We present a theoretical study of single-qubit operations by oscillatory fields on various semiconductor platforms. We explicitly show how to perform faster gate operations by going beyond the universally used rotating-wave approximation (RWA) regime, while using only two sinusoidal pulses. We first show for specific published experiments how much error is currently incurred by implementing pulses designed using standard RWA. We then show that an even modest increase in gate speed would cause problems in using RWA for gate design in the singlet-triplet (ST) and resonant-exchange (RX) qubits. We discuss the extent to which analytically keeping higher orders in the perturbation theory would address the problem. More strikingly, we give a new prescription for gating with strong coupling far beyond the RWA regime. We perform numerical calculations for the phases and the durations of two consecutive pulses to realize the key Hadamard and $\frac{\pi }{8}$ gates with coupling strengths up to several times the qubit splitting. Working in this manifestly non-RWA regime, the gate operation speeds up by two to three orders of magnitude and nears the quantum speed limit without requiring complicated pulse shaping or optimal control sequences.

The channel loss incurred in long-distance transmission places a significant burden on quantum key distribution (QKD) systems: they must defeat a passive eavesdropper who detects all the light lost in the quantum channel and does so without disturbing the light that reaches the intended destination. The current QKD implementation with the highest long-distance secret-key rate meets this challenge by transmitting no more than one photon per bit [M. Lucamarini et al., Opt. Express 21, 24550 (2013)]. As a result, it cannot achieve the Gbps secret-key rate needed for one-time pad encryption of large data files unless an impractically large amount of multiplexing is employed. We introduce floodlight QKD (FL-QKD), which floods the quantum channel with a high number of photons per bit distributed over a much greater number of optical modes. FL-QKD offers security against the optimum frequency-domain collective attack by transmitting less than one photon per mode and using photon-coincidence channel monitoring, and it is completely immune to passive eavesdropping. More importantly, FL-QKD is capable of a 2-Gbps secret-key rate over a 50-km fiber link, without any multiplexing, using available equipment, i.e., no new technology need be developed. FL-QKD achieves this extraordinary secret-key rate by virtue of its unprecedented secret-key efficiency, in bits per channel use, which exceeds those of state-of-the-art systems by two orders of magnitude.

We develop a perturbative treatment of induced dipole-dipole interactions in the diffusive transport of electromagnetic waves through disordered atomic clouds. The approach is exact at order 2 in the atomic density and accounts for the vector character of light. It is applied to the calculations of the electromagnetic energy stored in the atomic cloud, which modifies the energy transport velocity, and of the light scattering and transport mean free paths. Results are compared to those obtained from a purely scalar model for light.

We consider a time-dependent trap externally manipulated in such a way that one of its bound states is brought into an instant contact with the continuum threshold and then down again. It is shown that, in the limit of slow evolution, the probability to remain in the bound state, $P^{\mathrm{stay}}$ tends to a universal limit and is determined only by the manner in which the adiabatic bound state approaches and leaves the threshold. The task of evaluating $P^{\mathrm{stay}}$ in the adiabatic limit can be reduced to studying the loss from a zero-range well and is performed numerically. Various types of trapping potentials are considered. Applications of this theory to cold atoms in traps and to propagation of transversal modes in tapered waveguides are proposed.

Various theories of quantum gravity predict the existence of a minimum length scale, which implies the Planck-scale modifications of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle to a so-called generalized uncertainty principle (GUP). Previous studies of the GUP focused on its implications for high-energy physics, cosmology, and astrophysics. Here the application of the GUP to low-energy quantum systems, and particularly cold atoms, is studied. Results from the ${}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ atom recoil experiment are used to set upper bounds on parameters in three different GUP proposals. A ${10}^{14}$-level bound on the Ali-Das-Vagenas proposal is found, which is the second best bound so far. A ${10}^{26}$-level bound on Maggiore's proposal is obtained, which turns out to be the best available bound on it.

