We numerically study the vortex-vortex interaction in multicomponent homogeneous Bose-Einstein condensates within the realm of the Gross-Pitaevskii theory. We provide strong evidence that pairwise vortex interaction captures the underlying mechanisms which determine the geometric configuration of the vortices, such as different lattices in many-vortex states, as well as the bound vortex states with two (dimer) or three (trimer) vortices. Specifically, we discuss and apply our theoretical approach to investigate intra- and intercomponent vortex-vortex interactions in two- and three-component Bose-Einstein condensates, thereby shedding light on the formation of the exotic vortex configurations. These results correlate with current experimental efforts in multicomponent Bose-Einstein condensates and the understanding of the role of vortex interactions in multiband superconductors.

Long-lived, spatially localized, and temporally oscillating nonlinear excitations are predicted by numerical simulation of coupled Gross-Pitaevskii equations. These oscillons closely resemble the time-periodic breather solutions of the sine-Gordon equation but decay slowly by radiating Bogoliubov phonons. Their time-dependent profile is closely matched with solutions of the sine-Gordon equation, which emerges as an effective field theory for the relative phase of two linearly coupled Bose fields in the weak-coupling limit. For strong coupling the long-lived oscillons persist and involve both relative and total phase fields. The oscillons decay via Bogoliubov phonon radiation that is increasingly suppressed for decreasing oscillon amplitude. Possibilities for creating oscillons are addressed in atomic gas experiments by collision of oppositely charged Bose-Josephson vortices and direct phase imprinting.

We investigate the harmonic-trap control of the size and shape of Mott regions in the Fermi-Hubbard model on a square optical lattice. The use of Lanczos diagonalization on clusters with twisted boundary conditions, followed by an average over 50–80 samples, drastically reduces finite-size effects in some ground-state properties; calculations in the grand-canonical ensemble together with a local-density approximation allow us to simulate the radial density distribution. We have found that as the trap closes, the atomic cloud goes from a metallic state to a Mott core and to a Mott ring; the coverage of Mott atoms reaches a maximum at the core-ring transition. A “phase diagram” in terms of an effective density and of the on-site repulsion is proposed as a guide to maximize the Mott coverage. We also predict that the usual experimentally accessible quantities, the global compressibility and the average double occupancy (rather, its density derivative), display detectable signatures of the core-ring transition. Some spin-correlation functions are also calculated and predict the existence Néel-like ordering within Mott cores and rings.

We study the superfluidity of a pure spin current, which is a spin current without a mass current. We examine two types of pure spin currents, planar and circular, in a spin-1 Bose gas. For the planar current, it is usually unstable but can be stabilized by the quadratic Zeeman effect. The circular current can be generated with spin-orbit coupling. When the spin-orbit coupling strength is weak, we find that the circular pure spin current is the ground state of the system and thus a superflow. We discuss the experimental schemes to realize and detect a pure spin current.

We have investigated theoretically the spontaneous decay rate of an excited molecule placed near a circular aperture in a perfectly conducting infinitely thin plane screen. A quasistatic analytical solution for a molecule with an arbitrary position near the aperture is found. In a case with a retardation, an exact analytical solution expressed through spheroidal wave functions is obtained. Analytical results are in good agreement with numerical simulations. The results may be useful in the design and development of optical nanodevices based on the control of elementary quantum systems emission.

We present a numerical study of an isolated attosecond pulse generation in a preexcited medium driven by a moderately intense multicycle laser pulse, which is synthesized by adding a chirp-free laser pulse to a chirped laser pulse. The results show that by preparing the initial state of ${\mathrm{He}}^{+}$ ion as a preexcited state, the electron trajectories significantly can be modulated and the supercontinuous harmonics with higher emission efficiency can be obtained. Optimizing the chirp parameter allows a multicycle field to behave like a few-cycle one due to the control of electron tunneling. Therefore, a wide 1172-eV intense supercontinuum would be achieved on the high-order-harmonic generation spectrum. The classical and time-frequency approaches reveal that the long quantum path is suppressed and only the short quantum path is left. By properly filtering the harmonics from the supercontinuum, a 34-as intense isolated pulse with clean time profile is directly obtained without any phase compensation. Our simulation shows that by superposing the total supercontinuum region with phase compensation, we can obtain the shortest sub-4-as intense isolated pulse.

