The thermometry precision of a sample is a question of both fundamental and technological importance. In this paper, we consider a ring-structure system as our probe to estimate the temperature of a bath. Based on the Markovian master equation of the probe, we calculate the quantum Fisher information (QFI) of the probe at any time. We find that for the thermal equilibrium thermometry, the ferromagnetic structure can measure a lower temperature of the bath with a higher precision compared with the nonstructure probe, while for the dynamical thermometry, the antiferromagnetic structure can make the QFI of the probe in the dynamical process much larger than that in equilibrium with the bath, which is somewhat counterintuitive. Moreover, the best accuracy for the thermometry achieved in the antiferromagnetic structure case can be much higher than that in the nonstructure case. The physical mechanisms of the above phenomena are given in this paper.

It was recently shown by Motes, Gilchrist, Dowling, and Rohde [Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 120501 (2014)] that a time-bin encoded fiber-loop architecture can implement an arbitrary passive linear optics transformation. This was shown in the case of an ideal scheme whereby the architecture has no sources of error. In any realistic implementation, however, physical errors are present, which corrupt the output of the transformation. We investigate the dominant sources of error in this architecture—loss and mode mismatch—and consider how it affects the BosonSampling protocol, a key application for passive linear optics. For our loss analysis we consider two major components that contribute to loss—fiber and switches—and calculate how this affects the success probability and fidelity of the device. Interestingly, we find that errors due to loss are not uniform (unique to time-bin encoding), which asymmetrically biases the implemented unitary. Thus loss necessarily limits the class of unitaries that may be implemented, and therefore future implementations must prioritize minimizing loss rates if arbitrary unitaries are to be implemented. Our formalism for mode mismatch is generalized to account for various phenomenon that may cause mode mismatch, but we focus on two—errors in fiber-loop lengths and time jitter of the photon source. These results provide a guideline for how well future experimental implementations might perform in light of these error mechanisms.

The dynamical evolution of spatial patterns in a complex system can reveal the underlying structure and stability of stationary states. As a model system we employ a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate at the transition from miscible to immiscible with the additional control of linear interconversion. Excellent agreement is found between the detailed experimental time evolution and the corresponding numerical mean-field computations. Analyzing the dynamics of the system, we find clear indications of stationary states that we term nonlinear dressed states. A steady-state bifurcation analysis reveals a smooth connection of these states with dark-bright soliton solutions of the integrable two-component Manakov model.

We discuss the effects of quantum and thermal fluctuations on the Majorana edge states in a topological atomic wire coupled to a superfluid molecular gas with gapless excitations. We find that the coupling between the Majorana edge states remains exponentially decaying with the length of the wire, even at finite temperatures smaller than the energy gap for bulk excitations in the wire. This exponential dependence is controlled solely by the localization length of the Majorana states. The fluctuations, on the other hand, provide the dominant contribution to the preexponential factor, which increases with temperature and the length of the wire. More important is that thermal fluctuations give rise to a decay of an initial correlation between Majorana edge states to its stationary value after some thermalization time. This stationary value is sensitive to the temperature and to the length of the wire and, although vanishing in the thermodynamic limit, can still be feasible in a mesoscopic system at sufficiently low temperatures. The thermalization time, on the other hand, is found to be much larger than the typical time scales in the wire and is sufficient for quantum operations with Majorana fermions before the temperature-induced decoherence sets in.

We explore the superfluid phases of a two-component Fermi mixture with hybridized orbitals in optical lattices. We show that there exists a general mapping of this system to the Lieb lattice. By using simple multiband models with hopping between $s$- and $p$-orbital states, we show that superfluid order parameters can have a $\pi$-phase difference between lattice sites, which is distinct from the case with hopping between $s$ orbitals. If the population imbalance between the two spin species is tuned, the superfluid phase may evolve through various phases due to the interplay between hopping, interactions, and imbalance. We show that the rich behavior is observable in experimentally realizable systems.

We investigate the formation of a localized plateau beam in the transverse section of a nonlinear optical ring cavity filled with a metamaterial and a nonlocal medium such as a nematic liquid crystal. We show that, far from the modulational instability regime, localized structures with a varying width may be stable in one and two-dimensional settings. The mechanism of stabilization is related with strong nonlocal coupling mediated by a Lorentzian type of kernel. We show that there exists stable bright and dark localized structures. A reduction of Lugiato–Lefever equation in the regime close to the nascent bistability allows us to analytically derive a simple formula for the width of localized structures in one-dimensional systems. Direct numerical simulations of the dynamical model agree with the analytical predictions.

