We demonstrate that for a passive optical cavity containing a dispersive atomic medium, the increase in scale factor near the critical anomalous dispersion is not canceled by mode broadening or attenuation, resulting in an overall increase in the predicted quantum-noise-limited sensitivity. Enhancements of over two orders of magnitude are measured in the scale factor, which translates to greater than an order-of-magnitude enhancement in the predicted quantum-noise-limited measurement precision, by temperature-tuning a low-pressure vapor of noninteracting atoms in a low-finesse cavity close to the critical anomalous dispersion condition. The predicted enhancement in sensitivity is confirmed through Monte Carlo numerical simulations.

Low-mass (sub-eV) spin-0 dark matter particles, which form a coherently oscillating classical field $\varphi ={\varphi }_{0}cos\left(m_{\varphi }t\right)$, can induce oscillating variations in the fundamental constants through their interactions with the standard model sector. We calculate the effects of such possible interactions, which may include the linear interaction of $\varphi$ with the Higgs boson, on atomic and molecular transitions. Using recent atomic clock spectroscopy measurements, we derive limits on the linear interaction of $\varphi$ with the Higgs boson, as well as its quadratic interactions with the photon and light quarks. For the linear interaction of $\varphi$ with the Higgs boson, our derived limits improve on existing constraints by up to 2–3 orders of magnitude.

We introduce a coherence susceptibility method, based on the fact that it signals quantum fluctuations, for identifying quantum phase transitions, which are induced by quantum fluctuations. This method requires no prior knowledge of order parameter, and there is no need for careful considerations concerning the choice of a bipartition of the system. It can identify different types of quantum phase transition points exactly. At finite temperatures, where quantum criticality is influenced by thermal fluctuations, our method can pinpoint the temperature frame of quantum criticality, which perfectly coincides with recent experiments.

Prior to a measurement in a quantum-state tomography experiment, it is important to evaluate the performance of this measurement with respect to the average accuracy in state estimation. We propose a fast and reliable numerical certification of measurement performance that is applicable to any known quantum measurement. This numerical method is based on the statistical theory of unbiased estimation that is valid for any physically accessible quantum state that is necessarily full rank in the limit of a large number of measurement copies, and the Hoeffding inequality that applies to bounded statistical quantities in the quantum state space. We present the use of this straightforward certification procedure by illustrating the convergence to optimal pure-state tomography with an increasing number of overcomplete measurement outcomes. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the performances of symmetric informationally complete measurements and mutually unbiased bases, which are commonly regarded as optimal measurements, can be easily beaten in tomographic performance with randomly generated measurements that are only slightly more informationally overcomplete. Two important classes of random measurements are also discussed with the help of our numerical machinery.

We consider a generalized central spin model, consisting of two central qubits and an environmental spin chain (with periodic boundary condition) to which these central qubits are locally and weakly connected either at the same site or at two different sites separated by a distance $d$. Our purpose is to study the subsequent temporal generation of entanglement, quantified by concurrence, when initially the qubits are in an unentangled state. In the equilibrium situation, we show that the concurrence survives for a larger value of $d$ when the environmental spin chain is critical. Importantly, a common feature observed both in the equilibrium and the nonequilibrium situations while the latter is created by a sudden but global change of the environmental transverse field is that the two qubits become maximally entangled for the critical quenching. Following a nonequilibrium evolution of the spin chain, our study for $d\ne 0$ indicates that there exists a threshold time above which concurrence attains a finite value. Additionally, we show that the number of independent decohering channels (DCs) is determined by $d$ as well as the local difference of the transverse field of the two underlying Hamiltonians governing the time evolution; the concurrence can be enhanced by a higher number of independent channels. The qualitatively similar behavior displayed by the concurrence for critical and off-critical quenches, as reported here, is characterized by analyzing the nonequilibrium evolution of these channels. The concurrence is maximum when the decoherence factor or the echo associated with the most rapidly DC decays to zero; on the contrary, the condition when the concurrence vanishes is determined nontrivially by the associated decay of one of the intermediate DCs. Analyzing the reduced density of a single qubit, we also explain the observation that the dephasing rate is always slower than the unentanglement rate. We further establish that the maximally and minimally decohering channels show singular behavior which can be explained by invoking upon a quasiparticle picture.

We present an algorithmic method for the digital quantum simulation of many-body locally indivisible non-Markovian open quantum systems. It consists of two parts: first, a Suzuki-Lie-Trotter decomposition of the global system propagator into the product of subsystem propagators, which may not be quantum channels, and second, an algorithmic procedure for the implementation of the subsystem propagators through unitary operations and measurements on a dilated space. By providing rigorous error bounds for the relevant Suzuki-Lie-Trotter decomposition, we are able to analyze the efficiency of the method, and connect it with an appropriate measure of the local indivisibility of the system. In light of our analysis, the proposed method is expected to be experimentally achievable for a variety of interesting cases.

