Nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation in decoherence-free subspaces has attracted increasing attention recently, as it allows for high-speed implementation and combines both the robustness of holonomic gates and the coherence stabilization of decoherence-free subspaces. Since the first protocol of nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation in decoherence-free subspaces, a number of schemes for its physical implementation have been put forward. However, all previous schemes require two noncommuting gates to realize an arbitrary one-qubit gate, which doubles the exposure time of gates to error sources as well as the resource expenditure. In this paper, we propose an alternative protocol for nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation in decoherence-free subspaces, in which an arbitrary one-qubit gate in decoherence-free subspaces is realized by a single-shot implementation. The present protocol not only maintains the merits of the original protocol but also avoids the extra work of combining two gates to implement an arbitrary one-qubit gate and thereby reduces the exposure time to various error sources.

Closed formulas for upper bounds on three-tangles of three-qubit reduced states in terms of three-qubit–invariant polynomials of pure four-qubit states are obtained. Our results offer tighter constraints on total three-way entanglement of a given qubit with the rest of the system than those used by Regula et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 110501 (2014) and Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 049902(E) (2016)] to verify monogamy of four-qubit quantum entanglement.

We investigate the quantum dynamics of two interacting bosonic atoms confined in a one-dimensional anharmonic trap. The tunneling rate, an experimentally measurable parameter of the system, is calculated as a function of the effective coupling interatomic constant $g$ from the ground ($n=N=0$) and first excited atomic states in the trap with respect to relative ($n=2,N=0$) and center-of-mass ($n=0,N=2$) atomic motion. This allows us to investigate the initial population and pair correlation, as well as the effective coupling constant $g$, of the system by comparing the calculated tunneling rate with the experimental one. We observe that the only possible tunneling scenario is a sequential particle tunneling in the cases we consider. We also analyze a rearrangement $(0,2)\rightleftarrows (2,0)$ of the spectrum in the limit $g\to \pm 0$ of noninteracting atoms.

We theoretically investigate the atomic polarization effect on photoelectron angular distributions (PADs) in above-threshold ionization of noble gases with elliptically polarized laser fields at wavelength of 800 nm, ellipticity of 0.25, and intensity of $1.5\times {10}^{14}\text{W}/{\text{cm}}^2$. Simulations based on a semiclassical model that includes both the ionic Coulomb potential and the atomic polarization effect show surprisingly little difference between PADs for Ar, Kr, and Xe, which is in good agreement with recent experimental observations. Our calculations reveal that the atomic polarization effect increases the distance of the tunnel exit point of the photoelectron to the parent ion and weakens the strength of the interaction between the parent ion and the photoelectron on its subsequent classical propagation. As a result, the forward-scattering electrons which contribute to the main lobes in PADs are substantially suppressed. Our results indicate that the insensitivity of PADs for Ar, Kr, and Xe may be closely related to the influence of the atomic polarization effect on the photoelectron dynamics in the strong laser field.

We theoretically consider ultracold polar molecules in a wave guide. The particles are bosons: They experience a periodic potential due to an optical lattice oriented along the wave guide and are polarized by an electric field orthogonal to the guide axis. The array is mechanically unstable by opening the transverse confinement in the direction orthogonal to the polarizing electric field and can undergo a transition to a double-chain (zigzag) structure. For this geometry we derive a multimode generalized Bose-Hubbard model for determining the quantum phases of the gas at the mechanical instability, taking into account the quantum fluctuations in all directions of space. Our model limits the dimension of the numerically relevant Hilbert subspace by means of an appropriate decomposition of the field operator, which is obtained from a field theoretical model of the linear-zigzag instability. We determine the phase diagrams of small systems using exact diagonalization and find that, even for tight transverse confinement, the aspect ratio between the two transverse trap frequencies controls not only the classical but also the quantum properties of the ground state in a nontrivial way. Convergence tests at the linear-zigzag instability demonstrate that our multimode generalized Bose-Hubbard model can catch the essential features of the quantum phases of dipolar gases in confined geometries with a limited computational effort.

General quasiprobabilities are introduced to visualize time-dependent quantum correlations of light in phase space. They are based on the generalization of the Glauber-Sudarshan $P$ function to a time-dependent $P$ functional [W. Vogel, Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 013605 (2008)], which fully describes temporal correlations of radiation fields on the basis of continuous phase-space distributions. This approach is nontrivial, as the $P$ functional itself is highly singular for many quantum states and nonlinear processes. In general, it yields neither a well-behaved nor an experimentally accessible description of quantum stochastic processes. Our regularized version of this multitime-dependent quasiprobability is a smooth function and applies to stronger divergences compared to the single-time and multimode scenario. The technique is used to characterize an optical parametric process with frequency mismatch and a strongly nonlinear evolution of the quantized center-of-mass motion of a trapped ion. A measurement scheme, together with a sampling approach, is provided which yields direct experimental access to the regularized $P$ functional from measured data.

The far-field pattern of a simple one-dimensional laser array of emitters radiating into free space is considered. In the course of investigating the inverse problem for their near fields leading to a target beam form, surprisingly, we found that the result is successful when the matrix of the corresponding linear system is not well scaled. The essence of our numerical observations is captured by an elegant inequality defining the functional range of the optical distance between two neighboring emitters. Our finding can restrict substantially the parametric space of integrated photonic systems and simplify significantly the subsequent optimizations.

