In some atomic problems, the two-body muonic ions act as a kind of compound nucleus of a more complicated atomic system (containing a nucleus, a muon, and some electrons). Here we study its root-mean-square charge radius including various relativistic and radiative corrections. The numerical results are given for the muonic ions with the following nuclei: ${}^3\mathrm{He}, {}^4\mathrm{He}, {}^{12}\mathrm{C}$, and ${}^{16}\mathrm{O}$.

We present the fully fivefold differential cross sections (FDCSs) for ($e,3e$) processes in helium within the first Born approximation. The calculation is performed for a coplanar geometry in which the incident electron is fast ($\sim 6$ keV), the momentum transfer is small (0.24 a.u.), and for an asymmetric energy sharing between both slow ejected electrons at excess energy of 20 eV. Two cases have been considered: $E_1=15$ eV, $E_2=5$ eV and $E_1=8$ eV, $E_2=12$ eV. While waiting for new theoretical and experimental results for confrontations, in particular for asymmetric energy sharing, our results clearly demonstrate that, for the same incident energy, the same momentum transfer and the same excess energy, the ($e,3e$) process in helium with asymmetric energy sharing between ejected electrons is more likely than the case with symmetric energy sharing. The two- and three-dimensional representation of the FDCSs covering all possible values of the angle of ejections are presented and discussed. The theoretical cross sections are calculated by using a compact-kernel-integral-equation approach associated with the Jacobi matrix method to calculate a three-body wave function and which leads to a full convergence in terms of the basis size.

We present a joint experimental and theoretical investigation of the lifetime of weakly bound dimers formed near narrow interspecies Feshbach resonances in mass-imbalanced Fermi-Fermi systems, considering the specific example of a mixture of ${}^6\text{Li}$ and ${}^{40}\text{K}$ atoms. Our work addresses the central question of the increase in the stability of the dimers resulting from Pauli suppression of collisional losses, which is a well-known effect in mass-balanced fermionic systems near broad resonances. We present measurements of the spontaneous dissociation of dimers in dilute samples, and of the collisional losses in dense samples arising from both dimer-dimer processes and from atom-dimer processes. We find that all loss processes are suppressed close to the Feshbach resonance. Our general theoretical approach for fermionic mixtures near narrow Feshbach resonances provides predictions for the suppression of collisional decay as a function of the detuning from resonance, and we find excellent agreement with the experimental benchmarks provided by our ${}^6\text{Li}-{}^{40}\text{K}$ system. We finally present model calculations for other Feshbach-resonant Fermi-Fermi systems, which are of interest for experiments in the near future.

We present an implementation of optimal control theory for the first-principles nonadiabatic Ehrenfest molecular dynamics model, which describes a condensed matter system by considering classical point-particle nuclei, and quantum electrons, handled in our case with time-dependent density-functional theory. The scheme is demonstrated by optimizing the Coulomb explosion of small sodium clusters: the algorithm is set to find the optimal femtosecond laser pulses that disintegrate the clusters, for a given total duration, fluence, and cutoff frequency. We describe the numerical details and difficulties of the method.

We propose a method for creating far-field optical barrier potentials for ultracold atoms with widths that are narrower than the diffraction limit and can approach tens of nanometers. The reduced widths stem from the nonlinear atomic response to control fields that create spatially varying dark resonances. The subwavelength barrier is the result of the geometric scalar potential experienced by an atom prepared in such a spatially varying dark state. The performance of this technique, as well as its applications to the study of many-body physics and to the implementation of quantum-information protocols with ultracold atoms, are discussed, with a focus on the implementation of tunnel junctions.

We theoretically investigate the dispersive interaction of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) trapped inside an optomechanical cavity with a moving end mirror in the presence of the laser phase noise (LPN) as well as the atomic collisions. We assume that the effective frequency of the optical mode is much greater than those of the mechanical and the Bogoliubov modes of the movable mirror and the BEC. In the adiabatic approximation where the damping rate of the cavity is faster than those of the other modes, the system behaves as an effective two-mode model in which the atomic and mechanical modes are coupled to each other through the mediation of the optical field by an effective coupling parameter. We show that in the effective two-mode model, the LPN appears as a classical stochastic pump term which drives the amplitude quadratures of the mechanical and the Bogoliubov modes. It is also shown that a strong stationary mirror-atom entanglement can be established just in the dispersive and Doppler regimes where the two modes come into resonance with each other and the effect of the LPN gets very small.

We study a nonequilibrium dynamics of a one-dimensional spin-imbalanced Fermi-Hubbard model following a quantum quench of on-site interaction, realizable, for example, in Feshbach-resonant atomic Fermi gases. We focus on the post-quench evolution starting from the initial BCS and Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) ground states and analyze the corresponding spin-singlet, spin-triplet, density-density, and magnetization-magnetization correlation functions. We find that beyond a light-cone crossover time, rich post-quench dynamics leads to thermalized and pre-thermalized stationary states that display strong dependence on the initial ground state. For initially gapped BCS state, the long-time stationary state resembles thermalization with the effective temperature set by the initial value of the Hubbard interaction. In contrast, while the initial gapless FFLO state reaches a stationary pre-thermalized form, it remains far from equilibrium. We suggest that such post-quench dynamics can be used as a fingerprint for identification and study of the FFLO phase.

