The connection between the Leggett-Garg inequality and optimal scenarios from the point of view of quantum metrology is investigated for perfect and noisy general dichotomic measurements. In this context, we show that the Fisher information can be expressed in terms of quantum temporal correlations. This connection allows us to associate scenarios with relatively high Fisher information to scenarios in which the Leggett-Garg inequality is violated. We thus demonstrate a qualitative and, to some extent, quantitative link between measurement invasiveness and metrological performance. Finally, we illustrate our results by using a specific model for spin systems.

Assuming a well-behaving quantum-to-classical transition, measuring large quantum systems should be highly informative with low measurement-induced disturbance, while the coupling between system and measurement apparatus is fairly simple and weak. Here, we show that this is indeed possible within the formalism of quantum mechanics. We discuss an example of estimating the collective magnetization of a spin ensemble by simultaneous measuring three orthogonal spin directions. For the task of estimating the direction of a spin-coherent state, we find that the average guessing fidelity and the system disturbance are nonmonotonic functions of the coupling strength. Strikingly, we discover an intermediate regime for the coupling strength where the guessing fidelity is quasioptimal, while the measured state is almost not disturbed.

A class of adaptive decoders (ADs) for coherent-state sequences is studied, including in particular the most common technology for optical-signal processing, e.g., interferometers, coherent displacements, and photon-counting detectors. More generally we consider ADs comprising adaptive procedures based on passive multimode Gaussian unitaries and arbitrary single-mode destructive measurements. For classical communication on quantum phase-insensitive Gaussian channels with a coherent-state encoding, we show that the AD's optimal information transmission rate is not greater than that of a single-mode decoder. Our result also implies that the ultimate classical capacity of quantum phase-insensitive Gaussian channels is unlikely to be achieved with the considered class of ADs.

Resonant photoionization cross sections of $\mathrm{M}{\mathrm{n}}^{n+}$ ($n=5$ to 8) ions are measured in absolute values in the photon energy range of the $2p\to 3d$ transitions $\left(645–690\mathrm{eV}\right)$ using a merged-beams setup at the SOLEIL synchrotron radiation facility. The experimental cross sections are compared to calculations we performed using a multiconfiguration Dirac-Fock code and the opas code dedicated to radiative opacity calculations of hot and dense plasmas. Both calculations reproduce the measurements well.

The behavior of small clusters of one spin-up and two spin-down fermions with unlike-spin repulsive interactions in one-dimensional optical lattices was calculated using a diffusion Monte Carlo technique. We considered also a harmonic potential in the longitudinal direction to make our system resemble the standard experimental setups. When the interparticle repulsion is strong enough, the onset of fermionization is observed irrespective of the optical lattice parameters considered, in line with previous results for pure harmonic confinement. However, fermionization can also be seen even for small interparticle couplings if the optical potential is deep enough. In addition, for certain values of the wavelengths and the potential depths defining the lattice, Mott insulators in the fermionization limit with only three atoms were found.

We present a feasible protocol using a traveling wave field to experimentally observe a negative response, i.e., to obtain a decrease in the output field intensity when the input field intensity is increased. Our protocol uses one beam splitter and two mirrors to direct the traveling wave field into a lossy cavity in which there is a three-level atom in a $\mathrm{\Lambda }$ configuration. In our scheme, the input field impinges on a beam splitter and, while the transmitted part is used to drive the cavity mode, the reflected part is used as the control field to obtain a negative response of the output field. We show that the greater the cooperativity of the atom-cavity system, the more pronounced the negative response. The system we are proposing can be used to protect devices sensitive to intense fields, since the intensity of the output field, which should be directed to the device to be protected, is diminished when the intensity of the input field increases.

