We report a spin-orbit-coupling-induced backaction cooling in an optomechanical system, composed of a spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in an optical cavity with one movable end mirror, by suppressing heating effects of quantum noises. The collective density excitations of the spin-orbit-coupling-mediated hyperfine states—serving as atomic oscillators equally coupled to the cavity field—trigger strongly driven atomic backaction. We find that the backaction not only revamps low-temperature dynamics of its own but also provides an opportunity to cool the mechanical mirror to its quantum-mechanical ground state. Further, we demonstrate that the strength of spin-orbit coupling also superintends dynamic structure factor and squeezes nonlinear quantum noises, like thermomechanical and photon shot noise, which enhances optomechanical features of the hybrid cavity beyond previous investigations. Our findings are testable in a realistic setup and enhance the functionality of cavity optomechanics with spin-orbit-coupled hyperfine states in the field of quantum optics and quantum computation.

Exact solutions for local equilibrium and nonequilibrium out-of-time-ordered correlation (OTOC) functions are obtained for a lattice fermion model with on-site interactions, namely, the Falicov-Kimball (FK) model, in the large dimensional and thermodynamic limit. Our approach is based on the nonequilibrium dynamical mean-field theory generalized to an extended Kadanoff-Baym contour. We find that the density-density OTOC is most enhanced at intermediate coupling around the metal-insulator phase transition. In the high-temperature limit, the OTOC remains nontrivially finite and interaction dependent, even though dynamical charge correlations probed by an ordinary response function are completely suppressed. We propose an experiment to measure OTOCs of fermionic lattice systems including the FK and Hubbard models in ultracold atomic systems.

It is found that the differential cross section of photon-photon scattering is a function of the degree of polarization entanglement of the two-photon state. A reduced general expression for the differential cross section of photon-photon scattering is derived by applying simple symmetry arguments. An explicit expression is obtained for the example of photon-photon scattering due to virtual electron-positron pairs in quantum electrodynamics. It is shown how the effect in this explicit example can be explained as an effect of quantum interference and that it fits with the idea of distance-dependent forces.

We reconstruct the explicit formalism of qubit quantum theory from elementary rules on an observer's information acquisition. Our approach is purely operational: we consider an observer $O$ interrogating a system $S$ with binary questions and define $S$'s state as $O$'s “catalog of knowledge” about $S$. From the rules we derive the state spaces for $N$ elementary systems and show that (a) they coincide with the set of density matrices over an $N$-qubit Hilbert space ${\mathbb{C}}^{2^N}$; (b) states evolve unitarily under the group $\mathrm{PSU}\left(2^N\right)$ according to the von Neumann evolution equation; and (c) $O$'s binary questions correspond to projective Pauli operator measurements with outcome probabilities given by the Born rule. As a by-product, this results in a propositional formulation of quantum theory. Aside from offering an informational explanation for the theory's architecture, the reconstruction also unravels previously unnoticed structural insights. We show that, in a derived quadratic information measure, (d) qubits satisfy inequalities which bound the information content in any set of mutually complementary questions to 1 bit; and (e) maximal sets of mutually complementary questions for one and two qubits must carry precisely 1 bit of information in pure states. The latter relations constitute conserved informational charges which define the unitary groups and, together with their conservation conditions, the sets of pure quantum states. These results highlight information as a “charge of quantum theory” and the benefits of this informational approach. This work emphasizes the sufficiency of restricting to an observer's information to reconstruct the theory and completes the quantum reconstruction initiated in a companion paper (P. Höhn, arXiv:1412.8323).

Quantum key distribution (QKD) generates symmetric keys between two remote parties and guarantees the keys are not accessible to any third party. Wavelength-division multiplexing between QKD and classical optical communications by sharing the existing fiber-optics infrastructure is highly desired in order to reduce the cost of QKD applications. However, comparing to the light for classical transmission, quantum signals are very weak and easily affected by impairments from classical light, such as the spontaneous Raman-scattering effect. Here, by selecting an optimal wavelength of quantum signals, we significantly reduce the influence of the Raman-scattering effect. In addition, through coherent optical communication technology, we achieve high-speed classical data transmission with relatively low launch powers, thereby further reducing the impairments from classical light. As a result, we realize the multiplexing and long-distance copropagation of QKD and terabit classical data transmission up to 80 km. The data capacity is two orders of magnitude larger than the existing results. Our demonstration verifies the feasibility of QKD and classical communication to share the resources of backbone fiber links and thus taking the utility of QKD a great step forward.

Adaptive measurements were recently shown to significantly improve the performance of quantum state tomography. Utilizing information about the system for the online choice of optimal measurements allows one to reach the ultimate bounds of precision for state reconstruction. In this article we generalize an adaptive Bayesian approach to the case of process tomography and experimentally show its superiority in the task of learning unknown quantum operations. Our experiments with photonic polarization qubits cover all types of single-qubit channels. We also discuss instrumental errors and the criteria for evaluation of the ultimate achievable precision in an experiment. It turns out that adaptive tomography provides a lower noise floor in the presence of strong technical noise.