We derive and validate a set of coupled Bloch wave equations for analyzing the reflection and transmission properties of active semiconductor photonic-crystal waveguides. In such devices, slow-light propagation can be used to enhance the material gain per unit length, enabling, for example, the realization of short optical amplifiers compatible with photonic integration. The coupled-wave analysis is compared to numerical approaches based on the Fourier modal method and a frequency domain finite-element technique. The presence of material gain leads to the buildup of a backscattered field, which is interpreted as distributed feedback effects or reflection at passive-active interfaces, depending on the approach taken. For very large material gain values, the band structure of the waveguide is perturbed, and deviations from the simple coupled Bloch wave model are found.

Absorption spectrum of a system of two closely spaced identical atoms displays, at certain preparation, a dip that can be much narrower than the natural linewidth. This preparation includes (i) application of a strong magnetic field at an angle $\alpha$, that is very close to the magic angle ${\alpha }_0=arccos(1/\sqrt{3})\approx {54.7}^{\circ }$, with respect to the direction from one atom to another, and (ii) in-plane illumination by a laser light in the form of a nonresonant standing wave polarized at the same angle $\alpha$. Both qualitative and quantitative arguments for the narrow dip effect are presented.

A recent study of soft x-ray absorption in native and hydrogenated coronene cations, ${\mathrm{C}}_{24}{{\mathrm{H}}_{12+m}}^{+}m=0–7$, led to the conclusion that additional hydrogen atoms protect (interstellar) polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) molecules from fragmentation [Reitsma et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 053002 (2014)]. The present experiment with collisions between fast (30–200 eV) He atoms and pyrene (${\mathrm{C}}_{16}{{\mathrm{H}}_{10+m}}^{+}, m=0$, 6, and 16) and simulations without reference to the excitation method suggests the opposite. We find that the absolute carbon-backbone fragmentation cross section does not decrease but increases with the degree of hydrogenation for pyrene molecules.

The dynamics of an open quantum system is often modeled by introducing a bath initially in a product state with the system, letting the system and bath evolve unitarily together, and then tracing over the bath. However, often this model may not accurately reflect a particular experimental situation. Here, we provide some restrictions on one's ability to model an open quantum system using an initial product state when some information about the system-bath interaction is known. For instance, when certain symmetries exist in the system-bath interaction, we compute limitations on how much the system's purity can be increased if the bath is initially uncorrelated white noise. Furthermore, when the system and bath are qubits, we find that effectively only swap and product unitaries always generate system dynamics capable of being modeled using an initial product state. Finally, we show how any initial correlations between the system and environment are detectable, in principle, by observing the system transformation alone during certain joint evolutions. Our results have application in experimental quantum control and quantum computing where the system and environment are often assumed to be initially uncorrelated.

We show how weak nonlinearities can be used in a device-independent quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol using generalized two-mode Schrödinger cat states. The QKD protocol is therefore shown to be secure against collective attacks and for some coherent attacks. We derive analytical formulas for the optimal values of the Bell parameter, the quantum bit error rate, and the device-independent secret key rate in the noiseless lossy bosonic channel. Additionally, we give the filters and measurements which achieve these optimal values. We find that, over any distance in this channel, the quantum bit error rate is identically zero, in principle, and the states in the protocol are always able to violate a Bell inequality. The protocol is found to be superior in some regimes to a device-independent QKD protocol based on polarization entangled states in a depolarizing channel. Finally, we propose an implementation for the optimal filters and measurements.

We report a combined experimental and theoretical study on the electron-impact ionization of helium at $E_0=70.6\mathrm{eV}$ and equal energy sharing of the two outgoing electrons ($E_1=E_2=23\mathrm{eV}$), where a double-peak or dip structure in the binary region of the triple differential cross section is observed. The experimental cross sections are compared with results from convergent close-coupling (CCC), $B$-spline R-matrix-with-pseudostates (BSR), and time-dependent close-coupling (TDCC) calculations, as well as predictions from the dynamic screening three-Coulomb (DS3C) theory. Excellent agreement is obtained between experiment and the nonperturbative CCC, BSR, and TDCC theories, and good agreement is also found for the DS3C model. The data are further analyzed regarding contributions in particular coupling schemes for the spins of either the two outgoing electrons or one of the outgoing electrons and the $1s$ electron remaining in the residual ion. While both coupling schemes can be used to explain the observed double-peak structure in the cross section, the second one allows for the isolation of the exchange contribution between the incident projectile and the target. For different observation angles of the two outgoing electrons, we interpret the results as a propensity for distinguishing these two electrons—one being more likely the incident projectile and the other one being more likely ejected from the target.

