We propose a general scheme to create chiral topological edge modes within the bulk of two-dimensional engineered quantum systems. Our method is based on the implementation of topological interfaces, designed within the bulk of the system, where topologically protected edge modes localize and freely propagate in a unidirectional manner. This scheme is illustrated through an optical-lattice realization of the Haldane model for cold atoms [G. Jotzu et al., Nature (London) 515, 237 (2014)], where an additional spatially varying lattice potential induces distinct topological phases in separated regions of space. We present two realistic experimental configurations, which lead to linear and radial-symmetric topological interfaces, which both allow one to significantly reduce the effects of external confinement on topological edge properties. Furthermore, the versatility of our method opens the possibility of tuning the position, the localization length, and the chirality of the edge modes, through simple adjustments of the lattice potentials. In order to demonstrate the unique detectability offered by engineered interfaces, we numerically investigate the time evolution of wave packets, indicating how topological transport unambiguously manifests itself within the lattice. Finally, we analyze the effects of disorder on the dynamics of chiral and nonchiral states present in the system. Interestingly, engineered disorder is shown to provide a powerful tool for the detection of topological edge modes in cold-atom setups.

We show that a certain class of higher-order excitations in ultracold atoms experiments can be described by straightforward extension of the standard strong coupling approach in the coherent state path integral formalism. It is achieved by theoretical analysis of energy absorption spectroscopy in the three-dimensional system of strongly correlated bosons described by the Bose-Hubbard model. In particular, for unit filling, an explicit form of the single-particle Mott insulator Green function at finite temperatures is derived which goes beyond the standard Hubbard bands description. Moreover, for relevant densities, we calculated the energy absorption rate and performed thermometry on rubidium atomic cloud gas by using previously obtained experimental data. Within the local density approximation, we explain that in such systems the nature of absorption spectrum depends significantly on local chemical potential: (a) the crossover region between lobes is characterized by different types of particle-hole excitations from neighboring Mott lobes and (b) origin of higher-order energy excitations changes from hole type to particle type for higher bosonic densities.

We study a critical behavior of mixtures of two species of ultracold bosons trapped in an optical lattice. Using mean-field approximation, we determine the ground-state phase diagram of the system for a wide range of parameters. The introduction of interactions between different species of atoms strongly renormalizes the phase diagram. It can alter the critical behavior modifying multicriticality of crossing points and order of phase transitions in their vicinity between mixed and superfluid states. For selected values of model parameters, the behavior of the system falls out of the $XY$ model universality class, which usually is a hallmark of superfluid phase transition. We supplement our analysis with analytical calculations to explain the observed scenario.

We perform spectroscopic measurements of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in a strongly interacting Rydberg gas. We observe a significant spectral shift and attenuation of the transparency resonance due to the presence of interactions between Rydberg atoms. We characterize the attenuation as the result of an effective dephasing and show that the shift and the dephasing rate increase versus atomic density, probe Rabi frequency, and principal quantum number of Rydberg states. Moreover, we find that the spectral shift is reduced if the size of a Gaussian atomic cloud is increased and that the dephasing rate increases with the EIT pulse duration at large-parameter regimes. We simulate our experiment with a semianalytical model, which yields results in good agreement with our experimental data.

Systems of neutral kaons can be used to observe entanglement and the violation of Bell inequalities. The decay of these particles poses some problems, however, and recently an effective formalism for treating such systems has been derived. We generalize this formalism and make it applicable to other quantum systems that can be made to behave in a similar manner. As examples, we discuss two possible implementations of the generalized formalism using trapped ions such as ${}^{171}\mathrm{Yb}$ or ${}^{172}\mathrm{Yb}$, which may be used to simulate kaonic behavior in a quantum optical system.

We derive several uncertainty relations for two arbitrary unitary operators acting on physical states of a Hilbert space. We show that our bounds are tighter in various cases than the ones existing in the current literature. Using the uncertainty relation for the unitary operators, we obtain the tight state-independent lower bound for the uncertainty of two Pauli observables and anticommuting observables in higher dimensions. With regard to the minimum-uncertainty states, we derive the minimum-uncertainty state equation by the analytic method and relate this to the ground-state problem of the Harper Hamiltonian. Furthermore, the higher-dimensional limit of the uncertainty relations and minimum-uncertainty states are explored. From an operational point of view, we show that the uncertainty in the unitary operator is directly related to the visibility of quantum interference in an interferometer where one arm of the interferometer is affected by a unitary operator. This shows a principle of preparation uncertainty, i.e., for any quantum system, the amount of visibility for two general noncommuting unitary operators is nontrivially upper bounded.