We investigate measurement-based quantum communication with noisy resource states that are generated by entanglement purification. We consider the transmission of encoded information via noisy quantum channels using a measurement-based implementation of encoding, error correction, and decoding. We show that such an approach offers advantages over direct transmission, gate-based error correction, and measurement-based schemes with direct generation of resource states. We analyze the noise structure of resource states generated by entanglement purification and show that a local error model, i.e., noise acting independently on all qubits of the resource state, is a good approximation in general, and provides an exact description for Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states. The latter are resources for a measurement-based implementation of error-correction codes for bit-flip or phase-flip errors. This provides an approach to link the recently found very high thresholds for fault-tolerant measurement-based quantum information processing based on local error models for resource states with error thresholds for gate-based computational models.

We study the association and dissociation dynamics of weakly bound heteronuclear Feshbach molecules using transverse radio-frequency fields for expected parameters accessible through the microgravity environment of NASA's Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) aboard the International Space Station, including subnanokelvin temperatures and atomic densities as low as ${10}^8/{\mathrm{cm}}^3$. We show that under such conditions, thermal and loss effects can be greatly suppressed, resulting in a high efficiency of both association and dissociation of Feshbach molecules with a mean size exceeding ${10}^4{a}_0$ and allowing for the coherence in atom-molecule transitions to be clearly observable. Our theoretical model for heteronuclear mixtures includes thermal, loss, and density effects in a simple and conceptually clear manner. We derive the temperature, density, and scattering length regimes of ${}^{41}\mathrm{K}\text{−}{}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ that allow optimal association or dissociation efficiency with minimal heating and loss to guide upcoming experiments with ultracold atomic gases in space.

We experimentally study a system of quantum kicked rotors—an ensemble of diatomic molecules exposed to a periodic sequence of ultrashort laser pulses. In the regime where the underlying classical dynamics is chaotic, we investigate the quantum phenomenon of dynamical localization by means of state-resolved coherent Raman spectroscopy. We examine the dependence of the exponentially localized angular momentum distribution and of the total rotational energy on the time period between the pulses and their amplitude. The former parameter is shown to provide control over the localization center, whereas the latter one controls the localization length. Similar control of the center and width of a nonlocalized rotational distribution is demonstrated in the limit of classical diffusion, established by adding noise to the periodic pulse sequence.

Nonsequential double ionization is characterized by a knee structure in the plot of double-ionization probability versus laser intensity. In circularly polarized (CP) laser fields, this structure has only been observed for Mg atoms. By choosing laser fields according to a scaling law, we exhibit the knee structure in CP laser fields for Ar and He atoms. The collision of the ionized electron with the core enhances the ionization of the second electron and forms the knee structure. The electron recollision is universal in CP laser fields, but the ionization probability in the knee region decreases as the wavelength of the driven field increases. For experimental observations, it is beneficial to use target atoms with small ionization potentials and laser fields with short wavelengths.

We explore the trap profiles of a two-dimensional atomic Fermi gas in the presence of a Rashba spin-orbit coupling and under an adiabatic rotation. We first consider a noninteracting gas and show that the competition between the effects of Rashba coupling on the local density of single-particle states and the Coriolis effects caused by rotation gives rise to a characteristic ring-shaped density profile that survives at experimentally accessible temperatures. Furthermore, Rashba splitting of the Landau levels gives the density profiles a ziggurat shape in the rapid-rotation limit. We then consider an interacting gas under the BCS mean-field approximation for local pairing, and study the pair-breaking mechanism that is induced by the Coriolis effects on superfluidity, where we calculate the critical rotation frequencies both for the onset of pair breaking and for the complete destruction of superfluidity in the system. In particular, by comparing the results of a fully-quantum-mechanical Bogoliubov–de Gennes approach with those of a semiclassical local-density approximation, we construct extensive phase diagrams for a wide range of parameter regimes in the trap where the aforementioned competition may, e.g., favor an outer normal edge that is completely phase separated from the central superfluid core by vacuum.

The coupling of spins to long-wavelength bosonic modes is a prominent means to engineer long-range spin-spin interactions, and has been realized in a variety of platforms, such as atoms in optical cavities and trapped ions. To date, much of the experimental focus has been on the realization of long-range Ising models, but generalizations to other spin models are highly desirable. In this work, we explore a previously unappreciated connection between the realization of an $XY$ model by off-resonant driving of a single sideband of boson excitation (i.e., a single-beam Mølmer-Sørensen scheme) and a boson-mediated Ising simulator in the presence of a transverse field. In particular, we show that these two schemes have the same effective Hamiltonian in suitably defined rotating frames, and analyze the emergent effective $XY$ spin model through a truncated Magnus series and numerical simulations. In addition to $XY$ spin-spin interactions that can be nonperturbatively renormalized from the naive Ising spin-spin coupling constants, we find an effective transverse field that is dependent on the thermal energy of the bosons, as well as other spin-boson couplings that cause spin-boson entanglement not to vanish at any time. In the case of a boson-mediated Ising simulator with transverse field, we discuss the crossover from transverse field Ising-like to $XY\text{-like}$ spin behavior as a function of field strength.

