We study the spontaneous emission of an excited atom close to an optical nanofiber and the resulting scattering forces. For a suitably chosen orientation of the atomic dipole, the spontaneous emission pattern becomes asymmetric and a resonant Casimir-Polder force parallel to the fiber axis arises. For a simple model case, we show that such a lateral force is due to the interaction of the circularly oscillating atomic dipole moment with its image inside the material. With the Casimir–Polder energy being constant in the lateral direction, the predicted lateral force does not derive from a potential in the usual way. Our results have implications for optical force measurements on a substrate as well as for laser cooling of atoms in nanophotonic traps.

We present measurements and analytical modeling which demonstrate enhanced THz transmission through a subwavelength aperture via light-induced diffraction. Our experiment involves photoexciting a conducting pattern onto a silicon interface so as to control and modulate the near-field interference of THz radiation. To illustrate the concept, we photoexcite a simple double-conducting stripe pattern on the incident side of a silicon wafer which has a slit etched into a gold film on the exit side. We show that under certain resonant conditions set by the stripe dimensions, a constructive near-field interference can bring about enhanced transmission through the slit. By raster scanning the excitation pattern under these resonant conditions, one can build an image of subwavelength features such as the slit aperture of our sample.

We demonstrate that experiments measuring the transition energies of rare-earth ions doped in crystalline lattices are sensitive to violations of local Lorentz invariance and Einstein's equivalence principle. Using the crystal field of ${\mathrm{LaCl}}_3$ as an example, we calculate the frame-dependent energy shifts of the transition frequencies between low-lying states of ${\mathrm{Ce}}^{3+},{\mathrm{Nd}}^{3+}$, and ${\mathrm{Er}}^{3+}$ dopants in the context of the standard model extension, and show that they have high sensitivity to electron anomalies that break rotational invariance.

We suggest and analyze a scheme to adiabatically cool bosonic atoms to picokelvin temperatures which should allow the observation of magnetic ordering via superexchange in optical lattices. The starting point is a gapped phase called the spin Mott phase, where each site is occupied by one spin-up and one spin-down atom. An adiabatic ramp leads to an $xy$-ferromagnetic phase. We show that the combination of time-dependent density matrix renormalization group methods with quantum trajectories can be used to fully address possible experimental limitations due to decoherence, and demonstrate that the magnetic correlations are robust for experimentally realizable ramp speeds. Using a microscopic master equation treatment of light scattering in the many-particle system, we test the robustness of adiabatic state preparation against decoherence. Due to different ground-state symmetries, we also find a metastable state with $xy$-ferromagnetic order if the ramp crosses to regimes where the ground state is a $z$ ferromagnet. The bosonic spin Mott phase as the initial gapped state for adiabatic cooling has many features in common with a fermionic band insulator, but the use of bosons should enable experiments with substantially lower initial entropies.

We realize a pair of simultaneous ten-step one-dimensional quantum walks with two walkers sharing coins, which we prove is analogous to the ten-step two-dimensional quantum walk with a single walker holding a four-dimensional coin. Our experiment demonstrates a ten-step quantum walk over an $11\times 11$ two-dimensional lattice with a line defect, thereby realizing a localized walker state.

We derive a fine-grained uncertainty relation for the measurement of two incompatible observables on a single quantum system of continuous variables, and show that continuous-variable systems are more uncertain than discrete-variable systems. Using the derived fine-grained uncertainty relation, we formulate a stronger steering criterion that is able to reveal the steerability of NOON states that has hitherto not been possible using other criteria. We further obtain a monogamy relation for our steering inequality which leads to an, in principle, improved lower bound on the secret key rate of a one-sided device independent quantum key distribution protocol for continuous variables.