In the vicinity of a Feshbach resonance, a system of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice undergoes rich physical transformations which involve molecule formation and hopping of molecules on the lattice and thus goes beyond a single-band Hubbard model description. We explore theoretically the response of this system to a harmonic modulation of the magnetic field, and thus of the scattering length, across the Feshbach resonance. In the regime in which the single-band Hubbard model is still valid, we provide results for the doublon production as a function of the various parameters, such as frequency, amplitude, etc., that characterize the field modulation, as well as the lattice depth. The method may uncover a route towards the efficient creation of ultracold molecules and also provide an alternative to conventional lattice-depth-modulation spectroscopy.

We investigated the Raman-pulse-duration effect in a gravity gradiometer with two atom interferometers. Since the two atom clouds in the gradiometer experience different gravitational fields, it is hard to compensate for the Doppler shifts of the two clouds simultaneously by chirping the frequency of a common Raman laser. This leads to an appreciable phase shift. The magnitude of the phase shift relative to the differential phase shift of the two interferometers is in an order of $\tau /T$, and cannot be neglected in the precision measurements such as measuring the gravity gradient and the Newtonian gravitational constant.

We study the time-resolved dynamics of high-order harmonic generation (HHG) from oriented asymmetric molecules in intense laser fields theoretically. Previous studies have shown that the odd-even HHG spectra of asymmetric molecules don't show the striking two-center-interference-induced minimum, as the symmetric molecules do, due to the symmetry breaking. Surprisingly, with considering only the short-trajectory contribution, an apparent groove with small amplitudes is observed in the HHG time-frequency distribution, which implies that the harmonic emission is strongly suppressed in a specific time-frequency region. The position of this groove is sensitive to the molecular parameters and the orientation. Our analyses on this origin of the groove reveal different time-frequency properties of odd versus even signals, where the interplay of intramolecular interference and the permanent-dipole effect plays an important role. We show that the even-odd ratio often used in high-harmonic spectroscopy can be influenced significantly by the interference effect.

Phase-sensitive properties of light play a crucial role in a variety of quantum optical phenomena, which have been mostly discussed in the framework of photoelectric detection theory. However, modern detection schemes, such as arrays of on-off detectors, are not based on photoelectric counting. We demonstrate that the theory of homodyning with such click-counting detectors can be established by using a proper detection model. For practical applications, a variety of typically occurring imperfections are rigorously analyzed and directly observable nonclassicality criteria are studied. Fundamental examples demonstrate the general functionality of our technique. Thus, our approach of homodyne detection with on-off detector systems is able to bridge the gap between imperfect detection and the phase resolution demands for modern applications of quantum light.

Analytic expressions for the electric and magnetic fields of a radially polarized ultrashort and tightly focused laser pulse, propagating in vacuum, are derived from scalar and vector potentials satisfying simple initial conditions. It is shown that for a pulse of axial length comparable to a wavelength, only the zeroth (lowest-order) term in a power-series expansion of the vector potential is needed. A procedure is outlined which may be used to obtain the fields analytically, to any desired order. Most of the needed analytic work is done that would lead to the vector potential from which the fields may be derived and the main expressions are given.

Recent demonstrations of parity-time- $(\mathcal{PT}$-) symmetric structure have exhibited the great potential of this system for tailoring the light-matter interaction and developing a wide range of robust quantum devices. Here we explore the second-order photon correlations in a $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric system consisting of a passive nonlinear cavity coupled to an active cavity via optical tunneling. It is shown numerically that strong photon antibunching including perfect photon blockade can be obtained efficiently even if the Kerr nonlinearity strength, the photon-tunneling strength, and the driving strength are smaller than the cavity decay rate. The physical mechanism underlying photon blockade originally comes from the dynamical enhancement of intracavity nonlinearity by the effect of supermode field localization in the $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric arrangement. The results obtained provide insight into the crossover between the photon blockade and $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric theory. Such controllable photon antibunching may find applications in the generation of high-quality single-photon sources.

The problems of optimizing the value of an arbitrary observable of a two-level system at both a fixed time and the shortest possible time is theoretically explored. Complete identification and classification along with comprehensive analysis of globally optimal control policies and traps (i.e., policies which are locally but not globally optimal) are presented. The central question addressed is whether the control landscape remains trap-free if control constraints of the inequality type are imposed. The answer is astonishingly controversial: Although the traps are proven always to exist in this case, in practice they become trivially escapable once the control time is fixed and chosen long enough.