What is the role of coherence in determining the distribution of work done on a quantum system? We approach this question from an operational perspective and consider a setup in which the internal energy of a closed system is recorded by a quantum detector before and after the system is acted upon by an external drive. We find that the resulting work distribution depends on the initial state of the detector as well as on the choice of the final measurement. We consider two complementary measurement schemes, both of which show clear signatures of quantum interference. We specifically discuss how to implement these schemes in the circuit QED architecture, using an artificial atom as the system and a quantized mode of the electromagnetic field as the detector. Different measurement schemes can be realized by preparing the field either in a superposition of Fock states or in a coherent state and exploiting state-of-the art techniques for the characterization of microwave radiation at the quantum level. More generally, the single bosonic mode we utilize is arguably the minimal quantum detector capable of capturing the complementary aspects of the work distribution discussed here.

We investigate phase and frequency estimation with different measurement strategies under the effect of collective phase noise. First, we consider the standard linear estimation scheme and present an experimentally realizable optimization of the initial probe states by collective rotations. We identify the optimal rotation angle for different measurement times. Second, we show that subshot noise sensitivity—up to the Heisenberg limit—can be reached in presence of collective phase noise by using differential interferometry, where one part of the system is used to monitor the noise. For this, not only Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states but also symmetric Dicke states are suitable. We investigate the optimal splitting for a general symmetric Dicke state at both inputs and discuss possible experimental realizations of differential interferometry.

The endeavor to develop quantum networks gave rise to a rapidly developing field with far-reaching applications such as secure communication and the realization of distributed computing tasks. This ultimately calls for the creation of flexible multiuser structures that allow for quantum communication between arbitrary pairs of parties in the network and facilitate also multiuser applications. To address this challenge, we propose a two-dimensional quantum repeater architecture to establish long-distance entanglement shared between multiple communication partners in the presence of channel noise and imperfect local control operations. The scheme is based on the creation of self-similar multiqubit entanglement structures at growing scale, where variants of entanglement swapping and multiparty entanglement purification are combined to create high-fidelity entangled states. We show how such networks can be implemented using trapped ions in cavities.

The quantum entanglement and the probability of the dynamical Lamb effect for two qubits caused by nonadiabatic fast change of the boundary conditions are studied. The conditional concurrence of the qubits for each fixed number of created photons in a nonstationary cavity is obtained as a measure of the dynamical quantum entanglement due to the dynamical Lamb effect. We discuss the physical realization of the dynamical Lamb effect, based on superconducting qubits.

We develop a universal method to significantly suppress probe-induced shifts in any type of atomic clock using Ramsey spectroscopy. Our approach is based on the adaptation of the synthetic frequency concept [V. I. Yudin et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 030801 (2011)] (previously developed for blackbody radiation shift suppression) to Ramsey spectroscopy with the use of interrogations with different dark time intervals. The most significant suppression of the shift is obtained in combination with the so-called hyper-Ramsey spectroscopy technique [V. I. Yudin et al., Phys. Rev. A 82, 011804(R) (2010)]. In this case, the probe-induced frequency shifts can be suppressed considerably from metrologically significant levels to below a fractional level of ${10}^{-18}$ for practically any optical atomic clocks. The main advantage of our method in comparison with other hyper-Ramsey approaches [R. Hobson et al., Phys. Rev. A 93, 010501(R) (2016); T. Zanon-Willette et al., Phys. Rev. A 93, 042506 (2016)] derives from its much greater efficiency and robustness in the presence of decoherence.

Rydberg state excitation (RSE) of different atoms in elliptically polarized strong 800 nm laser fields is investigated experimentally, and the results are compared with calculations of the strong-field approximation (SFA) model and the semiclassical model. It is observed that the RSE probability declines with increasing laser ellipticity for all of the He, Ar, and Kr atoms. While the measured ellipticity dependence of He RSE is very consistent with the predictions of both the SFA and semiclassical calculations, the width of the ellipticity dependence for Ar and Kr atoms is wider than that of the SFA model but closer to the semiclassical calculations. Analysis indicates that unlike a tunneling-plus-rescattering process, the decline of the RSE yield with increasing ellipticity can be attributed to a decrease of electrons with low kinetic energy that could be captured in the Rydberg states by the Coulomb potential. It indicates that the atomic RSE process could be related to the very low or near-zero energy structure in the photoelectron spectrum in strong laser fields, which would stimulate further experimental and theoretical studies to reveal their underlying mechanisms.