We propose an optimal $1\to 2$ quantum cloning method based on the maximin principle by making full use of a priori information of amplitude and phase about the general cloned qubit input set, which is a simply connected region enclosed by a “longitude-latitude grid” on the Bloch sphere. Theoretically, the fidelity of the optimal quantum cloning machine derived from this method is the largest in terms of the maximin principle compared with that of any other machine. The problem solving is an optimization process that involves six unknown complex variables, six vectors in an uncertain-dimensional complex vector space, and four equality constraints. Moreover, by restricting the structure of the quantum cloning machine, the optimization problem is simplified as a three-real-parameter suboptimization problem with only one equality constraint. We obtain the explicit formula for a suboptimal quantum cloning machine. Additionally, the fidelity of our suboptimal quantum cloning machine is higher than or at least equal to that of universal quantum cloning machines and phase-covariant quantum cloning machines. It is also underlined that the suboptimal cloning machine outperforms the “belt quantum cloning machine” for some cases.

We present a proposal of a setup to measure the work distribution of a process acting on a quantum system emulated by the transverse degrees of freedom of classical light. Hermite-Gaussian optical modes are used to represent the energy eigenstates of a quantum harmonic oscillator prepared in a thermal state. The Fourier transform of the work distribution, or the characteristic function, can be obtained by measuring the light intensity at the output of a properly designed interferometer. The usefulness of the approach is illustrated by calculating the work distribution for a unitary operation that displaces the linear momentum of the oscillator. Other types of processes and quantum systems can be implemented with the same scheme. We also show that the setup can be used to investigate the energy distribution for open dynamics described by completely positive maps. We discuss the feasibility of the experiment, which can be realized with simple linear optical components.

We present the quantum master equations for midsize molecules in the presence of an external magnetic field. The Hamiltonian describing the dynamics of a molecule accounts for the molecular deformation and orientation properties, as well as for the electronic properties. In order to establish the master equations governing the relaxation of free-standing molecules, we have to split the molecule into two weakly interacting parts, a bath and a bathed system. The adequate choice of these systems depends on the specific physical system under consideration. Here we consider a first system consisting of the molecular deformation and orientation properties and the electronic spin properties and a second system composed of the remaining electronic spatial properties. If the characteristic time scale associated with the second system is small with respect to that of the first, the second may be considered as a bath for the first. Assuming that both systems are weakly coupled and initially weakly correlated, we obtain the corresponding master equations. They describe notably the relaxation of magnetic properties of midsize molecules, where the change of the statistical properties of the electronic orbitals is expected to be slow with respect to the evolution time scale of the bathed system.

The geometry-dependent ionization behavior of ammonia molecules is investigated. Different theoretical approaches for obtaining the ionization yield are compared, all of them showing a strong dependence of the ionization yield on the inversion coordinate at long wavelengths ($\ge 800$ nm). It is shown how this effect can be exploited to create and probe nuclear wave packets in neutral ammonia using Lochfraß. Furthermore, imaging of a wave packet tunneling through the barrier of a double-well potential in real time is discussed.

Rescattering is a central process in ultrafast physics, in which an electron, freed from an atom and accelerated by a laser field, loses its energy by producing high-order harmonics or multiple ionization. Here, taking helium as a prototypical atom, we demonstrate numerically superelastic rescattering in single ionization of an atom. In this scenario, the absorption of a high-energy extreme ultraviolet photon leads to emission of one electron and excitation of the second one into its first excited state, forming ${\mathrm{He}}^{+*}$. A time-delayed midinfrared laser pulse accelerates the freed electron, drives it back to the ${\mathrm{He}}^{+*}$, and induces the transition of the bound electron to the ground state of the ion. Identification of the superelastic rescattering process in the photoelectron momentum spectra provides a means to determine the photoelectron momentum at the time of rescattering without using any information of the time-delayed probe laser pulse.