In this paper, we examined a possibility of preservation of a substantially multimode radiation in a single cell of quantum memory. As a light source we considered a synchronously pumped optical parametric oscillator (SPOPO). As was shown in several studies, SPOPO radiation has a large number of the correlated modes making it attractive for the purposes of quantum communication and computing. We showed that these correlations can be mapped on the longitudinal spin waves of the memory cell and be restored later in the readout light. The efficiencies of the writing and readout depend on the mode structure of the memory determined by a mechanism of the light-matter interaction under consideration (the nonresonance Raman interaction) and by the profile of the driving light field. We showed that like the initial light pulse train, the restored one can be represented by a set of squeezed supermodes. The mapping of the quantum multimode correlations on the material medium offers opportunities to manipulate the quantum states within the memory cell followed by the reading of the transformed state.

We present a family of self-accelerating stable pulses propagating in optical fiber and connecting a slowly-modulated quasi-cw background to an unstable zero level. Such solutions represent a generalization of the self-accelerating Airy beams observed in the linear regime to a nonlinear dissipative system modeled by a standard complex cubic Ginzburg-Landau equation corresponding to linear gain and a (fast) saturable absorber. They can also be viewed as a generalization of the well-studied problem of pulled fronts to include acceleration.

The radiation emitted by a classically pumped three-level $\mathrm{\Lambda }$-type emitter in a resonator cavity featuring both radiative and unwanted losses is studied. In particular, the efficiency of one-photon Fock state excitation of the outgoing wave packet and the spatiotemporal shape of the wave packet are investigated. It is shown that, for a given shape of the emitter-cavity interaction, adjusting the shape of the pump pulse renders it possible to generate the emission of one-photon Fock state wave packets of desired shape with high efficiency.

We study the optical response of a resonant medium possessing nonlinear coupling to an external field driven by a few-cycle pump pulse sequence. We demonstrate the possibility of directly producing unipolar half-cycle pulses from the medium possessing an arbitrary nonlinearity, by choosing the proper pulse-to-pulse distance of the pump pulses in the sequence. We examine various ways of shaping the medium response using different geometrical configurations of nonlinear oscillators and different wavefront shapes for the excitation pulse sequence. Our approach defines a general framework to produce unipolar pulses of controllable form.

We consider frequency comb generation in dispersive singly resonant second-harmonic-generation cavity systems. Using a single temporal mean-field equation for the fundamental field that features a noninstantaneous nonlinear response function, we model the temporal and spectral dynamics and analyze comb generation, continuous wave bistability, and modulational instability. It is found that, owing to the significant temporal walk-off between the fundamental and second-harmonic fields, modulational instability can occur even in the complete absence of group-velocity dispersion. We further consider the relation of our model to a previously proposed modal expansion approach, and present a derivation of a general system of coupled mode equations. We show that the two models provide very similar predictions and become exactly equivalent in the limit that absorption losses and group-velocity dispersion at the fundamental frequency are neglected. Finally, we perform numerical simulations that show examples of the variety of comb states that are possible in phase-matched quadratic resonators, and discuss the dynamics of the comb formation process.

Unidirectional invisibility of a $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$-symmetric optical system is of great interest, but challenging as well since it is infeasible to fulfill it through wide optical frequency ranges in all angular directions. Accordingly we study reflectionless and invisible patterns in the TE and TM modes of an optical slab system consisting of an adjacent or separated pair of balanced gain and loss layers with a gap. We provide a comprehensive study of one of the simplest experimentally accessible examples of a unidirectionally reflectionless and invisible $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$-symmetric optical slab system. We obtain the physically optimal conditions for the realization of these phenomena. We derive analytic expressions, and show that only certain gain amounts restricted to take values between certain minimum and maximum values give rise to uni- or bidirectionally invisible configurations. The size of gap decides the measure of reflectionlessness and invisibility parameters, especially on gain value and incident angle.

Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) steering allows Alice to remotely prepare a state in some specific bases for Bob through her choice of measurements. The temporal analog of EPR steering, temporal steering, also reveals the steerability of a single system between different times. Focusing on a four-dimensional system, here we investigate the dynamics of the temporal steering measures, the temporal steering robustness, using five mutually unbiased bases. As an example of an application, we use these measures to examine the temporal correlations in a radical pair model of magnetoreception. We find that, due to interactions with a static nuclear spin, the radical pair model exhibits strong non-Markovianity.