We propose a versatile scheme to slow supersonically cooled molecules using a decelerating potential well, obtained by steering a focusing laser beam onto a pair of spinning reflective mirrors under a high-speed brake. The longitudinal motion of molecules in the moving red-detuned light field is analyzed and their corresponding phase-space stability is investigated. Trajectories of $\mathrm{C}{\mathrm{H}}_4$ molecules under the influence of the potential well are simulated using the Monte Carlo method. For instance, with a laser beam of power 20 kW focused onto a spot of waist radius 40–100 μm, corresponding to a peak laser intensity on the order of $\sim {10}^8\mathrm{W}/\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^2$, a $\mathrm{C}{\mathrm{H}}_4$ molecule of $\sim 250\mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}$ can be decelerated to $\sim 10\mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}$ over a distance of a few centimeters on a time scale of hundreds of microseconds.

Recently, hysteresis has been observed experimentally in a quantized superfluid circuit [S. Eckel, J. G. Lee, F. Jendrzejewski, N. Murray, C. W. Clark, C. J. Lobb, W. D. Phillips, M. Edwards, and G. K. Campbell, Nature (London) 506, 200 (2014)], which is a very important step for developing atomtronic devices. Here we find that quantized phase slips occur as the angular velocity rises, and the average angular momenta are quantized at special angular velocities, immune to the nonlinear interactions. When the spin and orbital angular momentum coupling is introduced, we find that two hysteresis loops could arise for each spin, and there exists a phase slip for spin up in one loop and spin down in the other loop. At the special angular velocities, a phase slip emerges for spin down in the lower state of the loop. Especially, multistability appears if the angular velocity is located in the hysteretic region. These results can promote experimental verification and pave the way for atomtronic devices.

The absorption of a single photon that excites a quantum system from a low to a high energy level is an elementary process of light-matter interaction, and a route towards realizing pure single-photon absorption has both fundamental and practical implications in quantum technology. Due to nonlinear optical effects, however, the probability of pure single-photon absorption is usually very low, which is particularly pertinent in the case of strong ultrafast laser pulses with broad bandwidth. Here we demonstrate theoretically a counterintuitive coherent single-photon absorption scheme by eliminating nonlinear interactions of ultrafast laser pulses with quantum systems. That is, a completely linear response of the system with respect to the spectral energy density of the incident light at the transition frequency can be obtained for all transition probabilities between 0 and 100% in multilevel quantum systems. To that end, a multiobjective optimization algorithm is developed to find an optimal spectral phase of an ultrafast laser pulse, which is capable of eliminating all possible nonlinear optical responses while maximizing the probability of single-photon absorption between quantum states. This work not only deepens our understanding of light-matter interactions, but also offers a way to study photophysical and photochemical processes in the “absence” of nonlinear optical effects.

By analyzing theoretical results from a numerical solution of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation for atoms in few-cycle bicircular laser pulses, we show that high-energy photoelectron momentum spectra can be used to extract accurate elastic scattering differential cross sections of the target ion with free electrons. We find that the retrieval range for a scattering angle with bicircular pulses is wider than with linearly polarized pulses, although the retrieval method has to be modified to account for different returning directions of the electron in the continuum. This result can be used to extend the range of applicability of ultrafast imaging techniques such as laser-induced electron diffraction and for the accurate characterization of laser pulses.

The violation of Bell's inequality requires a well-designed experiment to validate the result. In experiments using energy-time and time-bin entanglement, initially proposed by Franson in 1989, there is an intrinsic loophole due to the high postselection. To obtain a violation in this type of experiment, a chained Bell inequality must be used. However, the local realism bound requires a high visibility in excess of 94.63% in the time-bin entangled state. In this work, we show how such a high visibility can be reached in order to violate a chained Bell inequality with six, eight, and ten terms.

Cabello-Severini-Winter and Abramsky-Hardy (building on the framework of Abramsky-Brandenburger) both provide classes of Bell and contextuality inequalities for very general experimental scenarios using vastly different mathematical techniques. We review both approaches, carefully detail the links between them, and give simple, graph-theoretic methods for finding inequality-free proofs of nonlocality and contextuality and for finding states exhibiting strong nonlocality and/or contextuality. Finally, we apply these methods to concrete examples in stabilizer quantum mechanics relevant to understanding contextuality as a resource in quantum computation.