Strongly dipolar Bose gases can form liquid droplets stabilized by quantum fluctuations. In a theoretical description of this phenomenon, the low-energy scattering amplitude is utilized as an effective potential. We show that for magnetic atoms, corrections with respect to the Born approximation arise, and we derive a modified pseudopotential using a realistic interaction model. We discuss the resulting changes in collective mode frequencies and droplet stability diagrams. Our results are relevant to recent experiments with erbium and dysprosium atoms.

The response of a cold atom gas with contact interactions to a smoothly varying external harmonic confinement in the nonadiabatic regime is studied. The time variation of the angular frequency is varied such that the system is, for vanishing or infinitely strong contact interactions, scale invariant. The time evolution of the system with broken scale invariance (i.e., the time evolution of the system with finite interaction strength) is contrasted with that for a scale invariant system, which exhibits Efimovian-like expansion dynamics that is characterized by log-periodic oscillations with unique period and amplitude. It is found that the breaking of the scale invariance by the finiteness of the interactions leads to a time dependence of the oscillation period and amplitude. It is argued, based on analytical considerations for atomic gases of arbitrary size and numerical results for two one-dimensional particles, that the oscillation period approaches that of the scale-invariant system at large times. The role of the time-dependent contact in the expansion dynamics is analyzed.

By means of quantum Monte Carlo methods we calculate the binding energy of an impurity immersed in a Bose-Einstein condensate at $T=0$. The focus is on the attractive branch of the Bose polaron and on the role played by the mass imbalance between the impurity and the surrounding particles. For an impurity resonantly coupled to the bath, we investigate the dependence of the binding energy on the mass ratio and on the interaction strength within the medium. In particular, we determine the equation of state in the case of a static (infinite mass) impurity, where three-body correlations are irrelevant and the result is expected to be a universal function of the gas parameter. For the mass ratio corresponding to ${}^{40}\mathrm{K}$ impurities in a gas of ${}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ atoms, we provide an explicit comparison with the experimental findings of a recent study carried out at JILA.

In this paper, we study theoretically atomic quantum simulations of a U(1) gauge-Higgs model on a three-dimensional (3D) spatial lattice by using an extended Bose-Hubbard model with intersite repulsions on a 3D optical lattice. Here, the phase and density fluctuations of the boson variable on each site of the optical lattice describe the vector potential and the electric field on each link of the gauge-model lattice, respectively. The target gauge model is different from the standard Wilson-type U(1) gauge-Higgs model because it has plaquette and Higgs interactions with asymmetric couplings in the space-time directions. Nevertheless, the corresponding quantum simulation is still important as it provides us with a platform to study unexplored time-dependent phenomena characteristic of each phase in the general gauge-Higgs models. To determine the phase diagram of the gauge-Higgs model at zero temperature, we perform Monte Carlo simulations of the corresponding 3+1-dimensional U(1) gauge-Higgs model, and obtain the confinement and Higgs phases. To investigate the dynamical properties of the gauge-Higgs model, we apply the Gross-Pitaevskii equations to the extended Bose-Hubbard model. We simulate the time evolution of an electric flux that initially is put on a straight line connecting two external point charges. We also calculate the potential energy between this pair of charges and obtain the string tension in the confinement phase. Finally, we propose a feasible experimental setup for the atomic simulations of this quantum gauge-Higgs model on the 3D optical lattice. These results may serve as theoretical guides for future experiments.

Motivated by recent experiments we study the influence of thermal noise on the phase slips in toroidal Bose-Einstein condensates with a rotating weak link. We derive a generalized Arrhenius-like expression for the rate of stochastic phase slips. We develop a method to estimate the energy barrier separating different superflow states. The parameters at which the energy barrier disappears agree with the critical parameters for deterministic phase slips obtained from dynamics simulations, which confirms the validity of our energetic analysis. We reveal that adding thermal noise lowers the phase-slip threshold. However, the quantitative impact of the stochastic phase slips turns out to be too small to explain the significant discrepancy between theoretical and the experimental results.

We consider a system of noninteracting fermions in one dimension subject to a single-particle potential consisting of (a) a strong optical lattice, (b) a harmonic trap, and (c) uncorrelated on-site disorder. After a quench, in which the center of the harmonic trap is displaced, we study the occupation function of the fermions and the time evolution of experimental observables. Specifically, we present numerical and analytical results for the postquench occupation function of the fermions, and analyze the time evolution of the real-space density profile. Unsurprisingly for a noninteracting (and therefore integrable) system, the infinite-time limit of the density profile is nonthermal. However, due to Bragg localization of the higher-energy single-particle states, the approach to even this nonthermal state is extremely slow. We quantify this statement, and show that it implies a sensitivity to disorder parametrically stronger than that expected from Anderson localization.