The measurement of the correlation between two quantum systems or particles has a broad significance in physics and also plays a central role in the fields of quantum optics and quantum information science. We propose a method of measuring the correlation between the transverse momenta of two photons, in which one only needs to detect one of the photons. We show that it is possible to generate a single-photon fringe pattern by using two spatially separated identical biphoton sources. The fringes are similar to the ones observed in a Michelson interferometer and possess certain remarkable properties. A striking feature of the fringes is that although the pattern is obtained by detecting one photon only of each photon pair, the fringes shift due to a change in the optical path traversed by the undetected photon; the shift is characterized by a combination of wavelengths of both photons. Using this method one can, therefore, measure the wavelength of a photon without detecting it. The visibility of the fringes diminishes as the correlation between the transverse momenta of twin photons decreases: visibility is unity for maximum momentum correlation and zero for no momentum correlation. This dependence allows us to determine the momentum correlation between both photons from the visibility of the fringe pattern obtained by detecting one of the photons only. Our method can potentially be generalized to other quantum entities.

We show that generic pure states (states drawn according to the Haar measure) of four particles of equal internal dimension are uniquely determined among all other pure states by their two-body marginals. In fact, certain subsets of three of the two-body marginals suffice for the characterization. We also discuss generalizations of the statement to pure states of more particles, showing that these are almost always determined among pure states by three of their $(n-2)$-body marginals. Finally, we present special families of symmetric pure four-particle states that share the same two-body marginals and are therefore undetermined. These are four-qubit Dicke states in superposition with generalized GHZ states.

With 800-nm, 25-fs elliptically polarized ionization pulses, we observe molecular frame photoelectron angular distributions (MF-PADs) correlated with different dissociative ionization channels: ${\mathrm{OCS}}^{+}\to {\mathrm{S}}^{+}$+CO, ${\mathrm{CO}}^{+}$+S, ${\mathrm{CS}}^{+}$+O, and ${\mathrm{O}}^{+}$+CS. We find that the asymmetry in the MF-PAD depends on the specific dissociation channel and the laser intensities. For the dissociation channel leading to the production of ${\mathrm{O}}^{+}$, the OCS molecules are more likely to be ionized when the electric field points toward the O atom, while for other dissociation channels, they are more likely to be ionized when the electric field points toward the S atom.

We consider a model of non-Markovian quantum Brownian motion that consists of a harmonic oscillator bilinearly coupled to a thermal bath, both via its position and via its momentum operators. We derive the master equation for such a model, and we solve the equations of motion for a generic Gaussian system state. We then investigate the resulting evolution of the first and second moments for both an Ohmic and a super-Ohmic spectral density. In particular, we show that, irrespective of the specific form of the spectral density, the coupling with the momentum enhances the dissipation experienced by the system, accelerating its relaxation to the equilibrium as well as modifying the asymptotic state of the dynamics. Eventually, we characterize explicitly the non-Markovianity of the evolution using a general criterion which relies on the positivity of the master equation coefficients.

Spin cat states are superpositions of two or more coherent spin states (CSSs) that are distinctly separated over the Bloch sphere. Additionally, the nuclei with angular momenta greater than 1/2 possess a quadrupolar charge distribution. At the intersection of these two phenomena, we devise a simple scheme for generating various types of nuclear-spin cat states. The native biaxial electric quadrupole interaction that is readily available in strained solid-state systems plays a key role here. However, the fact that built-in strain cannot be switched off poses a challenge for the stabilization of target cat states once they are prepared. We remedy this by abruptly diverting via a single rotation pulse the state evolution to the neighborhood of the fixed points of the underlying classical Hamiltonian flow. Optimal process parameters are obtained as a function of electric field gradient biaxiality and nuclear-spin angular momentum. The overall procedure is seen to be robust under 5% deviations from optimal values. We show that higher-level cat states with four superposed CSS can also be formed using three rotation pulses. Finally, for open systems subject to decoherence we extract the scaling of cat-state fidelity damping with respect to the spin quantum number. This reveals rates greater than the dephasing of individual CSSs. Yet, our results affirm that these cat states can preserve their fidelities for practically useful durations under the currently attainable decoherence levels.

Eigenstate-preserving multi-qubit parity measurements lie at the heart of stabilizer quantum error correction, which is a promising approach to mitigate the problem of decoherence in quantum computers. In this work we explore a high-fidelity, eigenstate-preserving parity readout for superconducting qubits dispersively coupled to a microwave resonator, where the parity bit is encoded in the amplitude of a coherent state of the resonator. Detecting photons emitted by the resonator via a current biased Josephson junction yields information about the parity bit. We analyze theoretically the measurement back action in the limit of a strongly coupled fast detector and show that in general such a parity measurement, while approximately quantum nondemolition is not eigenstate preserving. To remediate this shortcoming we propose a simple dynamical decoupling technique during photon detection, which greatly reduces decoherence within a given parity subspace. Furthermore, by applying a sequence of fast displacement operations interleaved with the dynamical decoupling pulses, the natural bias of this binary detector can be efficiently suppressed. Finally, we introduce the concept of a heralded parity measurement, where a detector click guarantees successful multi-qubit parity detection even for finite detection efficiency.