We investigate the dynamics of fermionic atoms in a high-finesse optical resonator after a sudden switch on of the coupling between the atoms and the cavity. The atoms are additionally confined by optical lattices to a ladder geometry. The tunneling mechanism on a rung of a ladder is induced by a cavity-assisted Raman process. At long times after the quantum quench the arising steady state can carry a chiral current. In this work we employ exact diagonalization techniques on small system sizes to study the dissipative attractor dynamics after the quench towards the steady state and deviations of the properties of the steady state from predictions obtained by adiabatically eliminating the cavity mode.

We theoretically show the negative refraction existing in Möbius molecules. The negative refractive index is induced by the nontrivial topology of the molecules. With the Möbius boundary condition, the effective electromagnetic fields felt by the electron in a Möbius ring is spatially inhomogeneous. In this regard, the $D_N$ symmetry is broken in Möbius molecules and thus the magnetic response is induced through the effective magnetic field. Our findings provide an alternative architecture for negative refractive index materials based on the nontrivial topology of Möbius molecules.

We show how a recent experiment of quantum imaging with undetected photons can basically be described as an (a partial) ancilla-assisted process tomography in which the object is described by an amplitude-damping quantum channel. We propose a simplified quantum circuit version of this scenario, which also enables one to recast quantum imaging in quantum computation language. Our analogy and analysis may help us to better understand the role of classical and/or quantum correlations in imaging experiments.

The network paradigm for quantum computing involves interconnecting many modules to form a scalable machine. Typically it is assumed that the links between modules are prone to noise while operations within modules have a significantly higher fidelity. To optimize fault tolerance in such architectures we introduce a hierarchical generalization of the surface code: a small “patch” of the code exists within each module and constitutes a single effective qubit of the logic-level surface code. Errors primarily occur in a two-dimensional subspace, i.e., patch perimeters extruded over time, and the resulting noise threshold for intermodule links can exceed $\sim 10$% even in the absence of purification. Increasing the number of qubits within each module decreases the number of qubits necessary for encoding a logical qubit. But this advantage is relatively modest, and broadly speaking, a “fine-grained” network of small modules containing only about eight qubits is competitive in total qubit count versus a “course” network with modules containing many hundreds of qubits.

Landé $g$ factors for the fine-structure $1s^{2}2s^{2}2p{}^{2}P_{1/2}$ and ${}^{2}P_{3/2}$ levels in the boron isoelectronic sequence for selected $Z$ values have been calculated using the multiconfiguration Dirac-Fock method with both quantum-electrodynamic and electronic correlation corrections included. All-order Breit and vacuum polarization corrections were included in the calculation, with a fully optimized active set wave function. The results are compared with the available theoretical data, showing a very good agreement.

We investigate experimentally and numerically the field-free orientation of the symmetric-top molecule of methyl iodide at high temperatures using a terahertz radiation generated by a plasma induced by a two-color laser beam. The degree of orientation is measured from the free-induction decay emitted by the sample. The observed experimental signal is reproduced with good accuracy by numerical simulations.

We present a computational approach to optimal laser pulse shaping directed at accessing novel photoinduced states of matter. Results are illustrated for a simple charge-density wave (CDW) model where the targeted effect is CDW melting and negative temperature states. Optimal control is implemented using the Krotov method applied to nonequilibrium tight-binding Hamiltonians where the laser pulse is introduced using the Peierls substitution, and we demonstrate monotonic convergence for this class of problem.

We report on a trapped atom interferometer based on Bragg diffraction and Bloch oscillations with alkaline-earth-metal atoms. We use a Ramsey–Bordé Bragg interferometer with ${}^{88}\mathrm{Sr}$ atoms combined with Bloch oscillations to extend the interferometer time. Thanks to a long coherence time for Bloch oscillations of ${}^{88}\mathrm{Sr}$ atoms, we observed interference up to 1 s evolution time in the lattice. A detailed study of decoherence sources during the Bloch phase is also presented. While still limited in sensitivity by lattice lifetime and beam inhomogeneity this result opens the way to high contrast trapped interferometers with extended interrogation time.

Magnetically coupled hybrid quantum systems enable robust quantum state control through Landau-Zener transitions. Here, we show that an ultracold atomic sample magnetically coupled to a nanomechanical resonator can be used to cool the resonator's mechanical motion, to measure the mechanical temperature, and to enable entanglement of more than one of these mesoscopic objects. We calculate the expected coupling for both permanent-magnet and current-conducting nanostring resonators and describe how this hybridization is attainable using recently developed fabrication techniques, including SiN nanostrings and atom chips.