distinguish the Meissner phase and the vortex phase. By incorporating the diagonal hopping into the ladder, the dynamical evolution reveals a phase transition as the diagonal hopping rate exceeds a critical value. The pseudospin polarization rotates a full circle in a Bloch oscillating period, which implies nontrivial topology of the system. At the critical point, the lowest band gap is closed and the wave packet propagates alternatively in the two bands that leads to a doubled Bloch period. Edge states arise in the region of nontrivial band topology even in the absence of chiral symmetry. Our study may provide a dynamical way to identify the quantum phases and topological transitions in condensed-matter physics.

Anderson localization lasers exploit resonant cavities formed due to structural disorder. The inherent randomness in the structure of these cavities realizes a probability distribution in all cavity parameters such as quality factors, mode volumes, mode structures, and so on, implying resultant statistical fluctuations in the temporal behavior. Here we provide direct experimental measurements of temporal width distributions of Anderson localization lasing pulses in intrinsically and extrinsically disordered coupled-microresonator arrays. We first illustrate signature exponential decays in the spatial intensity distributions of the lasing modes that quantify their localized character, and then measure the temporal width distributions of the pulsed emission over several configurations. We observe a dependence of temporal widths on the disorder strength, wherein the widths show a single-peaked, left-skewed distribution in extrinsic disorder and a dual-peaked distribution in intrinsic disorder. We propose a model based on coupled rate equations for an emitter and an Anderson cavity with a random mode structure, which gives excellent quantitative and qualitative agreement with the experimental observations. The experimental and theoretical analyses bring to the fore the temporal complexity in Anderson-localization-based lasing systems.

We study the dynamics of quantum and classical correlations in a two-qutrit system coupled to independent reservoirs. In particular, we address the differences in the dynamics of Markovian and non-Markovian regimes and show that for specific initial states, classical correlations exhibit abrupt changes along the dynamics. A particular sudden change occurs when the classical correlations freeze to a certain value at a given time, revealing the apparition of a pointer-state basis. After this given time, the decoherence only affects quantum correlations. Here we identify two regimes in the decoherence dynamics: a mixed regime when both classical and quantum correlations decay and a quantum regime when only quantum correlations decay. We show that the freezing of classical correlations can be stable or metastable depending on the system-reservoir parameters. In the long-time limit, we find analytical expressions for the pointer-state basis the system settles in and consequently for classical and quantum correlations.

Weakly nonlinear degrees of freedom in dissipative quantum systems tend to localize near manifolds of quasiclassical states. We present a family of analytical and computational methods for deriving optimal unitary model transformations that reduce the complexity of representing typical states. These transformations minimize the quantum relative entropy distance between a given state and particular quasiclassical manifolds. This naturally splits the description of quantum states into transformation coordinates that specify the nearest quasiclassical state and a transformed quantum state that can be represented in fewer basis levels. We derive coupled equations of motion for the coordinates and the transformed state and demonstrate how this can be exploited for efficient numerical simulation. Our optimization objective naturally quantifies the nonclassicality of states occurring in some given open system dynamics. This allows us to compare the intrinsic complexity of different open quantum systems.

One of the fundamental issues in the field of open quantum systems is the classification and quantification of non-Markovianity. In the contest of quantity-based measures of non-Markovianity, the intuition of non-Markovianity in terms of information backflow is widely discussed. However, it is not easy to characterize the information flux for a given system state and show its connection to non-Markovianity. Here, by using the concepts from thermodynamics and information theory, we discuss a potential definition of information flux of an open quantum system, valid for static environments. We present a simple protocol to show how a system attempts to share information with its environment and how it builds up system-environment correlations. We also show that the information returned from the correlations characterizes the non-Markovianity and a hierarchy of indivisibility of the system dynamics.

We investigate under which conditions quantum nonlocal manifestations such as Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering or Bell nonlocality can manifest themselves even at the macroscopic level of two mechanical resonators in optomechanical systems. We adopt the powerful scheme of reservoir engineering, implemented by driving a cavity mode with a properly chosen two-tone field, to prepare two mechanical oscillators in an entangled state. We show that large and robust (both one-way and two-way) steering could be achieved in the steady state with realistic parameters. We analyze the mechanism of the asymmetric nature of steering in our system of a two-mode Gaussian state. However, unlike steering, a Bell nonlocality is present under much more stringent conditions. We consider two types of measurements, displaced parity and on-off detection, respectively. We show that for both the measurements the Bell violation requires very low environmental temperature. For the parity detection, a large Bell violation is observed only in the transient state when the mechanical modes decouple from the optical mode and with extremely small cavity losses and mechanical damping. However, for the on-off detection, a moderate Bell violation is found in the steady state and is robust against cavity losses and mechanical damping. Although a Bell violation with parity detection seems extremely challenging to demonstrate experimentally, the conditions required for violating Bell inequalities with the on-off detection are much less demanding.

The impossibility of an indeterministic evolution for standard relativistic quantum field theories, that is, theories in which all fields satisfy the condition that the generators of space-time translation have spectra in the forward light-cone, is demonstrated. The demonstration proceeds by arguing that a relativistically invariant theory must have a stable vacuum and then showing that stability of the vacuum, together with the requirements imposed by relativistic causality, entails deterministic evolution, if all degrees of freedom are standard degrees of freedom.