The distribution of entangled quantum systems among two or more nodes of a network is a key task at the basis of quantum communication, quantum computation, and quantum cryptography. Unfortunately, the transmission lines used in this procedure can introduce so many perturbations and so much noise in the transmitted signal that they prevent the possibility of restoring quantum correlations in the received messages either by means of encoding optimization or by exploiting local operations and classical communication. In this work we present a procedure which allows one to improve the performance of some of these channels. The mechanism underpinning this result is a protocol which we dub cut and paste, as it consists in extracting and reshuffling the subcomponents of these communication lines, which finally succeed in correcting each other. The proof of this counterintuitive phenomenon, while improving our theoretical understanding of quantum entanglement, also has a direct application in the realization of quantum information networks based on imperfect and highly noisy communication lines. A quantum optics experiment, based on the transmission of single-photon polarization states, is also presented which provides a proof-of-principle test of the proposed protocol.

Heralded near-deterministic multiqubit controlled-phase gates with integrated error detection have recently been proposed by Borregaard et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 110502 (2015)]. This protocol is based on a single four-level atom (a heralding quartit) and $N$ three-level atoms (operational qutrits) coupled to a single-resonator mode acting as a cavity bus. Here we generalize this method for two distant resonators without the cavity bus between the heralding and operational atoms. Specifically, we analyze the two-qubit controlled-$Z$ gate and its multiqubit-controlled generalization (i.e., a Toffoli-like gate) acting on the two-lowest levels of $N$ qutrits inside one resonator, with their successful actions being heralded by an auxiliary microwave-driven quartit inside the other resonator. Moreover, we propose a circuit-quantum-electrodynamics realization of the protocol with flux and phase qudits in linearly coupled transmission-line resonators with dissipation. These methods offer a quadratic fidelity improvement compared to cavity-assisted deterministic gates.

We study the efficiency of estimation procedures in which the temperature of an external bath is indirectly recovered by monitoring the transformations induced on a probing system that is put in thermal contact with the bath. In particular we compare the performances of sequential measurement schemes—where the probe is initialized only once and measured repeatedly during its interaction with the bath—with those of measure and re-prepare approaches where instead, after each interaction and measurement stage, the probe is reinitialized into the same fiduciary state. From our analysis it is revealed that the sequential approach, while being in general not capable of providing the best accuracy achievable, is nonetheless more versatile with respect to the choice of the initial state of the probe, yielding on average smaller indetermination levels.

We study the structure of triatomic molecules containing two helium atoms and one alkali-metal atom X (X = Li, Na). The three-body Schrödinger equation is solved in hyperspherical coordinates using the He-He and He-X pair van der Waals potentials available in the literature. We calculate the structural properties of the ${\mathrm{He}}_2\mathrm{Li}$ and ${\mathrm{He}}_2\mathrm{Na}$ bound states, and analyze one-dimensional pair and angle distribution functions as well as two-dimensional pair-pair and angle-angle distribution functions. These bound states are characterized by so peculiar weakly bound structures that classifying them into particular sizes and geometrical shapes appears to be elusive. Particularly, the $J^{\mathrm{\Pi }}=0^{+}$ excited states of ${}^4\mathrm{He}_2{}^6\mathrm{Li}$ and ${}^4\mathrm{He}_2{}^7\mathrm{Li}$ are found to constitute giant triatomic molecules with their size amounting to several hundred bohrs.