In instantaneous nonlocal quantum computation, two parties cooperate in order to perform a quantum computation on their joint inputs, while being restricted to a single round of simultaneous communication. Previous results showed that instantaneous nonlocal quantum computation is possible, at the cost of an exponential amount of prior shared entanglement (in the size of the input). Here, we show that a linear amount of entanglement suffices, (in the size of the computation), as long as the parties share nonlocal correlations as given by the Popescu-Rohrlich box. This means that communication is not required for efficient instantaneous nonlocal quantum computation. Exploiting the well-known relation to position-based cryptography, our result also implies the impossibility of secure position-based cryptography against adversaries with nonsignaling correlations. Furthermore, our construction establishes a quantum analog of the classical communication complexity collapse under nonsignaling correlations.

The exact values of the presently determined components of the angular Fock coefficients at the two-particle coalescences were obtained and systematized. The Green's-function approach was successfully applied to simplify the most complicated calculations. The boundary conditions for the Fock coefficient components in hyperspherical angular coordinates, which follow from the Kato cusp conditions for the two-electron wave function in the natural interparticle coordinates, were derived. The validity of the obtained boundary conditions was verified with examples of all the presently determined components. The additional boundary conditions not arising from the Kato cusp conditions were obtained as well. Wolfram's Mathematica was used extensively to obtain these results.

We report the binding energy of ${}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}{}^{133}\mathrm{Cs}$ molecules in their rovibrational ground state measured using an offset-free optical frequency comb based on difference frequency generation technology. We create molecules in the absolute ground state using stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) with a transfer efficiency of 88%. By measuring the absolute frequencies of our STIRAP lasers, we find the energy-level difference from an initial weakly bound Feshbach state to the rovibrational ground state with a resolution of $\sim 5$ kHz over an energy-level difference of more than $114\mathrm{T}\mathrm{Hz}$; this lets us discern the hyperfine splitting of the ground state. Combined with theoretical models of the Feshbach-state binding energies and ground-state hyperfine structure, we determine a zero-field binding energy of $h\times 114268135.24\left(4\right)\left(3\right)\mathrm{M}\mathrm{Hz}$. To our knowledge, this is the most accurate determination to date of the dissociation energy of a molecule.

A statistical-type model is developed to describe the ion production and electron emission in collisions of (molecular) ions with atoms. The model is based on the Boltzmann population of the bound electronic energy levels of the quasimolecule formed in the collision and the discretized continuum. The discretization of the continuum is implemented by a free-electron gas in a box model assuming an effective square potential of the quasimolecule. The temperature of the electron gas is calculated by taking into account a thermodynamically adiabatic process due to the change of the effective volume of the quasimolecule as the system evolves. The system may undergo a transition with a small probability from the discretized continuum to the states of the complementary continuum. It is assumed that these states are decoupled from the thermodynamic time development. The decoupled states overwhelmingly determine the yield of the asymptotically observed fragment ions. The main motivation of this work is to describe the recently observed ${\mathrm{H}}^{-}$ ion production in $\mathrm{O}{\mathrm{H}}^{+}+\mathrm{Ar}$ collisions. The obtained differential cross sections for ${\mathrm{H}}^{-}$ formation, cation production, and electron emission are close to the experimental ones. Calculations for the atomic systems ${\mathrm{O}}^{+}+\mathrm{Ar}$ and ${\mathrm{H}}^{+}+\mathrm{Ar}$ are also in reasonable agreement with the experiments indicating that the model can be applied to a wide class of collisions.

Despite the fact that the first calculations of nuclear bremsstrahlung cross sections were performed for relativistic electrons more than 80 years ago by Sauter, Bethe and Heitler, and Racah, a fully satisfactory solution to this problem is still missing up to the present day. Numerical approaches are impractical for electrons with energies above a few MeV because they require a prohibitively large number of partial waves. Analytic formulae need to describe simultaneously and accurately the interaction with the Coulomb field of the nucleus and the screening effect of the atomic electrons. In the present paper, a state-of-the-art analytic calculation will be discussed. In particular, higher-order corrections to the interaction with the Coulomb field of the nucleus, a subject seldom tackled in the past, are included and compared extensively with published data. The emerged difficulties will be highlighted, but unfortunately they can be overcome only with future large coordinated theoretical and experimental efforts.

We report a quantitative study of the effect of nonaxial recoil during Coulomb explosion of laser-aligned molecules and introduce a method to remove the blurring caused by nonaxial recoil in the fragment-ion angular distributions. Simulations show that nonaxial recoil affects correlations between the emission directions of fragment ions differently from the effect caused by imperfect molecular alignment. The method, based on analysis of the correlation between the emission directions of the fragment ions from Coulomb explosion, is used to deconvolute the effect of nonaxial recoil from experimental fragment angular distributions. The deconvolution method is then applied to a number of experimental data sets to correct the degree of alignment for nonaxial recoil, to select optimal Coulomb explosion channels for probing molecular alignment, and to estimate the highest degree of alignment that can be observed from selected Coulomb explosion channels.

