We study the quench dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate under a Raman-assisted synthetic spin-orbit coupling. To model the dynamical process, we adopt a self-consistent Bogoliubov approach, which is equivalent to applying the time-dependent Bogoliubov–de Gennes equations. We investigate the dynamics of the condensate fraction as well as the momentum distribution of the Bose gas following a sudden change of system parameters. Typically, the system evolves into a steady state in the long-time limit, which features an oscillating momentum distribution and a stationary condensate fraction. We investigate how different quench parameters such as the inter- and intraspecies interactions and the spin-orbit-coupling parameters affect the condensate fraction in the steady state. Furthermore, we find that the time average of the oscillatory momentum distribution in the long-time limit can be described by a generalized Gibbs ensemble with two branches of momentum-dependent Gibbs temperatures. Our study is relevant to the experimental investigation of dynamical processes in a spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensate.

The Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) theorem predicts that two-dimensional bosonic condensates exhibit quasi-long-range order which is characterized by a slow decay of the spatial coherence. However previous measurements on exciton-polariton condensates revealed that their spatial coherence can decay faster than allowed under the BKT theory, and different theoretical explanations have already been proposed. Through theoretical and experimental study of exciton-polariton condensates, we show that the fast decay of the coherence can be explained through the simultaneous presence of multiple modes in the condensate.

In the context of Gross-Pitaevskii theory, we investigate the unconventional Bose-Einstein condensations in the two-species mixture with $p$-wave symmetry in the second band of a bipartite optical lattice. An imaginary-time propagation method is developed to numerically determine the $p$-orbital condensation. Different from the single-species case, the two-species boson mixture exhibits two nonequivalent complex condensates in the intraspecies-interaction-dominating regime, exhibiting the vortex-antivortex lattice configuration in the charge and spin channels, respectively. When the interspecies interaction is tuned across the SU(2) invariant point, the system undergoes a quantum phase transition toward a checkerboardlike spin-density wave state with a real-valued condensate wave function. The influence of lattice asymmetry on the quantum phase transition is addressed. Finally, we present a phase-sensitive measurement scheme for experimentally detecting the unconventional Bose-Einstein condensation in our model.

We study finite-temperature properties of ultracold four-component mixtures of alkaline-earth-metal-like atoms in optical lattices that can be effectively described by the two-band spin-$1/2$ Hubbard model including Hund's exchange coupling term. Our main goal is to investigate the effect of exchange interactions on finite-temperature magnetic phases for a wide range of lattice fillings. We use the dynamical mean-field theory approach and its real-space generalization to obtain finite-temperature phase diagrams including transitions to magnetically ordered phases. It allows to determine optimal experimental regimes for approaching long-range ferromagnetic ordering in ultracold gases. We also calculate the entropy in the vicinity of magnetically ordered phases, which provides quantitative predictions for ongoing and future experiments aiming at approaching and studying long-range ordered states in optical lattices.

In analogy with quantum optics it is possible to impose nonseparability between different degrees of freedom of an optical beam. The resulting correlations between these degrees of freedom can be investigated with correlations functions traditionally employed in quantum mechanics, such as the well-known Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) correlation function. In this paper we present results achieving a maximal violation of Tsirelson's bound on CHSH correlations between spatial and polarization degrees of freedom of classical (Maxwell) fields. We describe the theoretical method, based on the realization of a nonunitary gate, and then proceed to its experimental implementation carried out with classical optical techniques. Our approach relies on the realization at the level of classical Maxwell fields of a so-called POVM (positive operator valued measure) which is traditionally discussed in the realm of quantum physics.

Fibonacci anyons are non-Abelian particles for which braiding is universal for quantum computation. Reichardt has shown how to systematically generate nontrivial braids for three Fibonacci anyons which yield unitary operations with off-diagonal matrix elements that can be made arbitrarily small in a particular natural basis through a simple and efficient iterative procedure. This procedure does not require brute force search, the Solovay-Kitaev method, or any other numerical technique, but the phases of the resulting diagonal matrix elements cannot be directly controlled. We show that despite this lack of control the resulting braids can be used to systematically construct entangling gates for two qubits encoded by Fibonacci anyons.