We consider two (natural) families of observables $O_k$ for systems with dimension $d=3,4,5$: the spin observables $S_x,S_y$, and $S_z$, and the observables that have mutually unbiased bases as eigenstates. We derive tight entropic uncertainty relations for these families, in the form ${\sum }_{k}H\left(O_k\right)\ge {\alpha }_d$, where $H\left(O_k\right)$ is the Shannon entropy of the measurement outcomes of $O_k$ and ${\alpha }_d$ is a constant. We show that most of our bounds are stronger than previously known ones. We also give the form of the states that attain these inequalities.

A dilutely filled $N$-site optical lattice near zero temperature within a high-$Q$ multimode cavity can be mapped to a spin ensemble with tailorable interactions at all length scales. The effective full site to site interaction matrix can be dynamically controlled by the application of up to $N(N+1)/2$ laser beams of suitable geometry, frequency, and power, which allows for the implementation of quantum annealing dynamics relying on the all-to-all effective spin coupling controllable in real time. Via an adiabatic sweep starting from a superfluid initial state one can find the lowest-energy stationary state of this system. As the cavity modes are lossy, errors can be amended and the ground state can still be reached even from a finite temperature state via ground-state cavity cooling. The physical properties of the final atomic state can be directly and almost nondestructively read off from the cavity output fields. As an example we simulate a quantum Hopfield associative memory scheme.

Resource states that contain nontrivial symmetry-protected topological order are identified for universal single-qudit measurement-based quantum computation. Our resource states fall into two classes: one as the qudit generalizations of the one-dimensional qubit cluster state, and the other as the higher-symmetry generalizations of the spin-1 Affleck-Kennedy-Lieb-Tasaki (AKLT) state, namely, with unitary, orthogonal, or symplectic symmetry. The symmetry in cluster states protects information propagation (identity gate), while the higher symmetry in AKLT-type states enables nontrivial gate computation. This work demonstrates a close connection between measurement-based quantum computation and symmetry-protected topological order.

Quantum feedback control (QFBC) and quantum feedforward control (QFFC) are two of the major techniques for protecting two nonorthogonal qubit states against decoherence. In this paper, we propose a quantum composite control scheme for protecting such states, where QFBC and QFFC are combined. Note that the combination is deliberately devised, other than simply one plus one (i.e., the trivial combination). We show the performance of our scheme is better than that of both the previous control schemes and the trivially combined one for most states and noises in the sense that, for given success probability, our scheme can achieve the biggest fidelity, and for given fidelity, our scheme has the biggest success probability. Furthermore, our scheme can be experimentally implemented with current technologies.

Dynamical decoupling techniques are the method of choice for increasing gate fidelities. While these methods have produced very impressive results in terms of decreasing local noise and increasing the fidelities of single-qubit operations, dealing with the noise of two-qubit gates has proven more challenging. The main obstacle is that the noise time scale is shorter than the two-qubit gate itself, so that refocusing methods do not work. We present a measurement- and feedback-based method to suppress two-qubit-gate noise, which cannot be suppressed by conventional methods. We analyze in detail this method for an error model, which is relevant for trapped-ion quantum information.

The decoherence of trapped-ion quantum gates due to heating of their motional modes is a fundamental science and engineering problem. This heating is attributed to electric-field noise arising from the trap-electrode surfaces. In this work, we investigate the source of this noise by focusing on the diffusion of carbon-containing adsorbates on the surface of Au(110). We show by density functional theory, based on detailed scanning probe microscopy, how the carbon adatom diffusion on the gold surface changes the energy landscape and how the adatom dipole moment varies with the diffusive motion. A simple model for the diffusion noise, which varies quadratically with the variation of the dipole moment, predicts a noise spectrum, in accordance with the measured values.

We report experiments in which positronium (Ps) atoms are produced in the $2{}^{3}S_1$ level by single-photon excitation from the ground state. To accomplish this, Stark-mixed $n=2$ states were optically excited in electric fields. By adiabatically switching off the electric field after laser excitation, some of the mixed states evolved into pure $2{}^{3}S_1$ levels, whose presence was detected via the time dependence of their annihilation $\gamma$ radiation. The observed $\approx 4\%$ production efficiency relative to that of Rydberg Ps states is consistent with a Monte Carlo simulation that takes into account the rate at which the electric fields were switched off.