A semiclassical model is developed to understand the electronic dynamics in the low-energy attosecond streaking. Under a relatively strong infrared (IR) pulse, the low-energy part of photoelectrons initialized by a single attosecond pulse (SAP) can either rescatter with the ionic core and induce interferences structures in the momentum spectra of the ionized electrons or be recaptured into the Rydberg states. The Coulomb potential plays essential roles in both the electron rescattering and recapturing processes. We find that by changing the time delay between the SAP and the IR pulse, the photoelectrons yield or the population of the Rydberg states can be effectively controlled. The present study demonstrates a fascinating way to steer the electron motion in the continuum.

We explore the asymmetric sequential Landau-Zener (LZ) dynamics in an ensemble of interacting Bose-condensed two-level atoms coupled with a cavity field. Assuming the couplings between all atoms and the cavity field are identical, the interplay between atom-atom interaction and detuning may lead to a series of LZ transitions. Unlike the conventional sequential LZ transitions, which are symmetric to the zero detuning, the LZ transitions of Bose-condensed atoms in a cavity field are asymmetric and sensitively depend on the photon number distribution of the cavity. In LZ processes involving single excitation numbers, both the variance of the relative atom number and the step slope of the sequential population ladder are asymmetric, and the asymmetry becomes more significant for smaller excitation numbers. Furthermore, in LZ processes involving multiple excitation numbers, there may appear asymmetric population ladders with decreasing step heights. During a dynamical LZ process, due to the atom-cavity coupling, the cavity field shows dynamical collapses and revivals. In comparison with the symmetric LZ transitions in a classical field, the asymmetric LZ transitions in a cavity field originate from the photon-number-dependent Rabi frequency. The asymmetric sequential LZ dynamics of Bose-condensed atoms in a cavity field may open up a way to explore the fundamental many-body physics in coupled atom-photon systems.

We show that radio-frequency (rf) radiation may be used to create Feshbach resonances in ultracold gases of alkali-metal atoms at desired magnetic fields that are convenient for atomic cooling and degeneracy. For the case of ${}^{39}\mathrm{K}+{}^{133}\mathrm{Cs}$, where there are no rf-free resonances in regions where Cs may be cooled to degeneracy, we show that a resonance may be created near 21 G with 69.2 MHz rf radiation. This resonance is almost lossless with circularly polarized rf, and the molecules created are long-lived even with plane-polarized rf.

We propose a method for generating an optical Schrödinger-cat-like state in a cavity in a substantial decoherence regime. Even when the cavity decay rate is considerably large, a cat-like state can be generated in a laser-like setting if the gain for the field is larger than the loss. Under the condition that opposite-phase atomic dipoles repeatedly traverse the cavity, the cavity field converges to a squeezed vacuum state in a steady state. A Schrödinger-cat-like state is then generated when a single photon decay occurs. The phase-space distribution of the cat state can be revealed in homodyne detection by using the decaying photon as a herald event. Quantum trajectory simulation was used to identify the conditions for the Schrödinger-cat-like state formation as well as to analyze the properties of those states. Based on these simulations, possible experiments are proposed within the reach of the current technology.

We theoretically study the high-order correlation functions of chaotic bosons and fermions. Based on the different parity of the Stirling number, the products of the first-order correlation functions are well classified and employed to represent the high-order correlation function. The correlation of bosons conduces a bunching effect, which will be enhanced as order $N$ increases. Different from bosons, the anticommutation relation of fermions leads to the parity of the Stirling number, which thereby results in a mixture of bunching and antibunching behaviors in high-order correlation. By further investigating third-order ghost diffraction and ghost imaging, the differences between the high-order correlations of bosons and fermions are discussed in detail. A larger $N$ will dramatically improve the ghost image quality for bosons, but a good strategy should be carefully chosen for the fermionic ghost imaging process due to its complex correlation components.

We investigate duality in entanglement of a bipartite multiphoton system generated from a coherent state of light. The system can exhibit polarization entanglement if the two parts are distinguished by their parity, or parity entanglement if the parts are distinguished by polarization. It was shown in Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 140404 (2013) that this phenomenon can be exploited as a method to test indistinguishability of two particles and it was conjectured that one can also test indistinguishability of macroscopic systems. We propose a setup to test this conjecture. Contrary to the previous studies using two-particle interference effect as in the Hong-Ou- Mandel setup, our setup neither assumes that the tested state is composed of single particles nor requires that the total number of particles be fixed. Consequently, the notion of entanglement duality is shown to be compatible with a broader class of physical systems. Moreover, by observing duality in entanglement in the above system one can confirm that macroscopic systems exhibit quantum behavior. As a practical side, entanglement duality is a useful concept that enables adaptive conversion of entanglement of one degree of freedom (DOF) to that of another DOF according to varying quantum protocols.