Adiabatic pulses are used extensively to enable robust control of quantum operations. We introduce an approach to adiabatic control that uses the superadiabatic quality factor as a performance metric to design robust, high-fidelity pulses. This approach permits the systematic design of quantum control schemes to maximize the adiabaticity of a unitary operation in a particular time interval given the available control resources. The interplay between adiabaticity, fidelity, and robustness of the resulting pulses is examined for the case of single-qubit inversion, and superadiabatic pulses are demonstrated to have improved robustness to control errors. A numerical search strategy is developed to find a broader class of adiabatic operations, including multiqubit adiabatic unitaries. We illustrate the utility of this search strategy by designing control waveforms that adiabatically implement a two-qubit entangling gate for a model NMR system.

We investigate two special classes of two-mode Gaussian states of light that are important from both the experimental and theoretical points of view: the mode-mixed thermal states and the squeezed thermal ones. Aiming to a parallel study, we write the Uhlmann fidelity between pairs of states belonging to each class in terms of their defining parameters. The quantum Fisher information matrices on the corresponding four-dimensional manifolds are diagonal and allow insightful parameter estimation. The scalar curvatures of the Bures metric on both Riemannian manifolds of special two-mode Gaussian states are evaluated and discussed. They are functions of two variables, namely, the mean numbers of photons in the incident thermal modes. Our comparative analysis opens the door to further investigation of the interplay between geometry and statistics for Gaussian states produced in simple optical devices.

Ongoing improvements in the measurement of positronium transition intervals motivate the calculation of the $O\left(m{\alpha }^7\right)$ corrections to these intervals. In this work we focus on corrections to the spin-singlet parapositronium energies involving virtual annihilation to two photons in an intermediate state. We have evaluated all contributions to the positronium $S$-state energy levels that can be written as the product of a one-loop correction on one side of the annihilation event and another one-loop correction on the other side. These effects contribute $\mathrm{\Delta }E=-0.561971\left(25\right)m{\alpha }^7/{\pi }^3$ to the parapositronium ground-state energy.

Double-differential cross sections for ionization of tetrahydrofuran by protons with energies from 300 to $3000\mathrm{keV}$ were measured at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt ion accelerator facility. The electrons emitted at angles between ${15}^{\circ }$ and ${150}^{\circ }$ relative to the ion-beam direction were detected with an electrostatic hemispherical electron spectrometer. Single-differential and total ionization cross sections have been derived by integration. The experimental results are compared to the semiempirical Hansen-Kocbach-Stolterfoht model as well as to the recently reported method based on the dielectric formalism. The comparison to the latter showed good agreement with experimental data in a broad range of emission angles and energies of secondary electrons. The scaling property of ionization cross sections for tetrahydrofuran was also investigated. Compared to molecules of different size, the ionization cross sections of tetrahydrofuran were found to scale with the number of valence electrons at large impact parameters.

Predicted 20 years ago, positron binding to neutral atoms has not yet been observed experimentally. A scheme is proposed to detect positron-atom bound states by colliding Rydberg positronium (Ps) with neutral atoms. Estimates of the charge-transfer reaction cross section are obtained using the first Born approximation for a selection of neutral atom targets and a wide range of incident Ps energies and principal quantum numbers. We also estimate the corresponding Ps ionization cross section. The accuracy of the calculations is tested by comparison with earlier predictions for charge transfer in Ps collisions with hydrogen and antihydrogen. We describe an existing Rydberg Ps beam suitable for producing positron-atom bound states and estimate signal rates based on the calculated cross sections and realistic experimental parameters. We conclude that the proposed methodology is capable of producing such states and of testing theoretical predictions of their binding energies.

We study the classical dynamics of many interacting particles in a periodically driven one-dimensional (1D) system. We show that under the rotating wave approximation (RWA), a short-distance 1D interaction ($\delta$ function or hard-core interaction) becomes a long-distance two-dimensional (2D) interaction which only depends on the distance in the phase space of the rotating frame. The RWA interaction describes the effect of the interaction on the slowly changing amplitude and phase of the oscillating particles, while the fast oscillations take on the role of a force carrier, which allows for interaction over much larger effective distances.

We present a proposal for reversing the weak (partial-collapse) quantum measurement on a cavity field with arbitrary maximum photon number. We start by putting forth a protocol to realize quantum phase gates between the cavity field and an ancilla qubit. Afterward, adopting these phase gates and some other quantum gates, we can determine the reversal of the cavity state just by observing the ancilla qubit. Compared to previous proposals, our proposal does not need any other weak measurement and can save reversal time, which is significantly important in quantum informatics and quantum computation.