In this paper we present elastic differential, integral, and momentum-transfer cross sections for electron collisions with carbonyl fluoride $\left({\mathrm{F}}_2\mathrm{CO}\right)$ molecules for the incident electron's energy from 0.5 eV to 20 eV. The Schwinger multichannel method with pseudopotentials was employed to obtain the cross sections in the static-exchange and static-exchange plus polarization approximations. The present results were compared with the available data in the literature, in particular, with the results of Kaur, Mason, and Antony [Phys. Rev. A 92, 052702 (2015)] for the differential, total, and momentum-transfer cross sections. We have found a ${\pi }^{*}$ shape resonance centered at 2.6 eV in the $B_1$ symmetry and other resonance, in the $B_2$ symmetry, located at around 9.7 eV. A systematic study of the inclusion of polarization effects was performed in order to have a well balanced description of this negative-ion transient state. The effects of the long-range electric dipole potential were included by the Born closure scheme. Electronic structure calculations were also performed to help in the interpretation of the scattering results, and associate the transient states to the unoccupied orbitals.

We study multiple ionization and subsequent dissociation of nitrous oxide $\left({\mathrm{N}}_2\mathrm{O}\right)$ in collisions with 1 a.u. ${\mathrm{Ar}}^{8+}$ and ${\mathrm{Xe}}^{15+}$ ions. The experiments are performed by using a recoil ion momentum spectrometer (RIMS) equipped with a position- and time-sensitive detector which allows the measurement of the momenta of fragment ions in coincidence. By measuring the momentum vectors of the recoiling fragment ions various important parameters, such as kinetic energy release and those related to molecular structure prior to fragmentation, have been derived. Furthermore, the projectile-charge-state dependence of the fragmentation dynamics of ${\mathrm{N}}_2\mathrm{O}$ is investigated and a very mild dependence has been noticed in a few channels. In addition, we also study the concerted and sequential mechanisms in the three-body decay of ${\mathrm{N}}_2{\mathrm{O}}^{q+}$ (where $q\le 7)$. It has been observed that ${\mathrm{N}}_2{\mathrm{O}}^{q+}$ breaks up mainly in a concerted manner except for the ${\mathrm{N}}_2{\mathrm{O}}^{3+}\to {\mathrm{N}}^{+}+{\mathrm{N}}^{+}+{\mathrm{O}}^{+}$ (1,1,1) and ${\mathrm{N}}_2{\mathrm{O}}^{4+}\to {\mathrm{N}}^{2+}+{\mathrm{N}}^{+}+{\mathrm{O}}^{+}$ (2,1,1) channels. For both these channels, the presence of an intermediate rotating ${\mathrm{NO}}^{2+}$ has been identified. Furthermore, by using Dalitz plot analysis, we have been able to separate various mutually mixed channels of highly charged ${\mathrm{N}}_2{\mathrm{O}}^{q+}$.

We solve the time-dependent Schrödinger equation for a noble gas atom (He and Ne) driven by an ionizing XUV and dressing IR fields. From this solution we deduce an angular dependence of the photoemission time delay as measured by the RABBITT (reconstruction of attosecond beating by interference of two-photon transitions) technique. We use a recent angle-resolved RABBITT measurement on helium [S. Heuser et al., Phys. Rev. A 94, 063409 (2016)] to test and calibrate our theoretical model. Based on this calibration, we find no significant difference between the time delay in He measured in the angle-integrated RABBITT experiments [C. Palatchi et al., J. Phys. B 47, 245003 (2014) and D. Guénot et al., J. Phys. B 47, 245602 (2014)] and measured or calculated in the polarization axis direction. The angular dependence of the photoemission time delay of Ne is shown to be qualitatively different from He because of the different orbital character of the valence $2p$ orbital. The angular momentum projection dependence of the time delay in Ne is also investigated.

Photoelectron angular distributions following the nonresonant two-photon $K$-shell ionization of neutral atoms are studied theoretically. Using the independent particle approximation and relativistic second-order perturbation theory, the contributions of screening and relativistic effects to the photoelectron angular distribution are evaluated. A simple nonrelativistic expression is presented for the angle-differential cross section in dipole approximation for two-photon ionization by elliptically polarized photons, and its limitations are analyzed numerically. Moreover, we show that screening effects of the inactive electrons can significantly affect the photoelectron distributions and can also lead to a strong elliptical dichroism. Numerical results are presented for the case of two-photon $K$-shell ionization of neutral Ne, Ge, Xe, and U atoms.