We consider a circuit-QED setup that allows the induction and control of non-Markovian dynamics of a qubit. Non-Markovianity is enforced over the qubit by means of its direct coupling to a bosonic mode which is controllably coupled to another qubit-mode system. We show that this configuration can be achieved in a circuit-QED setup consisting of two initially independent superconducting circuits, each formed by one charge qubit and one transmission-line resonator, which are put in interaction by coupling the resonators to a current-biased Josephson junction. We solve this problem exactly and then proceed with a thorough investigation of the emergent non-Markovianity in the dynamics of the qubits. Our study might serve the context for the first experimental assessment of non-Markovianity in a multielement solid-state device.

The double-differential cross sections (DDCS) of low-energy electrons emitted at forward, backward, and perpendicular directions are reported for collisions of 3.75 MeV/u ${\mathrm{O}}^{q+}$ ($q=5$, 6, 7, 8) projectiles with He and Ne targets. The measured DDCS are found to be deviating from the $q^2$ dependence throughout the entire energy region. The effect of projectile electrons, for the dressed ions, as a function of the impact parameter is clearly noticeable for large as well as low-impact parameter collisions. We also present a theoretical calculation based on the prior form of the continuum distorted wave–eikonal initial state approximation, in which the projectile-active electron interaction is modeled with the Green-Sellin-Zachor potential. This particular representation of the potential has been proven to give good qualitative results for projectiles with residual electrons. In addition to the total DDCS, the individual contributions from target ionization, projectile electron loss, and simultaneous ionization processes are also calculated. The total DDCS obtained from these calculations are shown to be in excellent agreement with the experimental observations.

We calculate antiproton-impact total single ionization of Ne, Ar, Kr, Xe, and ${\mathrm{H}}_2\mathrm{O}$ using a time-dependent convergent close-coupling approach. The Ne, Ar, Kr, and Xe atom wave functions are described in a model of six $p$-shell electrons above a frozen Hartree-Fock core with only one-electron excitations from the outer $p$ shell allowed. For treating the water molecule we use a neonization method recently proposed by Montanari and Miraglia [J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 47, 015201 (2014)], which describes the ten-electron water molecule as a dressed Ne-like atom in a pseudospherical potential. In the present work the target states of noble gas atoms and water are obtained using a Laguerre basis expansion. For the noble gas atoms there is reasonably good agreement with the calculated single-ionization cross sections.

We demonstrate the coherent population trapping in a single quantum dot and an ensemble of negatively charged quantum dots using a train of femtosecond pulses. Particularly in an ensemble of quantum dots, we show that the detrimental effects due to the inhomogeneous distribution of their properties can be minimized by appropriately choosing the pulse-train parameters and the magnetic-field strength in such a way that the electron-Zeeman splitting is an integer multiple of the pulse repetition rate.

We present a technique for generation of tripartite quantum-correlated amplitude-squeezed light beams, using frequency doubling in a singly resonant cavity with two output ports. The two-output second-harmonic (SH) beams are both nonlinearly coupled to the common fundamental beam even though they have no direct interaction. The nonlinear coupling produces noise reduction of amplitude for each beam and quantum correlations among three beams. In our first experiment, we measured amplitude squeezing of 0.5, 0.8, and 0.6 dB for the fundamental beam and two output SH beams, respectively. Meanwhile, quantum correlation of 0.6 dB between the two amplitude-squeezed SH beams and quantum anticorrelation of 0.6 and 0.8 dB between the squeezed fundamental beam and each of the SH beams were observed around the range of optimum conversion efficiency. This opens an alternate way to produce tripartite-quantum-correlated systems.

