Self-pulsing cavity solitons may exist in a semiconductor laser with an intracavity saturable absorber. They show locally the passive $Q$-switching behavior that is typical of lasers with saturable absorbers in the plane-wave approximation. Here we show that excitable cavity solitons are also possible in a suitable parameter range and characterize their excitable dynamics and properties.

Some remarks and numerics on TE waves guided in nonlinear media are presented. Connections with resent publications are discussed.

The preceding Comment contains statements that we feel are inaccurate and that lead one to think that the problem we study in Phys. Rev. A 91, 013840 (2015) was solved long ago. However, we argue that our results are new and add to the understanding of the process of transverse electric wave propagation in a Kerr medium. In our Reply we contest the critical statements that are given in the Comment.

We investigate the dissipative dynamics of a corotating vortex pair in a highly oblate axisymmetric Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in a harmonic potential. The initial vortex state is prepared by creating a doubly charged vortex at the center of the condensate and letting it dissociate into two singly charged vortices. The separation of the vortex pair gradually increases over time and its increasing rate becomes higher with increasing the sample temperature $T$. The evolution of the vortex state is well described with a dissipative point vortex model including longitudinal friction on the vortex motion. For condensates of sodium atoms having a chemical potential of $\mu \approx k_B\times 120$ nK, we find that the dimensionless friction coefficient $\alpha$ increases from 0.01 to 0.03 over the temperature range of $200\text{nK}<T<450$ nK.

We examine the accuracy of an intrinsically one-dimensional (1D) quantum electrodynamics to predict accurately the forces and charges of a three-dimensional (3D) system that has a high degree of symmetry and therefore depends effectively only on a single coordinate. As a test case we analyze two charged capacitor plates that are infinitely extended along two coordinate directions. Using the lowest-order fine-structure correction to the photon propagator we compute the vacuum's induced charge polarization density and show that the force between the charged plates is increased. Although a one-dimensional theory cannot take the transverse character of the virtual (force-mediating) photons into account, nevertheless it predicts, in lowest order of the fine-structure constant, the Coulomb force law between the plates correctly. However, the quantum correction to the classical result is slightly different between the 1D and 3D theories with the polarization charge density induced from the vacuum underestimated by the 1D approach.

We consider a thermofield approach to analyze the evolution of an open quantum system coupled to an environment at finite temperature. In this approach, the finite-temperature environment is exactly mapped onto two virtual environments at zero temperature. These two environments are then unitarily transformed into two different chains of oscillators, leading to a one-dimensional structure that can be numerically studied using tensor network techniques. Compared to previous approaches using a single chain mapping, our strategy offers the advantage of an exact description of the initial state at arbitrary temperatures, which results in a gain in computational efficiency and a reduced truncation error.

In a variant of communication complexity tasks, two or more separated parties cooperate to compute a function of their local data, using a limited amount of communication. It is known that communication of quantum systems and shared entanglement can increase the probability for the parties to arrive at the correct value of the function, compared to classical resources. Here we show that quantum superpositions of the direction of communication between parties can also serve as a resource to improve the probability of success. We present a tripartite task for which such a superposition provides an advantage compared to the case where the parties communicate in a fixed order. In a more general context, our result also provides semi-device-independent certification of the absence of a definite order of communication.

We investigate how to enhance entanglement in the steady state of interacting two-level systems. The steady state is reached by spontaneous decay of the individual systems. When we additionally couple them to a dissipative two-level ancilla with variable eigenfrequency and coupling strength, we observe a considerable enhancement effect in the entanglement of this steady state. Moreover, we see that the increased entanglement is directly connected to the selection of certain excited states via the environment disturbing the ancilla. This effect could be used in dissipative state preparation schemes, and as a test-bed for decoherence models.

We study the relation between single-mode nonclassicality and two-mode entanglement in a beam splitter. We show that single-mode nonclassicality (the entanglement potential) of incident light cannot be transformed into two-mode entanglement completely after a single beam splitter. Some of the entanglement potential remains as single-mode nonclassicality in the two entangled output modes. Two-mode entanglement generated in the process can be equivalently quantified as an increase in the minimum uncertainty widths (or decrease in the squeezing) of the output states compared to the input states. We use the nonclassical depth and logarithmic negativity as single-mode nonclassicality and entanglement measures, respectively. We realize that a conservation relation between the two quantities can be adopted for Gaussian states, if one works in terms of uncertainty width. This conservation relation is extended to many sets of beam splitters.

We measured the ground-state static electric-dipole polarizabilities of Cs, Rb, and K atoms using a three-nanograting Mach-Zehnder atom beam interferometer. Our measurements provide benchmark tests for atomic structure calculations and thus test the underlying theory used to interpret atomic parity-nonconservation experiments. We measured ${\alpha }_{\mathrm{Cs}}=4\pi {\epsilon }_0\times 59.39\left(9\right){\AA }^3,{\alpha }_{\mathrm{Rb}}=4\pi {\epsilon }_0\times 47.39\left(8\right){\AA }^3$, and ${\alpha }_{\mathrm{K}}=4\pi {\epsilon }_0\times 42.93\left(7\right){\AA }^3$. In atomic units, these measurements are ${\alpha }_{\mathrm{Cs}}=401.2\left(7\right),{\alpha }_{\mathrm{Rb}}=320.1\left(6\right)$, and ${\alpha }_{\mathrm{K}}=290.0\left(5\right)$. We report ratios of polarizabilities ${\alpha }_{\mathrm{Cs}}/{\alpha }_{\mathrm{Rb}}=1.2532\left(10\right),{\alpha }_{\mathrm{Cs}}/{\alpha }_{\mathrm{K}}=1.3834\left(9\right)$, and ${\alpha }_{\mathrm{Rb}}/{\alpha }_{\mathrm{K}}=1.1040\left(9\right)$ with smaller fractional uncertainty because the systematic errors for individual measurements are largely correlated. Since Cs atom beams have short de Broglie wavelengths, we developed measurement methods that do not require resolved atom diffraction. Specifically, we used phase choppers to measure atomic beam velocity distributions, and we used electric field gradients to give the atom interference pattern a phase shift that depends on atomic polarizability.