In this paper, we study the entanglement classification of the two-dimensional subspace spanned by $n$-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) and $W$ states under stochastic local operations and classical communication (SLOCC). We show that for $n\ge 4$ such a system can have infinite SLOCC inequivalent classes. Specifically, two states, ${|\mathrm{GHZ}\rangle }_n+x{|W\rangle }_n$ and ${|\mathrm{GHZ}\rangle }_n+y{|W\rangle }_n$, from the subspace spanned by $n$-qubit ${|W\rangle }_n$ and ${|\mathrm{GHZ}\rangle }_n$ are SLOCC equivalent if and only if ${\left(\frac{x}{y}\right)}^n=1$.

One-loop quantum electrodynamic (QED) corrections are studied for two basic atomic processes, radiative recombination of an electron with a bare nucleus and radiative decay of a hydrogenlike ion. The perturbations of the bound-state wave function and the binding energy due to the electron self-energy and the vacuum polarization are computed in the Feynman and Coulomb gauges. QED corrections induced by these perturbations are calculated for the differential cross section and the polarization of the emitted radiation in the radiative recombination of an electron and a bare uranium nuclei, as well as the corresponding corrections to the ratio of the $E1$ (electric dipole) and $M2$ (magnetic quadrupole) transition amplitudes in the $2p_{3/2}\to 1s$ radiative decay of hydrogenlike uranium. The results obtained indicate the expected magnitude of the QED effects in these processes on a subpercent level.

We investigate the effect of intercombination transitions in excitation hopping processes such as those found in Förster resonance energy transfer. Taking strontium Rydberg states as our model system, the breakdown of $LS$ coupling leads to weakly allowed transitions between Rydberg states of different spin quantum number. We show that the long-range interactions between two Rydberg atoms can be affected by these weakly allowed spin transitions, and the effect is greatest when there is a near degeneracy between the initial state and a state with a different spin quantum number. We also consider a case of four atoms in a spin chain and show that a spin impurity can resonantly hop along the chain. By engineering the many-body energy levels of the spin chain, the breakdown of $LS$ coupling due to interelectronic effects in individual atoms can be mapped onto a spatial separation of the total spin and the total orbital angular momentum along the spin chain.

We develop a collisional formalism adapted for the dynamics of ultracold dipolar particles in a confined geometry and in fields tilted relative to the confinement axis. Using tesseral harmonics instead of the usual spherical harmonics to expand the scattering wave function, we recover a good quantum number $\xi =\pm 1$ which is conserved during the collision. We derive the general expression of the dipole-dipole interaction in this convenient basis set as a function of the polar and azimuthal angles of the fields. We apply the formalism to the collision of fermionic and bosonic polar KRb molecules in a tilted electric field and in a one-dimensional optical lattice. The presence of a tilted field drastically changes the magnitude of the reactive and inelastic rates as well as the inelastic threshold properties at vanishing collision energies. Setting an appropriate strength of the confinement for the fermionic system, we show that the ultracold particles can even further reduce their kinetic energy by inelastic excitation to higher states of the confinement trap.

We present a theoretical investigation of the multiphoton resonance dynamics in the high-order-harmonic generation (HHG) process driven by two frequency-comb fields with the carrier frequencies of fundamental and second harmonics, respectively. The many-mode Floquet theorem is employed to provide a nonperturbative and exact treatment of the interaction between a quantum system and frequency-comb laser fields. The coupling of the weak second-harmonic control frequency-comb laser field promises more routes to coherently optimize the multiphoton resonance dynamics and HHG power spectra. First, even-order harmonics are generated due to the coupling of the second-harmonic frequency-comb field. Second, the HHG power spectra can be greatly enhanced via multiphoton resonance, which can be achieved by tuning the carrier-envelope-phase (CEP) shifts and the peak intensities of both frequency-comb fields. Furthermore, besides the multiphoton transitions involving only fundamental-harmonic photons, additional multiphoton transitions involving both fundamental- and second-harmonic photons occur, resulting in the generation of combs with frequencies dependent on CEP shifts of both fields. Different multiphoton transition paths can interfere with each other when the two CEP shifts are matching, and the interference of paths allows one to coherently control the HHG power spectra by varying the relative phase between the fields.