We investigate the coherent dynamics of a noninteracting Bose-Einstein condensate in a system consisting of two bosonic reservoirs coupled via a spatially localized mode. We describe this system by a two-terminal Fano-Anderson model and investigate analytically the time evolution of observables such as the Josephson current. In doing so, we find that the Josephson current sensitively depends on the on-site energy of the localized mode. This facilitates using this setup as a transistor for a Bose-Einstein condensate. We identify two regimes. In one regime, the system exhibits well-behaved long-time dynamics with a slowly oscillating and undamped Josephson current. In a second regime, the Josephson current is a superposition of an extremely weakly damped slow oscillation and an undamped fast oscillation. Our results are confirmed by finite-size simulations.

Quantum key distribution provides information-theoretically-secure communication. In practice, device imperfections may jeopardise the system security. Device-independent quantum key distribution solves this problem by providing secure keys even when the quantum devices are untrusted and uncharacterized. Following a recent security proof of the device-independent quantum key distribution, we improve the key rate by tightening the parameter choice in the security proof. In practice where the system is lossy, we further improve the key rate by taking into account the loss position information. From our numerical simulation, our method can outperform existing results. Meanwhile, we outline clear experimental requirements for implementing device-independent quantum key distribution. The maximal tolerable error rate is 1.6%, the minimal required transmittance is 97.3%, and the minimal required visibility is $96.8\%$.

The magnetic hyperfine (MHF) splitting of the ground and low-energy $3/2^{+}(7.8\pm 0.5$ eV) levels in the ${}^{229}\mathrm{Th}$ nucleus in the muonic atom (${\mu }_{1S_{1/2}}^{-}{{}^{229}\mathrm{Th})}^{*}$ is calculated considering the distribution of the nuclear magnetization in the framework of the collective nuclear model with wave functions of the Nilsson model for the unpaired neutron. It is shown that (a) deviation of the MHF structure of the isomeric state exceeds 100% from its value for a pointlike nuclear magnetic dipole (the order of sublevels is reversed); (b) partial inversion of levels of the ${}^{229}\mathrm{Th}$ ground-state doublet and spontaneous decay of the ground state to the isomeric state occur; (c) the $E0$ transition, which is sensitive to differences in the mean-square charge radii of the doublet states, is possible between mixed sublevels with $F=2$; and (d) MHF splitting of the $3/2^{+}$ isomeric state may be in the optical range for certain values of the intrinsic $g_K$ factor and a reduced probability of a nuclear transition between the isomeric and the ground states.

We investigate single-cesium-atom heating owing to the momentum accumulation process induced by the resonant pulsed excitation in a microscopic optical dipole trap formed by a strongly focused 1064-nm laser beam. The heating depends on the trap frequency, which restricts the maximum repetition rate of the pulsed excitation. We experimentally verify the heating of a single atom and then demonstrate how to suppress it with an optimized pulsed excitation and cooling method. The typical trap lifetime of a single cesium atom is extended from $108\pm 6\mu \mathrm{s}$ to $2536\pm 31\mathrm{ms}$, and the corresponding number of excitations increases from $\sim 108$ to $\sim 360000$. In applying this faster cooling method, we use the trapped single cesium atom as a triggered single-photon source at an excitation repetition rate of 10 MHz. The second-order intensity correlations of the emitted single photons are characterized by implementing a Hanbury Brown and Twiss setup, and a clear antibunching effect has been observed.

We propose a method to prepare an entangled spin-orbit state between the spin and the orbital angular momenta of a neutron wave packet. This spin-orbit state is created by passing neutrons through the center of a quadrupole magnetic field, which provides a coupling between the spin and orbital degrees of freedom. A Ramsey-fringe-type measurement is suggested as a means of verifying the spin-orbit correlations.

In this work, we describe a method to realize a three-dimensional Weyl semimetal by coupling multilayers of a honeycomb optical lattice in the presence of a pair of Raman lasers. The Raman lasers render each isolated honeycomb layer a Chern insulator. With finite interlayer coupling, the bulk gap of the system closes at certain out-of-plane momenta due to Raman assisted tunneling and results in the Weyl semimetal phase. Using experimentally relevant parameters, we show that both one pair and two pairs of Weyl points can be realized by tuning the interlayer coupling strength. We suggest that Landau-Zener tunneling can be used to detect Weyl points and show that the transition probability increases dramatically when the Weyl point emerges. The realization of chiral anomaly by using a magnetic-field gradient is also discussed.