We study the ionization of atomic hydrogen in the direction of polarization due to a linearly polarized XUV pulse in the presence of a strong IR laser. We describe the photoelectron spectra as an interference problem in the time domain. Electron trajectories stemming from different optical laser cycles give rise to intercycle interference energy peaks known as sidebands. These sidebands are modulated by a coarse-grained structure coming from the intracycle interference of the two electron trajectories born during the same optical cycle. We make use of a simple semiclassical model that offers the possibility to establish a connection between emission times and the photoelectron kinetic energy. We analyze such interference pattern as a function of the time delay between the IR and the XUV pulses and also as a function of the laser intensity. We compare the semiclassical predictions with the continuum-distorted-wave strong-field approximation and the ab initio solution of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation.

We theoretically study the Hall response of a lattice system following a quench where the topology of a filled band is suddenly changed. In the limit where the physics is dominated by a single Dirac cone, we find that the change in the Hall conductivity is two-thirds of the quantum of conductivity. We explore this universal behavior in the Haldane model and discuss cold-atom experiments for its observation. Beyond the linear response, the Hall effect crosses over from fractional to integer values. We investigate finite-size effects and the role of harmonic confinement.

We analytically study the effect of gravitational and harmonic forces on ultracold atoms with synthetic spin-orbit coupling (SOC). In particular, we focus on the recently observed transitions between internal states induced by acceleration of the external modes. Our description corresponds to a generalized version of the Landau-Zener (LZ) model: the dimensionality is enlarged to combine the quantum treatment of the external variables with the internal-state characterization; additionally, atomic-interaction effects are considered. The emergence of the basic model is analytically traced. Namely, by using a sequence of unitary transformations and a subsequent reduction to the spin space, the SOC Hamiltonian, with the gravitational potential incorporated, is exactly converted into the primary LZ scenario. Moreover, the transitions induced by harmonic acceleration are approximately cast into the framework of the basic LZ model through a complete analytical procedure. We evaluate how the validity of our picture depends on the system preparation and on the magnitude of atomic-interaction effects. The identification of the regime of applicability and the rigorous characterization of the parameters of the effective model provide elements to control the transitions.

Coherent backscattering is a coherence effect in the propagation of waves through disordered media involving two or more scattering events. Here we report on the observation of coherent backscattering from individual atoms and their mirror images. This system displays two important advantages: First, the effect can be observed at low optical densities, which allows us to work in very dilute clouds or far from resonance. Second, due to the fact that the radiation of an atom interferes constructively with that of its own image, the phenomenon is much more robust to dephasing induced by strong saturation. In particular, the contribution of inelastically scattered photons to the interference process is demonstrated.

Quantum entanglement in mechanical systems is not only a key signature of macroscopic quantum effects but has wide applications in quantum technologies. Here we propose an effective approach for creating strong steady-state entanglement between two directly coupled mechanical oscillators (or a mechanical oscillator and a microwave resonator) in a modulated optomechanical system. The entanglement is achieved by combining the processes of a cavity cooling and the two-mode parametric interaction, which can surpass the bound on the maximal stationary entanglement from the two-mode parametric interaction. In principle, our proposal allows one to cool the system from an initial thermal state to an entangled state with high purity by a monochromatic driving laser. Also, the obtained entangled state can be used to implement the continuous-variable teleportation with high fidelity. Moreover, our proposal is robust against the thermal fluctuations of the mechanical modes under the condition of strong optical pumping.

We study the nonequilibrium quantum phase transition of an Ising chain in a dissipative cavity driven by an external transverse light field. When driving and dissipation are in balance, the system can reach a nonequilibrium steady state which undergoes a superradiant phase transition as the driving strength increases. Interestingly, the superradiant field changes the effective bias of the Ising chain in return and drives its own transition between the ferromagnetic and the paramagnetic phase. We study the rich physics in this system with sophisticated behavior and investigate important issues in its dynamics such as the stability of the system and criticality of the phase transition.

We elaborate a solution for the problem of stable propagation of transversely localized vortex beams in homogeneous optical media with self-focusing Kerr nonlinearity. Stationary nonlinear Bessel-vortex states are stabilized against azimuthal breakup and collapse by multiphoton absorption, while the respective power loss is offset by the radial influx of the power from an intrinsic reservoir. A linear stability analysis and direct numerical simulations reveal a region of stability of these vortices. Beams with multiple vorticities have their stability regions too. These beams can then form robust tubular filaments in transparent dielectrics as common as air, water, and optical glasses at sufficiently high intensities. We also show that the tubular, rotating, and specklelike filamentation regimes, previously observed in experiments with axicon-generated Bessel beams, can be explained as manifestations of the stability or instability of a specific nonlinear Bessel-vortex state, which is fully identified.

We introduce a scheme to reconstruct an arbitrary quantum state of a mechanical oscillator network. We assume that a single element of the network is coupled to a cavity field via a linearized optomechanical interaction, the time dependence of which is controlled by a classical driving field. By designing a suitable interaction profile, we show how the statistics of an arbitrary mechanical quadrature can be encoded in the cavity field, which can then be measured. We discuss the important special case of Gaussian state reconstruction and study numerically the effectiveness of our scheme for a finite number of measurements. Finally, we speculate on possible routes to extend our ideas to the regime of single-photon optomechanics.

