We study extreme events occurring in the transverse $(x,y)$ section of the field emitted by a broad-area semiconductor laser with a saturable absorber. The spatiotemporal events on which we perform the statistical analysis are identified as maxima of the field intensity in the three-dimensional space $(x,y,t)$. We identify regions in the parameter space where extreme events are more likely to occur and we study the connection of those extreme events with the cavity solitons that are known to exist in the same system, both stationary and self-pulsing.

We show from ab initio laser theory that by choosing an appropriate spatial pump profile, many different spatial modes of a typical microlaser can be turned on at the same pump energy, substantially increasing the number $N$ of simultaneous lasing modes. The optimal pump profile can be obtained simply from knowledge of the space-dependent saturated gain profile when the system is uniformly pumped up to the $N\mathrm{th}$ modal threshold. We test this general result by applying it to a two-dimensional diffusive random laser and a microdisk laser. Achieving highly multimode lasing at reasonable pump powers is useful for reducing the spatial coherence of laser sources, making them suitable for use in speckle-free imaging and other applications.

We present a comprehensive experimental analysis of statistical properties of the self-amplified spontaneous emission free-electron laser (FEL) FLASH by means of Hanbury Brown and Twiss interferometry. The experiments were performed at FEL wavelengths of 5.5, 13.4, and 20.8 nm. We determined the second-order intensity correlation function for all wavelengths and different operation conditions of FLASH. In all experiments a high degree of spatial coherence (above 50%) was obtained. Our analysis performed in spatial and spectral domains provided us with the independent measurements of an average pulse duration of the FEL that were below 60 fs. To explain the complicated behavior of the second-order intensity correlation function we developed an advanced theoretical model that includes the presence of multiple beams and external positional jitter of the FEL pulses. By this analysis we determined that in one of the experiments external positional jitter was about 25% of the beam size. We envision that methods developed in our study will be used widely for analysis and diagnostics of FEL radiation.

We theoretically investigate optical detection of a weak classical force acting on a free particle in a dissipative coupling optomechanical system with a degenerate parametric amplifier (PA). We show that the PA allows one to achieve the force sensitivity far better than the standard quantum limit (SQL) over a broad range of the detection frequencies. The improvement depends on the parametric gain and the driving power. Moreover, we discuss the effects of the mechanical damping and the thermal noise on the force sensitivity. We find that the robustness of the force sensitivity is much better than the SQL against the mechanical damping and the thermal noise is achievable in the presence of the PA with a high parametric gain. For the temperature $T=1$ K, the improvement in sensitivity is better by a factor of about 7 when the driving power is set at a value corresponding to the SQL with no PA.

We study how temperature affects the lifetime of a quantized, persistent current state in a toroidal Bose-Einstein condensate. When the temperature is increased, we find a decrease in the persistent current lifetime. Comparing our measured decay rates to simple models of thermal activation and quantum tunneling, we do not find agreement. We also measured the size of the hysteresis loops in our superfluid ring as a function of temperature, enabling us to extract the critical velocity. The measured critical velocity is found to depend strongly on temperature, approaching the zero-temperature mean-field solution as the temperature is decreased. This indicates that an appropriate definition of critical velocity must incorporate the role of thermal fluctuations, something not explicitly contained in traditional theories.

Logical nonlocality is completely characterized by Hardy's “paradox” in $(2,2,l)$ and $(2,k,2)$ scenarios. We consider a variety of consequences and applications of this fact. (i) Polynomial algorithms may be given for deciding logical nonlocality in these scenarios. (ii) Bell states are the only entangled two-qubit states which are not logically nonlocal under projective measurements. (iii) It is possible to witness Hardy nonlocality with certainty in a simple tripartite quantum system. (iv) Noncommutativity of observables is necessary and sufficient for enabling logical nonlocality.

We study how correlations affect the performance of the simulator of a Maxwell's demon demonstrated in a recent optical experiment [M. D. Vidrighin, O. Dahlsten, M. Barbieri, M. S. Kim, V. Vedral, and I. A. Walmsley, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 050401 (2016)]. The power of the demon is found to be enhanced or hindered, depending on the nature of the correlation, in close analogy to the situation faced by a thermal demon.

Recent developments in quantum gas microscopy open up the possibility of real-time observation of quantum many-body systems. To understand the dynamics of atoms under such circumstances, we formulate the dynamics under a real-time spatially resolved measurement and show that, in an appropriate limit of weak spatial resolution and strong atom-light coupling, the measurement indistinguishability of particles results in complete suppression of relative positional decoherence. As a consequence, quantum correlation in the multiparticle dynamics persists under a minimally destructive observation. We numerically demonstrate this for ultracold atoms in an optical lattice. Our theoretical framework can be applied to the feedback control of quantum many-body systems which may be realized in subwavelength-spacing lattice systems.