In this paper, we theoretically investigate the displacement and momentum fluctuations spectra of the movable mirror in a standard optomechanical system driven by a finite-bandwidth squeezed vacuum light accompanying a coherent laser field. Two cases in which the squeezed vacuum is generated by degenerate and nondegenerate parametric oscillators (DPO and NDPO) are considered. We find that for the case of finite-bandwidth squeezed vacuum injection, the two spectra exhibit unique features, which strongly differ from those of broadband squeezing excitation. In particular, the spectra exhibit a three-peaked and a four-peaked structure, respectively, for the squeezing injection from DPO and NDPO. Besides, some anomalous characteristics of the spectra such as squeezing-induced pimple, hole burning, and dispersive profile are found to be highly sensitive to the squeezing parameters and the temperature of the mirror. We also evaluate the mean-square fluctuations in position and momentum quadratures of the movable mirror and analyze the influence of the squeezing parameters of the input field on the mechanical squeezing. It will be shown that the parameters of driven squeezed vacuum affects the squeezing. We find the optimal mechanical squeezing is achievable via finite-bandwidth squeezed vacuum injection which is affected by the intensity of squeezed vacuum. We also show that the phase of incident squeezed vacuum determines whether position or momentum squeezing occurs. Our proposed scheme not only provides a feasible experimental method to detect and characterize squeezed light by optomechanical systems, but also suggests a way for controllable transfer of squeezing from an optical field to a mechanical oscillator.

So far, Brillouin scattering and cavity optomechanics have been mostly disconnected branches of research, although both deal with photon-phonon coupling. This begs for the development of a broader theory that contains both fields. Here, we derive the dynamics of optomechanical cavities from that of Brillouin-active waveguides. This explicit transition elucidates the link between phenomena such as Brillouin amplification and electromagnetically induced transparency. It proves that effects familiar from cavity optomechanics all have traveling-wave partners, but not vice versa. We reveal a close connection between two parameters of central importance in these fields: the Brillouin gain coefficient and the zero-point optomechanical coupling rate. This enables comparisons between systems as diverse as ultracold atom clouds, plasmonic Raman cavities, and nanoscale silicon waveguides. In addition, back-of-the-envelope calculations show that unobserved effects, such as photon-assisted amplification of traveling phonons, are now accessible in existing systems. Finally, we formulate both circuit- and cavity-oriented optomechanics in terms of vacuum coupling rates, cooperativities, and gain coefficients, thus reflecting the similarities in the underlying physics.

For systems analogous to a linear harmonic oscillator, the simplest way to characterize the state is by a covariance matrix containing the symmetrically ordered moments of operators analogous to position and momentum. We show that using Stokes-like detectors without direct access to either position or momentum, the estimation of the covariance matrix of a macroscopic signal is still possible using interference with a classical noisy and low-intensity reference. Such a detection technique will allow one to estimate macroscopic quantum states of electromagnetic radiation without a coherent high-intensity local oscillator. It can be directly applied to estimate the covariance matrix of macroscopically bright squeezed states of light.

Three-level quantum systems, which possess some unique characteristics beyond two-level ones, such as electromagnetically induced transparency, coherent trapping, and Raman scatting, play important roles in solid-state quantum information processing. Here, we introduce an approach to implement the physically feasible three-level transitionless quantum driving with multiple Schrödinger dynamics (MSDs). It can be used to control accurately population transfer and entanglement generation for three-level quantum systems in a nonadiabatic way. Moreover, we propose an experimentally realizable hybrid architecture, based on two nitrogen-vacancy-center ensembles coupled to a transmission line resonator, to realize our transitionless scheme which requires fewer physical resources and simple procedures, and it is more robust against environmental noises and control parameter variations than conventional adiabatic passage techniques. All these features inspire the further application of MSDs on robust quantum information processing in experiment.

Recently, W. Lechner, P. Hauke, and P. Zoller [Sci. Adv. 1, e1500838 (2015)] have proposed a quantum annealing architecture, in which a classical spin glass with all-to-all pairwise connectivity is simulated by a spin glass with geometrically local interactions. We interpret this architecture as a classical error-correcting code, which is highly robust against weakly correlated bit-flip noise, and we analyze the code's performance using a belief-propagation decoding algorithm. Our observations may also apply to more general encoding schemes and noise models.