We report the achievement of spatial confinement of muonium atoms (the bound state of a positive muon and an electron). Muonium emitted into a vacuum from mesoporous silica reflects between two ${\mathrm{SiO}}_2$ confining surfaces separated by 1 mm. From the data, one can extract that the reflection probability on the confining surfaces kept at 100 K is about 90% and the reflection process is well described by a cosine law. This technique enables new experiments with this exotic atomic system and is a very important step towards a measurement of the $1S-2S$ transition frequency using continuous-wave laser spectroscopy.

Systematic analysis is made for illuminating the mechanism of rotational and vibrational excitations in an impulsive ion-molecule collision from the viewpoint of its sudden nature. Variation of the energy-loss spectrum with the projectile mass is examined in the collision system of an alkali-metal ion with a nitrogen molecule at a hyperthermal energy of 27 eV using a common interaction potential. The spectra are obtained by the classical trajectory calculation and compared with two sudden-limit models—the hard-shell model for rigid-rotor molecules and the hard-potential model for vibrating-rotor molecules [A. Ichimura and M. Nakamura, Phys. Rev. A 69, 022716 (2004)]. For a projectile much lighter than the target, the vibrational and rotational excitation occurs in such a way that the hard-potential model predicts, producing a spectral profile with double peaks. As the projectile mass increases, the vibrational suddenness is degraded so that the vibrational excitation becomes quenched, while the spectral profile still shows a double-peak structure explainable with the hard-shell model. Subsequently, as the projectile mass further increases, the rotational suddenness is also degraded so that the spectrum indicates a profile departing far from the prediction of the hard-shell model; the deeply inelastic peak is suppressed and the nearly elastic peak is enhanced. Such spectral deformation actually occurs in an experimental result reported for ${\mathrm{Na}}^{+}–{\mathrm{N}}_2$ collisions [M. Nakamura, S. Kita, and T. Hasegawa, J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 56, 3161 (1987)]. Eventually, the deeply inelastic peak disappears due to temporary excitation during a collision.

Imaging structures at the molecular level is a developing interdisciplinary research field that spans the boundaries of physics and chemistry. High-spatial-resolution images of molecules can be obtained with photons or ultrafast electrons. In addition, images of valence molecular orbitals can be extracted via tomographic techniques based on the coherent extreme UV radiation emitted by a molecular gas exposed to an intense ultrashort infrared laser pulse. In this paper, we demonstrate that similar information can be obtained by inverting energy-resolved photoelectron spectra using a simplified analytical model.

We present a theoretical investigation of x-ray multiphoton ionization dynamics of polyatomic molecules, based on the rate equation model and molecular electronic structure calculations. An efficient numerical procedure is developed to calculate photoionization cross sections, Auger rates, and fluorescence rates for all possible electronic multiple-hole configurations of molecules. We investigate the charge-state distribution of a water molecule after interaction with an intense x-ray pulse and discuss its dependence on the fluence and the pulse duration of the x-ray beam. Our results demonstrate that a water molecule exposed to an intense x-ray pulse is more ionized than what would be expected within the independent-atom picture.

Entanglement entropy (EE), a fundamental concept in quantum information for characterizing entanglement, has been extensively employed to explore quantum phase transitions (QPTs). Although the conventional single-site mean-field (MF) approach successfully predicts the emergence of QPTs, it fails to include any entanglement. Here, in the framework of a cluster MF treatment, we extract the signature of EE in bosonic superfluid-insulator (SI) transitions. We consider a trimerized Kagomé lattice of interacting bosons, in which each trimer is treated as a cluster, and implement the cluster MF treatment by decoupling all intertrimer hopping. In addition to superfluid and integer insulator phases, we find that fractional insulator phases appear when the tunneling is dominated by the intratrimer part. To quantify the residual bipartite entanglement in a cluster, we calculate the second-order Rényi entropy, which can be experimentally measured by quantum interference of many-body twins. The second-order Rényi entropy itself is continuous everywhere, however, the continuousness of its first-order derivative breaks down at the phase boundary. This means that the bosonic SI transitions can still be efficiently captured by the residual entanglement in our cluster MF treatment. Besides to the bosonic SI transitions, our cluster MF treatment may also be used to capture the signature of EE for other QPTs in quantum superlattice models.