A non-Hermitian interferometer can realize asymmetric transmission in the presence of imaginary potential and magnetic flux. Here, we propose a non-Hermitian dimer with an unequal hopping rate by an interferometerlike cluster in the framework of a tight-binding model. The intriguing features of this design are the wave-vector independence and unidirectionality of scattering, which amplify the wave packet without distortion and absorb the incoherent wave without reflection. The absorption relates to the system spectral singularities. The dynamical behaviors of the spectral singularities are also investigated analytically and numerically.

We study the Hamiltonian identifiability of a many-body spin-$1/2$ system assisted by the measurement on a single quantum probe based on the eigensystem realization algorithm approach employed in Zhang and Sarovar, Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 080401 (2014). We demonstrate a potential application of Gröbner basis to the identifiability test of the Hamiltonian, and provide the necessary experimental resources, such as the lower bound in the number of the required sampling points, the upper bound in total required evolution time, and thus the total measurement time. Focusing on the examples of the identifiability in the spin-chain model with nearest-neighbor interaction, we classify the spin-chain Hamiltonian based on its identifiability, and provide the control protocols to engineer the nonidentifiable Hamiltonian to be an identifiable Hamiltonian.

Pauli's exclusion principle has a strong impact on the properties of most fermionic quantum systems. Remarkably, the fermionic exchange symmetry implies further constraints on the one-particle picture. By exploiting those generalized Pauli constraints, we derive a measure which quantifies the influence of the exchange symmetry beyond Pauli's exclusion principle. It is based on a geometric hierarchy induced by the exclusion principle constraints. We provide a proof of principle by applying our measure to a simple model. In that way, we conclusively confirm the physical relevance of the generalized Pauli constraints and show that the fermionic exchange symmetry can have an influence on the one-particle picture beyond Pauli's exclusion principle. Our findings provide a perspective on fermionic multipartite correlation since our measure allows one to distinguish between static and dynamic correlations.

Atomic-molecular Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) offer brand new opportunities to revolutionize quantum gases and probe the variation of fundamental constants with unprecedented sensitivity. The recent realization of spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in BECs provides a new platform for exploring completely new phenomena unrealizable elsewhere. In this study, we find a way of creating a Rashba-Dresselhaus SOC in atomic-molecular BECs by combining the spin-dependent photoassociation and Raman coupling, which can control the formation and distribution of a different type of topological excitation—carbon-dioxide-like skyrmion. This skyrmion is formed by two half-skyrmions of molecular BECs coupling with one skyrmion of atomic BECs, where the two half-skyrmions locate at both sides of one skyrmion. Carbon-dioxide-like skyrmion can be detected by measuring the vortices structures using the time-of-flight absorption imaging technique in real experiments. Furthermore, we find that SOC can effectively change the occurrence of the Chern number in $k$ space, which causes the creation of topological spin textures from some separated carbon-dioxide-like monomers each with topological charge $-2$ to a polymer chain of the skyrmions. This work helps in creating dual SOC atomic-molecular BECs and opens avenues to manipulate topological excitations.

We investigate numerically the momentum correlations in a two-dimensional, harmonically trapped interacting Bose system at $T=0$ temperature, by using a particle number preserving Bogoliubov approximation. Interaction-induced quantum fluctuations of the quasicondensate lead to a large anticorrelation dip between particles of wave numbers $\mathbf{k}$ and $-\mathbf{k}$ for $\left|\mathbf{k}\right|\sim 1/R_c$, with $R_c$ the typical size of the condensate. The anticorrelation dip found is a clear fingerprint of coherent quantum fluctuations of the condensate. In contrast, for larger wave numbers, $\left|\mathbf{k}\right|\gg 1/R_c$, a weak positive correlation is found between particles of wave numbers $\mathbf{k}$ and $-\mathbf{k}$, in accordance with the Bogoliubov result for homogeneous interacting systems.

We have calculated the zero-temperature binding energy of a single impurity atom immersed in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of ultracold atoms. The impurity and the condensed atoms are trapped in the respective axially symmetric harmonic potentials, where the impurity interacts with bosonic atoms in the condensate via low-energy $s$-wave scattering. In this case, bosons are excited around the impurity to form a quasiparticle, namely, a BEC polaron. We have developed a variational method, a la Lee-Low-Pines (LLP), for description of the polaron that has a conserved angular momentum around the symmetric axis. We find from numerical results that the binding between the impurity and the excited bosons breaks the degeneracy of the impurity energy with respect to the total angular momentum of the polaron. The angular momentum is partially shared by the excited bosons in a manner that is similar to the drag effect on the polaron momentum by a phonon cloud in the LLP theory for the electron-phonon system.