Geometrical and topological phases play a fundamental role in quantum theory. Geometric phases have been proposed as a tool for implementing unitary gates for quantum computation. A fractional topological phase has been recently discovered for bipartite systems. The dimension of the Hilbert space determines the topological phase of entangled qudits under local unitary operations. Here we investigate fractional topological phases acquired by photonic entangled qudits. Photon pairs prepared as spatial qudits are operated inside a Sagnac interferometer and the two-photon interference pattern reveals the topological phase as fringes shifts when local operations are performed. Dimensions $d=2$, 3, and 4 were tested, showing the expected theoretical values.

In an ultracold, optically trapped mixture of ${}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ and metastable triplet ${}^4\mathrm{He}$ atoms we have studied trap loss for different spin-state combinations, for which interspecies Penning ionization is the main two-body loss process. We observe long trapping lifetimes for the purely quartet spin-state combination, indicating strong suppression of Penning-ionization loss by at least two orders of magnitude. For the other spin mixtures we observe short lifetimes that depend linearly on the doublet character of the entrance channel. We compare the extracted loss rate coefficient with recent predictions of multichannel quantum-defect theory for reactive collisions involving a strong exothermic loss channel and find near-universal loss for doublet scattering. Our work demonstrates control of Penning-ionization reactive collisions by internal atomic state preparation.

With the advent of spatially resolved fluorescence imaging in quantum gas microscopes, it is now possible to directly image glassy phases and probe the local effects of disorder in a highly controllable setup. Here we present numerical calculations using a spatially resolved local mean-field theory, show that it captures the essential physics of the disordered system, and use it to simulate the density distributions seen in single-shot fluorescence microscopy. From these simulated images we extract local properties of the phases which are measurable by a quantum gas microscope and show that unambiguous detection of the Bose glass is possible. In particular, we show that experimental determination of the Edwards-Anderson order parameter is possible in a strongly correlated quantum system using existing experiments. We also suggest modifications to the experiments which will allow further properties of the Bose glass to be measured.

We investigate a quantum repeater scheme for quantum key distribution based on the work by S. Muralidharan et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 250501 (2014)]. Our scheme extends that work by making use of error syndrome measurement outcomes available at the repeater stations. We show how to calculate the secret key rates for the case of optimizing the syndrome information, while the known key rate is based on a scenario of coarse graining the syndrome information. We show that these key rates can surpass the Pirandola-Laurenza-Ottaviani-Banchi bound on secret key rates of direct transmission over lossy bosonic channels.

The computational cost of performing a configuration interaction (CI) calculation for treating electron-electron correlation is directly proportional to the number of terms in the CI expansion. In this work, we present a diagrammatic projection approach for a priori identification of noncontributing terms in a CI expansion. This method known as the geminal-projected configuration interaction (GP-CI) method is based on using a two-body R12 geminal operator for describing electron-electron correlation in a reference many-electron wave function. The diagrammatic projection procedure was performed by first deriving the Hugenholtz diagrams of the energy expression of the R12 reference wave function and then performing diagrammatic factorization of effective particle-hole creation operators. The projection operation, which is a functional of the geminal function, was defined and used for the construction of the geminal-projected particle-hole creation operators. The form of the two-body R12 geminal operator was derived analytically by imposing an approximate Kato cusp condition. A linear combination of the geminal-projected one-particle one-hole and two-particle two-hole operators were used for the construction of the GP-CI wave function. The applicability and implementation of the diagrammatic projection method was demonstrated by performing proof-of-concept calculations on an isoelectronic series of 10 electron systems: ${\mathrm{CH}}_4,{\mathrm{NH}}_3,{\mathrm{H}}_2\mathrm{O},\mathrm{HF}$, and $\mathrm{Ne}$. The results from the calculations show that compared to conventional CI calculations, the GP-CI method was able to substantially reduce the size of the CI space (by a factor of 6–9) while maintaining an accuracy of ${10}^{-5}$ Hartrees for the ground-state energies. These results demonstrate the ability of the diagrammatic projection procedure to identify noncontributing states using an analytical form of the R12 geminal correlator operator. The geminal-projection method was also applied to second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory (GP-MP2) giving similar results to the GP-CI method in terms of reduction of the double excitation space and accuracy to the ground-state energy. This work also extends the analytical derivation of the geminal-projected particle-hole creation operators that were used for the construction of the CI wave function to coupled-cluster theory (GP-CCSD). This general derivation can also be applied to other many-electron theories and multideterminant quantum Monte Carlo calculations.