We study the dynamical response of ultracold fermion-boson mixtures in the Bogoliubov regime, where the interactions between fermionic impurities and bosonic excitations (phonons) are described by an effective Fröhlich model under the Bogoliubov approximation. A characteristic suppression of the single-particle spectral weight is found in the small-momentum region where the impurity band and phonon mode intersect. Using a diagrammatic technique we compute the Bragg spectra as well as the momentum-dependent force-force correlation function. We find that both of them are heavily affected by the spectral weight suppression effect at low impurity densities in both one- and two-dimensional systems. We show that the spectral weight suppression feature in Bragg spectra, which was previously found in quantum Monte Carlo simulations and which cannot be recovered by the random phase approximation, can be accurately reproduced with the help of vertex corrections.

We explore the coherent control of nonlinear absorption of intense laser fields in four-level atomic systems. For instance, in a four-level ladder system, a coupling field creates electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) with an Aulter-Townes doublet for the probe field while the control field is absent. A large absorption peak appears at resonance as the control field is switched on. We show how such a large absorption leads to optical switching. Further, this large absorption diminishes and a transparency window appears due to the saturation effects as the strength of the probe field is increased. We further demonstrate that the threshold of the optical bistability can be modified by suitable choices of the coupling and the control fields. In a four-level $\mathsf{Y}$-type configuration, the effect of the control field on saturable absorption (SA) and reverse saturable absorption (RSA) is highlighted in the context of nonlinear absorption of the probe field. We achieve RSA and SA in a simple atomic system just by applying a control field.

We report measurements of Hanbury Brown and Twiss correlation of coherent light transmitted through disordered one-dimensional photonic lattices. Although such a lattice exhibits transverse Anderson localization when a single input site is excited, uniform excitation precludes its observation. By examining the Hanbury Brown–Twiss correlation for a uniformly excited disordered lattice, we observe intensity anticorrelations associated with photon antibunching—a signature of non-Gaussian statistics. Although the measured average intensity distribution is uniform, transverse Anderson localization nevertheless underlies the observed anticorrelation.

Computing entanglement of an arbitrary bipartite or multipartite mixed state is in general not an easy task as it usually involves complex optimization. Here we show that, exploiting symmetries of certain multiqudit mixed states, we can compute a genuine multiparty entanglement measure, the generalized geometric measure, for these classes of mixed states. The chosen states have different ranks and consist of an arbitrary number of parties.

To date, a conclusive detection of quantum speedup remains elusive. Recently, a team by Google Inc. [V. S. Denchev et al., Phys. Rev. X 6, 031015 (2016)] proposed a weak-strong cluster model tailored to have tall and narrow energy barriers separating local minima, with the aim to highlight the value of finite-range tunneling. More precisely, results from quantum Monte Carlo simulations as well as the D-Wave 2X quantum annealer scale considerably better than state-of-the-art simulated annealing simulations. Moreover, the D-Wave 2X quantum annealer is $\sim {10}^8$ times faster than simulated annealing on conventional computer hardware for problems with approximately ${10}^3$ variables. Here, an overview of different sequential, nontailored, as well as specialized tailored algorithms on the Google instances is given. We show that the quantum speedup is limited to sequential approaches and study the typical complexity of the benchmark problems using insights from the study of spin glasses.

Nonlocal games are an important part of quantum information processing. Recently there has been an increased interest in generalizing nonlocal games beyond the basic setup by considering games with multiple parties and/or with large alphabet inputs and outputs. We consider another interesting generalization—games with nonuniform inputs. Here we derive a tight upper bound for the classical winning probability for a family of nonlocal games with nonuniform input distribution, known as ${\mathrm{CHSH}}_q\left(p\right)$, which was introduced recently in the context of relativistic bit-commitment protocols by Chakraborty et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 250501 (2015)].