We investigate the radiative coupling between two two-level atoms with arbitrarily polarized dipoles in the vicinity of a nanofiber. We present a systematic derivation for the master equation, the single- and cross-atom decay coefficients, and the dipole-dipole interaction coefficients for the atoms interacting with the vacuum of the field in the guided and radiation modes of the nanofiber. We study numerically the case where the atomic dipoles are circularly polarized. In this case, the rate of emission depends on the propagation direction along the fiber axis and, hence, the radiative interaction between the atoms is chiral. We examine the time evolution of the atoms for different initial states. We calculate the fluxes and mean numbers of photons spontaneously emitted into guided modes in the positive and negative directions of the fiber axis. We show that the chiral radiative coupling modifies the collective emission of the atoms. We observe that the modifications strongly depend on the initial state of the atomic system, the radiative transfer direction, the distance between the atoms, and the distance from the atoms to the fiber surface.

Bad cavity lasers are experiencing renewed interest in the context of active optical frequency standards, due to their enhanced robustness against fluctuations of the laser cavity. The gain medium would consist of narrow-linewidth atoms, either trapped inside the cavity or intersecting the cavity mode dynamically. A series of effects like the atoms finite velocity distribution, atomic interactions, or interactions of realistic multilevel atoms with auxiliary or stray fields can lead to an inhomogeneous broadening of the atomic gain profile. This causes the emergence of unstable regimes of laser operation, characterized by complex temporal patterns of the field amplitude. We study the steady-state solutions and their stability for the metrology-relevant case of a bad cavity laser with spin-1/2 atoms, such as ${}^{171}\mathrm{Yb}$, interacting with an external magnetic field. For the stability analysis, we present an efficient method, which can be applied to a broad class of single-mode bad cavity lasers with inhomogeneously broadened multilevel atoms acting as a gain medium.

We introduce multipulse quantum noise spectroscopy protocols for spectral estimation of the noise affecting multiple qubits coupled to Gaussian dephasing environments including both classical and quantum sources. Our protocols are capable of reconstructing all the noise auto- and cross-correlation spectra entering the multiqubit dynamics, providing access, in particular, to the asymmetric spectra associated with nonclassical environments. Our result relies on (i) an exact analytic solution for the reduced multiqubit dynamics that holds in the presence of an arbitrary Gaussian environment and dephasing-preserving control; (ii) the use of specific timing symmetries, which allow for a frequency comb to be engineered for all filter functions of interest, and for the spectra to be related to experimentally accessible observables. We show that quantum spectra have distinctive dynamical signatures, which we explore in two paradigmatic open-system models describing spin and charge qubits coupled to bosonic environments. Complete noise spectroscopy is demonstrated numerically in a realistic setting consisting of two-exciton qubits coupled to a phonon bath. The estimated spectra allow us to accurately predict the exciton dynamics as well as extract the temperature and spectral density of the quantum environment.

We cast the problem of illuminating an object in a noisy environment into a communication protocol. A probe is sent into the environment, and the presence or absence of the object constitutes a signal encoded on the probe. The probe is then measured to decode the signal. We calculate the Holevo information and bounds to the accessible information between the encoded and received signal with two different Gaussian probes—an Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) state and a coherent state. We also evaluate the Gaussian discord consumed during the encoding process with the EPR probe. We find that the Holevo quantum advantage, defined as the difference between the Holevo information obtained from the EPR and coherent state probes, is approximately equal to the discord consumed. These quantities become exact in the typical illumination regime of low object reflectivity and low probe energy. Hence we show that discord is the resource responsible for the quantum advantage in Gaussian quantum illumination.

Superposition, arguably the most fundamental property of quantum mechanics, lies at the heart of quantum information science. However, how to create the superposition of any two unknown pure states remains as a daunting challenge. Recently, it was proved that such a quantum protocol does not exist if the two input states are completely unknown, whereas a probabilistic protocol is still available with some prior knowledge about the input states [M. Oszmaniec et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 110403 (2016)]. The knowledge is that both of the two input states have nonzero overlaps with some given referential state. In this work, we experimentally realize the probabilistic protocol of superposing two pure states in a three-qubit nuclear magnetic resonance system. We demonstrate the feasibility of the protocol by preparing a families of input states, and the average fidelity between the prepared state and expected superposition state is over 99%. Moreover, we experimentally illustrate the limitation of the protocol that it is likely to fail or yields very low fidelity, if the nonzero overlaps are approaching zero. Our experimental implementation can be extended to more complex situations and other quantum systems.