We present an ab initio approach for grand-canonical ensembles in thermal equilibrium (eq) with local or nonlocal external potentials based on the one-reduced density matrix (1RDM). We show that equilibrium properties of a grand-canonical ensemble are determined uniquely by the eq-1RDM and establish a variational principle for the grand potential with respect to its 1RDM. We further prove the existence of a Kohn-Sham system capable of reproducing the 1RDM of an interacting system at finite temperature. Utilizing this Kohn-Sham system as an unperturbed system, we deduce a many-body approach to iteratively construct approximations to the correlation contribution of the grand potential.

The process of inelastic nonresonant two x-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) photon Compton scattering by a free atom is theoretically investigated. The object of the study is the He atom. We obtain the absolute values and the shape of the double differential scattering cross section. The quantum effect of creation of “hot” scattered photons with maximum energy $2\hslash \omega -I_{1s}$ is predicted ($\hslash \omega$ is the energy of the incident XFEL photon on the atom, and $I_{1s}$ is the energy of the ionization threshold of an atomic $1s^2$ shell).

The importance of multielectron dynamics during the tunneling ionization of a correlated quantum system is investigated. By comparison of the solution of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation with the time-dependent configuration-interaction singles approach, we demonstrate the importance of a multielectron description of the tunneling ionization process especially for weakly confined quantum systems. Within this context, we observe that adiabatic driving by an intense light field can even enhance the correlations between still trapped electrons.

We introduce a two-dimensional short-range correlated disorder that is the natural generalization of the well-known one-dimensional dual random dimer model [D. H. Dunlap et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 65, 88 (1990)]. We demonstrate that, as in one dimension, this model induces a localization-delocalization transition in the single-particle spectrum. Moreover we show that the effect of such a disorder on a weakly interacting boson gas is to enhance the condensate spatial homogeneity and delocalization and to increase the condensate fraction around an effective resonance of the two-dimensional dual dimers. This study proves that short-range correlations of a disordered potential can enhance the quantum coherence of a weakly interacting many-body system.

Anisotropic homogeneous metamaterials that are neither wholly dissipative nor wholly active at a specific frequency are permitted by classical electromagnetic theory. Well-established homogenization formalisms indicate that such a metamaterial may be realized quite simply as a random mixture of electrically small (possibly nanoscale) spheroidal particles of at least two different isotropic dielectric materials, one of which must be dissipative but the other active. The dielectric properties of this metamaterial are influenced by the volume fraction, spatial distribution, particle shape and size, and the relative permittivities of the component materials. Similar metamaterials with more complicated linear as well as nonlinear constitutive properties are possible. Dynamic control of the active component material, for example, via stimulated Raman scattering, affords dynamic control of the metamaterial.

Maxwell's fish eye is predicted to image with a resolution not limited by the wavelength of light. However, interactions between sources and drains may ruin the subwavelength imaging capabilities of this and similar absolute optical instruments. Nevertheless, as we show in this paper, at resonance frequencies of the device, an array of drains may resolve a single source, or alternatively, a single drain may scan an array of sources, no matter how narrowly spaced they are. It seems that near-field information can be obtained from far-field distances.

We consider the effect of self-phase modulation and cross-phase modulation on the joint spectral amplitude of photon pairs generated by spontaneous four-wave mixing. In particular, the purity of a heralded photon from a pair is considered in the context of schemes that aim to maximize the purity and minimize correlation in the joint spectral amplitude using birefringent phase matching and short pump pulses. We find that nonlinear phase-modulation effects will be detrimental and will limit the quantum interference visibility that can be achieved at a given generation rate. An approximate expression for the joint spectral amplitude with phase modulation is found by considering the group velocity walk-off between each photon and the pump but neglecting the group-velocity dispersion at each wavelength. The group-velocity dispersion can also be included with a numerical calculation, and it is shown that it has only a small effect on the purity for the realistic parameters considered.

We examine the evolution of a time-varying perturbation signal pumped into a monomode fiber in the anomalous dispersion regime. We establish analytically that the perturbation evolves into a conservative pattern of periodic pulses whose structures and profiles share a close similarity with the so-called soliton-crystal states recently observed in fiber media [see, e.g., A. Haboucha et al., Phys. Rev. A 78, 043806 (2008); D. Y. Tang et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 153904 (2008); F. Amrani et al., Opt. Express 19, 13134 (2011)]. We derive mathematically and generate numerically a crystal of solitons using time-division multiplexing of identical pulses. We suggest that at very fast pumping rates, the pulse signals overlap and create an unstable signal that is modulated by the fiber nonlinearity to become a periodic lattice of pulse solitons that can be described by elliptic functions. We carry out a linear stability analysis of the soliton-crystal structure and establish that the correlation of centers of mass of interacting pulses broadens their internal-mode spectrum, some modes of which are mutually degenerate. While it has long been known that high-intensity periodic pulse trains in optical fibers are generated from the phenomenon of modulational instability of continuous waves, the present study provides evidence that they can also be generated via temporal multiplexing of an infinitely large number of equal-intensity single pulses to give rise to stable elliptic solitons.

We develop a rigorous connection between statistical properties of an interference pattern and the coherence properties of the underlying quantum state. With explicit examples, we demonstrate that even for inaccurate reconstructions of interference patterns, properly defined statistical moments permit a reliable characterization of quantum coherence in terms of the number of coherently superposed state vectors.