In this paper, we investigate the possibility of entanglement swapping between two distinct qubits coupled to their own (in general) non-Markovian environments. This goal is achieved by performing Bell state measurement on photons leaving dissipative cavities. In the continuation, we introduce the concept of entangling power to measure the average of swapped entanglement over all possible pure initial states. Then we present our results in two regimes, strong and weak coupling, and discuss the role of the detuning parameter in each regime in the amount of swapped entanglement. We also determine the conditions under which the maximum amount of entanglement can be swapped between the two qubits. It is revealed that, despite the presence of dissipation, it is possible to create long-living stationary entanglement between the two qubits.

The coincidence Doppler broadening (CDB) technique was applied to study the momentum distribution of positronium (Ps) and its interactions with oxygen molecules in free spaces of silica aerogels filled with nitrogen and oxygen mixtures of various ratios. The deconvoluted CDB spectra become narrower and narrower with increasing oxygen partial pressure, which is due to electron exchange collision of ortho-Ps (o-Ps) with oxygen molecules. The momentum distribution of para-Ps (p-Ps) was successfully derived from deconvoluted CDB spectra by a two-Gaussian-function fitting. The bimodal distribution of Ps momentum reveals that o-Ps atoms (with enough kinetic energy) can be moderated effectively by exciting oxygen molecules from the ground state to the excited state ($a^{\prime }{\mathrm{\Delta }}_g$ or $b^{\prime }{{\mathrm{\Sigma }}_g}^{+}$) through inelastic collisions. It is interesting to find that the energy difference $\mathrm{\Delta }E$ between two components of p-Ps momentum distributions decreases gradually because more and more o-Ps atoms lose energy through elastic collisions prior to inelastic collisions as oxygen partial pressure increases.

A detailed study of the anharmonicity-induced resonances caused by the coupling of center-of-mass and relative motion is presented for a system of two ultracold atoms in single-well potentials. As has been confirmed experimentally, these inelastic confinement-induced resonances are of interest since they can lead to coherent molecule formation, losses, and heating in ultracold atomic gases. A perturbative model is introduced to describe the resonance positions and the coupling strengths. The validity of the model and the behavior of the resonances for different confinement geometries are analyzed in comparison with exact numerical ab initio calculations. While such resonances have so far only been detected for large positive values of the $s\text{-wave}$ scattering length, it is found that they are present also for negative $s\text{-wave}$ scattering lengths, i.e., for attractive interactions. The possibility to coherently tune the resonances by a variation of the external confinement geometry might pave the way for coherent molecule association where magnetic Feshbach resonances are inaccessible.

Magic wavelengths (${\lambda }_{\mathrm{magic}}$) for the $7S_{1/2}-7P_{1/2,3/2}$ transitions (D lines) in Fr were reported by Dammalapati et al. [U. Dammalapati, K. Harada, and Y. Sakemi, Phys. Rev. A 93, 043407 (2016)]. These ${\lambda }_{\mathrm{magic}}$ were determined by plotting dynamic polarizabilities ($\alpha$) of the involved states with the above transitions against a desired range of wavelengths. Electric dipole (E1) matrix elements listed in [J. E. Sansonetti, J. Phys. Chem. Ref. Data 36, 497 (2007)], from the measured lifetimes of the $7P_{1/2,3/2}$ states and from the calculations considering core-polarization effects in the relativistic Hartree-Fock (HFR) method, were used to determine $\alpha$. However, contributions from core correlation effects and from the E1 matrix elements of the $7P-7S, 7P-8S$, and $7P-6D$ transitions to $\alpha$ of the $7P$ states were ignored. In this work, we demonstrate importance of these contributions and improve accuracies of $\alpha$ further by replacing the E1 matrix elements taken from the HFR method by the values obtained employing relativistic coupled-cluster theory. Our static $\alpha$ are found to be in excellent agreement with the other available theoretical results, whereas substituting the E1 matrix elements used by Dammalapati et al. gives very small $\alpha$ values for the $7P$ states. Owing to this, we find disagreement in ${\lambda }_{\mathrm{magic}}$ reported by Dammalapati et al. for linearly polarized light, especially at wavelengths close to the D lines and in the infrared region. As a consequence, a ${\lambda }_{\mathrm{magic}}$ reported at 797.75 nm which was seen supporting a blue detuned trap in their work is now estimated at 771.03 nm and is supporting a red detuned trap. Also, none of our results match with the earlier results for circularly polarized light. Moreover, our static values of $\alpha$ will be very useful for guiding experiments to carry out their measurements.