We show that the pumping current is a convenient parameter for manipulating the temporal localized structures (LSs), also called localized pulses, found in passively-mode-locked vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers. While short electrical pulses can be used for writing and erasing individual LSs, we demonstrate that a current modulation introduces a temporally evolving parameter landscape allowing one to control the position and the dynamics of LSs. We show that the localized pulse drifting speed in this landscape depends almost exclusively on the local parameter value instead of depending on the landscape gradient, as shown in quasi-instantaneous media. This experimental observation is theoretically explained by the causal response time of the semiconductor carriers that occurs on a finite time scale and breaks the parity invariance along the cavity, thus leading to a different paradigm for temporal tweezing of localized pulses. Different modulation waveforms are applied for describing exhaustively this paradigm. Starting from a generic model of passive mode locking based upon delay differential equations, we deduce the effective equations of motion for these LSs in a time-dependent current landscape.

A time-domain approach using the momentum operator is used to model spontaneous four-wave mixing in a lossless nonlinear waveguide. The effects of self- and cross-phase modulation on the photon-pair production rate and heralded photon purity are investigated. We show that in the special case where only one half of the photon-pair state is filtered the generation rate and purity of the heralded photons are unmodified by the presence of self- and cross-phase modulation. The significance of this special case arises when we consider heralded single-photon sources, where future schemes are likely to only filter the herald photon to ensure a high heralding efficiency is maintained.

We have studied light storage in an electromagnetically-induced-transparency medium. The total storage efficiency for the probe pulse has been presented, with and without adiabatic approximation. Storage with different control parameters has been discussed and the influences on storage efficiency have been addressed. We have found that good efficiency can be achieved by using easily controlled wave shapes for the control field.

We propose a scheme to realize the storage and retrieval of light pulses in a fast-light medium via a mechanism of active Raman gain (ARG). The system under consideration is a four-level atomic gas interacting with three (pump, signal, and control) laser fields. We show that a stable propagation of signal light pulses with superluminal velocity (i.e., fast-light pulses) is possible in such a system through the ARG contributed by the pump field and the quantum interference effect induced by the control field. We further show that a robust storage and retrieval of light pulses in such a fast-light medium can be implemented by switching on and off the pump and the control fields simultaneously. The results reported here may have potential applications for light information processing and transmission using fast-light media.

In this Comment, we reexamine the security of phase-encoded quantum private query (QPQ). We find that the current phase-encoded QPQ protocols, including their applications, are vulnerable to a probabilistic entangle-and-measure attack performed by the owner of the database. Furthermore, we discuss how to overcome this security loophole and present an improved cheat-sensitive QPQ protocol without losing the good features of the original protocol.

It has been known for many years now that the descriptions of electromagnetic couplings in velocity gauge and length gauge can yield different results for atoms and molecules in strong fields. We point out that it is mathematically consistent to mix velocity gauge for some components of a material with length gauge for other components, although this should not be possible for a bona fide gauge transformation. For many-particle systems in a Hartree approximation, it is even possible to mix velocity gauge and length gauge for different particles of the same kind. Four main sources of analytic differences between velocity gauge and length gauge are then identified, and it is pointed out that these sources imply differences between velocity gauge and length gauge in particular for subfemtosecond spectroscopy, for experiments involving strong fields, and for chiral materials. Finally, it is emphasized that the transformation from velocity gauge to length gauge is just a particular example of a picture-changing unitary transformation. However, all these transformations lead to nonunitary shifts of the Hamiltonian, irrespective of whether the transformation can be described as a gauge transformation. Therefore, all these descriptions of quantum optics in dipole approximation are formally equivalent if agreement is achieved which particular formulation of the time-dependent interaction terms perturbs the “true” energy eigenstates of a system. However, this is where the actual discrepancies between velocity gauge, length gauge, and also other formulations such as acceleration gauge originate. This implies a generalization of the results of Galstyan et al. [Phys. Rev. A 93, 023422 (2016)] from two different classes of theoretical formulations to many different classes of theoretical formulations.

We analyze the continuous measurement of two noncommuting observables for a qubit, and investigate whether the simultaneously observed noisy signals are consistent with the evolution of an equivalent classical system. Following the approach outlined by Leggett and Garg, we show that the readouts violate macrorealistic inequalities for arbitrarily short temporal correlations. Moreover, the derived inequalities are manifestly violated even in the absence of Hamiltonian evolution, unlike for Leggett-Garg inequalities that use a single continuous measurement. Such a violation should indicate the failure of at least one postulate of macrorealism: either physical quantities do not have well-defined values at all times or the measurement process itself disturbs what is being measured. Nevertheless, for measurements of equal strength we are able to construct a classical stochastic model for a spin that perfectly emulates both the qubit evolution and the observed noisy signals, thus emulating the violations; interestingly, this model also requires an unphysical noise to emulate the readouts, which effectively restricts the ability of an observer to learn information about the spin.