We propose to control light trapping in a large ensemble of cold atoms by an external, static magnetic field. For an appropriate choice of frequency and polarization of the exciting pulse, the field is expected to speed up the fluorescence of a dilute atomic system. In a dense ensemble, the field does not affect the early-time superradiant signal but amplifies intensity oscillations at intermediate times and induces a very slow, nonexponential long-time decay. The slowing down of fluorescence is due to the excitation of spatially localized collective atomic states that appear only under a strong magnetic field and have exponentially long lifetimes. Our results therefore pave a way towards experimental observation of the disorder-induced localization of light in cold atomic systems.

We propose a efficient scheme for high-precision three-dimensional (3D) atom localization via spatial interference in a generic double two-level atomic system driven by a weak probe field and three mutually perpendicular standing-wave fields. Because the spatial interference originates from the position-dependent atom-field interaction, the position information of the atom can be obtained by the measurement of the atom population. We find that the precision of 3D atom localization in volumes depends sensitively on the frequency detuning and the phase shifts associated with the standing-wave fields. Interestingly enough, we show that adjusting the frequency detuning and phase shifts can lead to a redistribution of the atoms and a significant change in the visibility of the interference pattern. As a result, the atom can be localized in volumes that are substantially smaller than a cubic optical wavelength.

The modulation of the electron conductivity in an air filament, which is produced by carrier-envelope phase (CEP) stabilized 7-fs laser pulses, is realized experimentally. Numerical results based on a coupled 3D+1 generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation including the real electric-field dependent ionization model are in good agreement with those from the experiment. It is demonstrated that the CEP effect on the electron density originates from the CEP-induced modification of the electric field of the laser pulse, and this modification is amplified during nonlinear propagation. The results provide important information to help understand the physical mechanism of the filaments driven by few-cycle femtosecond laser pulses.

We consider the propagation of several entangled photons through an elastically scattering medium and study statistical properties of their speckle patterns. We find the spatial correlations of multiphoton speckles and their sensitivity to changes of system parameters. Our analysis covers both the directed-wave regime, where rays propagate almost ballistically while experiencing small-angle diffusion, and the real-space diffusive regime. We demonstrate that long-range correlations of the speckle patterns dominate experimental signatures for large-aperture photon detectors. We also show that speckle sensitivity depends strongly on the number of photons $N$ in the incoming beam, increasing as $\sqrt{N}$ in the directed-wave regime and as $N$ in the diffusive regime.

A recent experiment [K. C. Lee et al., Science 334, 1253 (2011)] succeeded in detecting entanglement between two macroscopic specks of diamonds, separated by a macroscopic distance, at room temperature. This impressive result is a further confirmation of the validity of quantum theory in (at least parts of) the mesoscopic and macroscopic domain, and poses a challenge to collapse models, which predict a violation of the quantum superposition principle, which is bigger the larger the system. We analyze the experiment in the light of such models. We will show that the bounds placed by experimental data are weaker than those coming from matter-wave interferometry and noninterferometric tests of collapse models.

We present analytical solutions to three qubits and a single-mode cavity coupling system beyond the rotating-wave approximation (RWA). The zeroth-order approximation, equivalent to the adiabatic approximation, works well for arbitrary coupling strength for small qubit frequency. The first-order approximation, called the generalized rotating-wave approximation (GRWA), produces an effective solvable Hamiltonian with the same form as the ordinary RWA one and exhibits substantial improvements of energy levels over the RWA even on resonance. Based on these analytical eigensolutions, we study both the bipartite entanglement and genuine multipartite entanglement (GME). The dynamics of these two kinds of entanglements using the GRWA are consistent with the numerical exact ones. Interestingly, the well-known sudden death of entanglement occurs in the bipartite entanglement dynamics but not in the GME dynamics.

Topological quantum error correction codes are currently among the most promising candidates for efficiently dealing with the decoherence effects inherently present in quantum devices. Numerically, their theoretical error threshold can be calculated by mapping the underlying quantum problem to a related classical statistical-mechanical spin system with quenched disorder. Here, we present results for the general fault-tolerant regime, where we consider both qubit and measurement errors. However, unlike in previous studies, here we vary the strength of the different error sources independently. Our results highlight peculiar differences between toric and color codes. This study complements previous results published in New J. Phys. 13, 083006 (2011).