We investigate spontaneous and pumped entanglement of two-level systems in the vicinity of a photonic topological insulator interface, which supports a nonreciprocal (unidirectional), scattering-immune, and topologically protected surface-plasmon polariton in the band gap of the bulk material. To this end, we derive a master equation for qubit interactions in a general three-dimensional, nonreciprocal, inhomogeneous, and lossy environment. The environment is represented exactly, via the photonic Green's function. The resulting entanglement is shown to be extremely robust to defects occurring in the material system, such that strong entanglement is maintained even if the interface exhibits electrically large and geometrically sharp discontinuities. Alternatively, depending on the initial excitation state, using a nonreciprocal environment allows two qubits to remain unentangled even for very close spacing. The topological nature of the material is manifest in the insensitivity of the entanglement to variations in the material parameters that preserve the gap Chern number. Our formulation and results should be useful for both fundamental investigations of quantum dynamics in nonreciprocal environments and technological applications related to entanglement in two-level systems.

We calculate the gauge-invariant cumulants (and moments) associated with the Zak phase in the Rice-Mele model. We reconstruct the underlying probability distribution by maximizing the information entropy and applying the moments as constraints. When the Wannier functions are localized within one unit cell, the probability distribution so obtained corresponds to that of the Wannier function. We show that in the fully dimerized limit the magnitudes of the moments are all equal. In this limit, if the on-site interaction is decreased towards zero, the distribution shifts towards the midpoint of the unit cell, but the overall shape of the distribution remains the same. Away from this limit, if alternate hoppings are finite and the on-site interaction is decreased, the distribution also shifts towards the midpoint of the unit cell, but it does this by changing shape, by becoming asymmetric around the maximum, and by shifting. We also follow the probability distribution of the polarization in cycles around the topologically nontrivial point of the model. The distribution moves across to the next unit cell, its shape distorting considerably in the process. If the radius of the cycle is large, the shift of the distribution is accompanied by large variations in the maximum.

A hidden-variable model is explicitly constructed by use of a Liouvillian description for the dynamics of two coupled spin-1/2 particles. In this model, the underlying Hamiltonian trajectories play the role of deterministic hidden variables, whereas the shape of the initial probability distribution figures as a hidden variable that regulates the capacity of the model in producing correlations. We show that even though the model can very well describe the short-time entanglement dynamics of initially separated pure states, it is incapable of violating the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality. Our work suggests that, if one takes the reluctance of a given quantum resource to be emulated by a local-hidden-variable model as a signature of its nonclassicality degree, then one can conclude that entanglement and nonlocality are nonequivalent even in the context of two-qubit pure states.

We investigate the origin of imperfections in the fidelity of a two-photon controlled-phase gate based on two-level-emitter nonlinearities. We focus on a passive system that operates without external modulations to enhance its performance. We demonstrate that the fidelity of the gate is limited by opposing requirements on the input pulse width for one- and two-photon-scattering events. For one-photon scattering, the spectral pulse width must be narrow compared with the emitter linewidth, while two-photon-scattering processes require the pulse width and emitter linewidth to be comparable. We find that these opposing requirements limit the maximum fidelity of the two-photon controlled-phase gate to $84\%$ for photons with Gaussian spectral profiles.

Measurements of quantum systems can be used to generate classical data that are truly unpredictable for every observer. However, this true randomness needs to be discriminated from randomness due to ignorance or lack of control of the devices. We analyze the randomness gain of a measurement-device-independent setup, consisting of a well-characterized source of quantum states and a completely uncharacterized and untrusted detector. Our framework generalizes previous schemes as arbitrary input states and arbitrary measurements can be analyzed. Our method is used to suggest simple and realistic implementations that yield high randomness generation rates of more than one random bit per qubit for detectors of sufficient quality.

Quantum metrology aims to exploit quantum phenomena to overcome classical limitations in the estimation of relevant parameters. We consider a probe undergoing a phase shift $\phi$ whose generator is randomly sampled according to a distribution with unknown concentration $\kappa$, which introduces a physical source of noise. We then investigate strategies for the joint estimation of the two parameters $\phi$ and $\kappa$ given a finite number $N$ of interactions with the phase imprinting channel. We consider both single qubit and multipartite entangled probes, and identify regions of the parameters where simultaneous estimation is advantageous, resulting in up to a twofold reduction in resources. Quantum enhanced precision is achievable at moderate $N$, while for sufficiently large $N$ classical strategies take over and the precision follows the standard quantum limit. We show that full-scale entanglement is not needed to reach such an enhancement, as efficient strategies using significantly fewer qubits in a scheme interpolating between the conventional sequential and parallel metrological schemes yield the same effective performance. These results may have relevant applications in optimization of sensing technologies.

Adiabatic quantum control is a powerful tool for quantum engineering and a key component in some quantum computation models, where accurate control over the timing of the involved pulses is not needed. However, the adiabatic condition requires that the process be very slow and thus limits its application in quantum computation, where quantum gates are preferred to be fast due to the limited coherent times of the quantum systems. Here, we propose a feasible scheme to implement universal holonomic quantum computation based on non-Abelian geometric phases with superadiabatic quantum control, where the adiabatic manipulation is sped up while retaining its robustness against errors in the timing control. Consolidating the advantages of both strategies, our proposal is thus both robust and fast. The cavity QED system is adopted as a typical example to illustrate the merits where the proposed scheme can be realized in a tripod configuration by appropriately controlling the pulse shapes and their relative strength. To demonstrate the distinct performance of our proposal, we also compare our scheme with the conventional adiabatic strategy.

We report on the five-body repulsive and attractive van der Waals interactions between the strongly dipole-dipole coupled Rydberg states. Compared to four-body van der Waals interactions, five-body van der Waals interactions show more energy levels and more potential wells caused by avoided crossings. This research bridges the few-body physics and many-body physics. Other disciplines, such as chemistry, biology, and medical fields, will also benefit from better understanding van der Waals interactions.