We investigate the quantum dephasing dynamics of an impurity qubit immersed in a quasi-two-dimensional dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate whose collective excitations act as a reservoir for the qubit. We show that the properties of the environment are highly engineerable through the relative strength of the dipolar and contact interactions such that qubit's dephasing dynamics could be Markovian, weak non-Markovian, or even highly non-Markovian. It is also revealed that the appearance of the roton excitation is responsible for the highly non-Markovian dephasing dynamics. Since rotonlike dispersions also appear in condensates placed in cavities or with spin-orbit couplings, our results pave the way for searching for systems that are suitable environment engineering.

A class of universal “three-body” bound states has been recently predicted theoretically for identical fermions interacting at $p$-wave resonance in two dimensions. This phenomenon is called the super Efimov effect since the binding energies of the states follow a intriguing double exponential scaling. However, experimental resolution of this scaling is expected to meet formidable challenges. In this work, we introduce a thermodynamic quantity, the three-body contact $C_{\theta }$, to quantify three-body correlations in a two-dimensional gas composed of the resonantly interacting fermions; the contact $C_{\theta }$ is the consequence of the underlying universal super Efimov effect in the many-body context. We show how $C_{\theta }$ affects physical observables such as the radio-frequency spectrum, the momentum distribution, and the atom loss rate. The signature of the elusive super Efimov effect can be pinned down by the detection of the three-body contact $C_{\theta }$ via these observables in the many-body system.

Superradiant lasers may soon achieve state-of-the-art frequency purity, with linewidths of 1 mHz or less. In a superradiant (or bad-cavity) laser, coherence is primarily stored in the atomic gain medium instead of the optical field. This phase storage is characterized by spontaneous quantum synchronization of the optical dipole moments of each atom. To observe this synchronization, we create two independent superradiant atomic ensembles lasing in a single optical cavity and observe the dynamics of phase realignment, collective power enhancement, and steady-state frequency locking. This work introduces superradiant ensembles as a testbed for fundamental study of quantum synchronization as well and informs research on narrow linewidth superradiant lasers.

The objective, classical world emerges from the underlying quantum substrate via the proliferation of redundant copies of selected information into the environment, which acts as a communication channel, transmitting that information to observers. These copies are independently accessible, allowing many observers to reach consensus about the state of a quantum system via its imprints in the environment. Quantum Darwinism recognizes that the redundancy of information is thus central to the emergence of objective reality in the quantum world. However, in addition to the “quantum system of interest,” there are many other systems “of no interest” in the Universe that can imprint information on the common environment. There is therefore a danger that the information of interest will be diluted with irrelevant bits, suppressing the redundancy responsible for objectivity. We show that mixing of the relevant (the “wheat”) and irrelevant (the “chaff”) bits of information makes little quantitative difference to the redundancy of the information of interest. Thus, we demonstrate that it does not matter whether one separates the wheat (relevant information) from the (irrelevant) chaff: The large redundancy of the relevant information survives dilution, providing evidence of the objective, effectively classical world.

In this work, we study optical self-focusing that leads to collapse events for the time-independent model of copropagating beams with different wavelengths. We show that collapse events depend on the combined critical power of two beams for fundamental, vortex, and mixed configurations as well as on the ratio of their individual powers.

We propose that measurements of time-of-arrival correlations in multipartite systems can sharply distinguish between different approaches to the time-of-arrival problem. To show this, we construct a positive-operator-valued measure for two distinct time-of-arrival measurements in a bipartite system, and we prove that the resulting probabilities differ strongly from ones defined in terms of probability currents. We also prove that time-of-arrival correlations are entanglement witnesses, a result suggesting the use of temporal observables for quantum information processing tasks. Finally, we construct the probabilities for sequential time-of-arrival measurements on a single particle. We derive the state-reduction rule for time-of-arrival measurements; it differs significantly from the standard one, because time-of-arrival measurements are not defined at a single predetermined moment of time.