Experimental tests of Bell-type inequalities distinguishing between quantum mechanics and local realistic theories remain of considerable interest if performed on massive particles, for which no conclusive result has yet been obtained. Only two-particle experiments may specifically test the concept of spatial nonlocality in quantum theory, whereas single-particle experiments may generally test the concept of quantum noncontextuality. Here we have performed the first Bell-type experiment with a beam of thermal-neutron pairs in the singlet state of spin, as originally suggested by J. S. Bell. These measurements confirm the quantum-theoretical predictions, in agreement with the results of the well-known polarization experiments carried out on optical photons years ago.

Measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD) protocol has been demonstrated as a viable solution to detector side-channel attacks. Recently, to bridge the strong security of MDI-QKD with the high efficiency of conventional QKD, the detector-device-independent (DDI) QKD has been proposed. One crucial assumption made in DDI-QKD is that the untrusted Bell state measurement (BSM) located inside the receiver's laboratory cannot send any unwanted information to the outside. Here, we show that if the BSM is completely untrusted, a simple scheme would allow the BSM to send information to the outside. Combined with Trojan horse attacks, this scheme could allow an eavesdropper to gain information of the quantum key without being detected. To prevent the above attack, either countermeasures to Trojan horse attacks or some trustworthiness to the “untrusted” BSM device is required.

We study the dynamics of heat flux in the thermalization process of a pair of identical quantum systems that interact dissipatively with a reservoir in a cascaded fashion. Despite that the open dynamics of the bipartite system $S$ is globally Lindbladian, one of the subsystems “sees” the reservoir in a state modified by the interaction with the other subsystem and hence it undergoes a non-Markovian dynamics. As a consequence, the heat flow exhibits a nonexponential time behavior which can greatly deviate from the case where each party is independently coupled to the reservoir. We investigate both thermal and correlated initial states of $S$ and show that the presence of correlations at the beginning can considerably affect the heat-flux rate. We carry out our study in two paradigmatic cases—a pair of harmonic oscillators with a reservoir of bosonic modes and two qubits with a reservoir of fermionic modes—and compare the corresponding behaviors. In the case of qubits and for initial thermal states, we find that the trace distance discord is at any time interpretable as the correlated contribution to the total heat flux.

The mixed configuration-interaction (CI) many-body-perturbation-theory method is accurate in divalent atoms. In more complex atoms, with the number of valence electrons it becomes progressively more difficult to saturate CI space. Here, a four-valence electron atom, Si i, is considered. It is found that by using a relatively small cavity of 30 a.u. and by choosing carefully configuration space, it is possible to obtain quite accurate agreement between the theory and experiment. After subtraction of systematic shifts of 481 and $-426$ ${\mathrm{cm}}^{-1}$ for the lowest even and odd states, respectively, the deviation between theory and experiment becomes at the level of 100 ${\mathrm{cm}}^{-1}$. This agreement is comparable to that in divalent atoms where the CI saturation has been achieved. It is anticipated that the approach can also give good results for atoms with more valence electrons to be considered in the future.

Asymmetry in the molecular-frame photoelectron angular distributions from core-hole- or core-valence-excited polyatomic targets with symmetry-equivalent atoms can provide direct evidence for core-hole localization. Using acetylene as an example, we contrast the small asymmetry that can be seen in direct core-level ionization, due to the competition between two competing pathways to the continuum, with ionization from core-valence-excited HCCH, which offers the prospect of observing markedly greater asymmetry.

We investigate the problem of a single ion in a radio-frequency trap immersed in an ultracold Bose gas in either a condensed or a noncondensed phase. We develop a master-equation formalism describing the sympathetic cooling, and we determine the cooling rates of ions. We show that the cold atomic reservoir modifies the stability diagram of the ion in the Paul trap, creating regions where the ion is either cooled or heated due to the energy quanta exchanged with the time-dependent potential.

We explore, theoretically and experimentally, a method for cooling a broadband heat reservoir, via its laser-assisted collisions with two-level atoms followed by their fluorescence. This method is shown to be advantageous compared to existing laser-cooling methods in terms of its cooling efficiency, the lowest attainable temperature for broadband baths, and its versatility: it can cool down any heat reservoir, provided the laser is red detuned from the atomic resonance. It is applicable to cooling down both dense gaseous and condensed media.