We study quantum magnetism of interacting spinor bosons at integer fillings hopping in a square lattice in the presence of non-Abelian gauge fields. In the strong-coupling limit, this leads to the rotated ferromagnetic Heisenberg model, which is a new class of quantum spin model. We introduce Wilson loops to characterize frustrations and gauge equivalent classes. For a special equivalent class, we identify a spin-orbital entangled commensurate ground state. It supports not only commensurate magnons, but also a gapped elementary excitation: incommensurate magnons with two gap minima continuously tuned by the spin-orbit coupling (SOC) strength. At low temperatures, these magnons lead to dramatic effects in many physical quantities such as density of states, specific heat, magnetization, uniform susceptibility, staggered susceptibility, and various spin-correlation functions. The commensurate magnons lead to a pinned central peak in the angle-resolved light or atom Bragg spectroscopy. However, the incommensurate magnons split it into two located at their two gap minima. At high temperatures, the transverse spin-structure factors depend on the SOC strength explicitly. The whole set of Wilson loops can be mapped out by measuring the specific heat at the corresponding orders in the high-temperature expansion. We argue that one gauge may be realized in current experiments and other gauges may also be realized in future experiments. The results achieved along the exact solvable line sets up the stage to investigate dramatic effects when tuning away from it by various means. We sketch the crucial roles to be played by these magnons at other equivalent classes, with spin anisotropic interactions and in the presence of finite magnetic fields. Various experimental detections of these phenomena are discussed.

We investigate theoretically and experimentally thermal light ghost imaging where the light transmitted through the object as the seed light is amplified by an optical parametric amplifier (OPA). In conventional lens imaging systems with OPA, the spectral bandwidth of OPA dominates the image resolution. Theoretically, we prove that in ghost imaging via optical parametric amplification (GIOPA) the bandwidth of OPA will not affect the image resolution. The experimental results show that for weak seed light the image quality in GIOPA is better than that of conventional ghost imaging. Our work may be valuable in remote sensing with ghost imaging technique, where the light passed through the object is weak after a long-distance propagation.

Optical frequency combs generated with ultrahigh-$Q$ whispering-gallery-mode resonators are expected to provide a compact, versatile, and energy-efficient source for the generation of coherent lightwave and microwave signals. So far, Kerr and Raman nonlinearities in these resonators have predominantly been investigated separately, even though both effects originate from the same third-order susceptibility. We present a spatiotemporal formalism for the theoretical understanding of these Kerr-Raman combs, which allows us to describe the complex interplay between both nonlinearities and all-order dispersion. These theoretical findings are successfully compared with experiments performed with ultrahigh-$Q$ calcium and magnesium fluoride resonators.

We investigate the Casimir free energy of a metallic film either sandwiched between two dielectric plates or in vacuum. It is shown that even for a thin film of several tens of nanometer thickness the Casimir free energy and pressure calculated with the Lifshitz theory using the Drude model and the plasma model approaches take significantly different values and can be easily discriminated. According to our results, the classical limit is already achieved for films of about 100-nm thickness if the Drude model approach is used in calculations. In this case the classical expressions for the Casimir free energy and pressure are common for both configurations considered. If the plasma model approach is used, the classical limit is not achieved for any film thickness. Instead, the Casimir free energy and pressure are decreasing exponentially to zero. When the plasma frequency goes to infinity, the Casimir free energy obtained using the Drude model approach goes to a nonzero limit in contradiction with expectations. If the plasma model approach is used the free energy of metallic film goes to zero in the limit of infinitely large plasma frequency. All analytic results are accompanied by numerical computations performed for an Au film and sapphire plates. The possibilities to observe the predicted effects discriminating between the Drude and plasma model approaches are discussed.