We theoretically study high-order harmonic generation (HHG) from solid-phase systems in spatially inhomogeneous strong laser fields originated by resonant plasmons within a metallic nanostructure. The intensity of the second plateau in HHG may be enhanced by two to three orders and be comparable with the intensity of the first plateau. This is due to bigger transition probabilities to higher conduction bands. It provides us with a practical way to increase the conversion efficiency of HHG with laser intensity below the damage threshold. It presents a promising way to triple the range of HHG spectra in experimental measurements. It also allows us to generate intense isolated attosecond pulses from solids driven by few-cycle laser fields.

Photoionization with attosecond pulses populates hole states in the photoion. Superpositions of hole states represent ideal candidates for time-dependent spectroscopy, for example via pump-probe studies. The challenge consists in identifying pulses that create coherent superpositions of hole states while satisfying practical constraints. Here, we employ quantum optimal control to maximize the degree of coherence between these hole states. To this end, we introduce a derivative-free optimization method with sequential parametrization update (SPA optimization). We demonstrate the versatility and computational efficiency of SPA optimization for photoionization in argon by maximizing the coherence between the $3s$ and $3p_0$ hole states using shaped attosecond pulses. We show that it is possible to maximize the hole coherence while simultaneously prescribing the ratio of the final hole state populations.

We study a system with competing short- and global-range interactions in the framework of the Bose-Hubbard model. Using a mean-field approximation we obtain the phase diagram of the system and observe four different phases: a superfluid, a supersolid, a Mott insulator, and a charge-density wave, where the transitions between the various phases can be either of first or second order. We qualitatively support these results using Monte Carlo simulations. An analysis of the low-energy excitations shows that the second-order phase transition from the charge-density wave to the supersolid is associated with the softening of particle- and holelike excitations which give rise to a gapless mode and an amplitude Higgs mode in the supersolid phase. This amplitude Higgs mode is further transformed into a roton mode which softens at the supersolid to superfluid phase transition.

In analogy with the usual Anderson localization taking place in time-independent disordered quantum systems where the disorder acts in configuration space, systems exposed to temporally disordered potentials can display Anderson localization in the time domain. We demonstrate this phenomenon with one-dimensional examples where a temporally disordered potential induces localization during the quantum evolution of wave packets, in contrast with a fully delocalized classical dynamics. This is an example of a time crystal phenomenon, i.e., a crystalline behavior in the time domain.

We investigate the propagation of circularly polarized electromagnetic waves through a free-standing $\mathrm{\Omega }$ particle chiral metamaterial slab and study the associated delay times: dwell time and group delay. Through this analysis, we observe different interactions of right- and left-circularly polarized waves in the terahertz frequency range (1–2.5 THz) with the resonant elements. As a consequence, the resonant-frequency group delay and dwell time of the right-circularly polarized wave are one or more orders of magnitude longer than those of the left. In addition, we compare the delay times obtained from rigorous numerical simulations with those calculated using the retrieved effective parameters. We find that the dwell time cannot be evaluated correctly from the effective medium approximation, while no such problems exist in the case of group delay.