Any repeated use of a fixed experimental instrument is subject to memory effects. We design an estimation method uncovering the details of the underlying interaction between the system and the internal memory without having any experimental access to memory degrees of freedom. In such case, by definition, any memoryless quantum process tomography (QPT) fails because the observed data sequences do not satisfy the elementary condition of statistical independence. However, we show that the randomness implemented in certain QPT schemes is sufficient to guarantee the emergence of observable “statistical” patterns containing complete information on the memory channels. We demonstrate the algorithm in detail for the case of qubit memory channels with two-dimensional memory. Interestingly, we find that for the arbitrary estimation method, the memory channels generated by controlled unitary interactions are indistinguishable from memoryless unitary channels.

Using an isoclinic-point technique, we measured the $D_1$ collision shift by Xe, $\partial \left[\delta \nu \right]/\partial P$, and the exponent $\kappa$ of the shift's temperature dependence (i.e., $\delta \nu \sim T^{\kappa }$). As demonstrated in our examination of the Rb-Kr system [N. P. Wells et al., Phys. Rev. A 89, 052516 (2014)], the isoclinic point provides (arguably) the only means of assessing $\kappa$ unambiguously: ${\kappa }_{\mathrm{Kr}}=0.36\pm 0.06$ and in the present work ${\kappa }_{\mathrm{Xe}}=0.32\pm 0.05$. With our estimate of $\kappa$ for the Rb-Kr and Rb-Xe systems, we were able to combine our Kr and Xe collision shift measurements with those of Rotondaro and Perram [M. D. Rotondaro and G. P. Perram, J. Quant. Spectrosc. Radiat. Transfer 57, 497 (1997)] (another set of high quality $\partial \left[\delta \nu \right]/\partial P$ measurements) to obtain a highly accurate experimental estimate for the $D_1$ collision shift resulting from Rb's interaction with the heavy noble gases: For the Rb-Kr interaction $\partial \left[\delta \nu \right]/\partial P{|}_{T=323\mathrm{K}}=-5.02\pm 0.07\mathrm{MHz}/\mathrm{torr}$ and for the Rb-Xe interaction $\partial \left[\delta \nu \right]/\partial P{|}_{T=323\mathrm{K}}=-5.46\pm 0.09\mathrm{MHz}/\mathrm{torr}$. These measured values for the collision-shift coefficient are approximately $20\%$ smaller (in magnitude) than the best theoretical estimates, suggesting that there is room for theoretical improvement regarding our present understanding of how noble-gas collisions perturb the alkali-metal $P_{1/2}$ state.

We present ab initio calculations for the double ionization of helium by fast proton impact, using the generalized-Sturmian-functions methodology and within a perturbative treatment of the projectile-target interaction. The cross-section information is extracted from the asymptotic behavior of the numerical three-body function that describes the emission process. Our goal is to provide benchmark first-order Born fully differential cross sections with which one may investigate the suitability of transition matrices calculated using approximate analytic-type solutions for the double continuum (the choice of effective charges or effective momenta to partially account for the internal target interactions being, to some extent, arbitrary). We also provide fully differential cross sections for the low-ejection-energy regime, which is beyond the suitable range of such perturbative methods. We find, however, that the effective momentum approach allows one to get at least a rough characterization of the most dominant physical process involved. We also compare our calculations with the only available relative experimental set, showing an agreement in shape that can be well understood within the given momentum transfer regime.

We excite ultracold rubidium atoms in a magneto-optical trap to a coherent superposition of the three $|m_j|$ sublevels of the $37d_{5/2}$ Rydberg state. After some delay, during which the relative phases of the superposition components can evolve, we apply an electric field pulse to ionize the Rydberg electron and send it to a detector. The electron traverses many avoided crossings in the Stark levels as it ionizes. The net effect of the transitions at these crossings is to mix the amplitudes of the initial superposition into the same final states at ionization. Similar to a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, the three initial superposition components have multiple paths by which they can arrive at ionization and, since the phases of those paths differ, we observe quantum beats as a function of the delay time between excitation and initiation of the ionization pulse. We present a fully quantum-mechanical calculation of the electron's path to ionization and the resulting interference pattern.