The availability of short-pulse free-electron lasers has led to the idea of using photoelectron holography as a method of directly imaging molecular dissociations or reactions in real time, as, e.g., in a recent theoretical study by Krasniqi et al., [F. Krasniqi, B. Najjari, L. Strüder, D. Rolles, A. Voitkiv, and J. Ullrich, Phys. Rev. A 81, 033411 (2010)]. In this paper, we extend this earlier work and in particular look at two critical questions concerning the optimum type of data required for such holographic imaging: the choice of photoelectron kinetic energy (e.g., $\sim$300 eV versus $\sim$1700 eV as in the prior study), and the use of a single energy or multiple energies. After verifying that our calculations fully duplicate those in this prior paper, we show that using lower energies is preferable to using higher energies for image quality, a conclusion consistent with prior photoelectron holography studies at surfaces, and that multiple lower energies in which the hologram effectively spans a volume in $k$space yields the best quality images that should be useful for such “molecular movies.” Although the amount of data required for such multi-energy holography is roughly an order of magnitude higher than that for single energy, the reduction of artifacts and the improved quality of the images suggest this as the optimum ultimate future strategy for such dynamic imaging.

The concept that all de Broglie particles can form vortex beams is analyzed for neutral atoms. It is shown how atoms diffracted from a suitably constructed optical mask configuration employing light of $l$ units of orbital angular momentum and at far-off resonance with an atomic transition can lead to the generation of a discrete set of atom vortex beams each endowed with the property of quantized orbital angular momentum about the beam axis in units of $\hslash l$. Selection criteria of atom vortex beams are derived and the functioning of the mask configuration for angular dispersion of beams in terms of de Broglie wavelength is analyzed. Prospects of applications in the areas of atom interferometry and dispersion, and quantum information processing via atom vortices are pointed out.

Efficient excitation of dense plasma columns at 100-Hz repetition rate using a tailored pump pulse profile produced a tabletop soft-x-ray laser average power of 0.1 mW at λ = 13.9 nm and 20 μW at λ = 11.9 nm from transitions of Ni-like Ag and Ni-like Sn, respectively. Lasing on several other transitions with wavelengths between 10.9 and 14.7 nm was also obtained using 0.9-J pump pulses of 5-ps duration from a compact diode-pumped chirped pulse amplification Yb:YAG laser. Hydrodynamic and atomic plasma simulations show that the pump pulse profile, consisting of a nanosecond ramp followed by two peaks of picosecond duration, creates a plasma with an increased density of Ni-like ions at the time of peak temperature that results in a larger gain coefficient over a temporally and spatially enlarged space leading to a threefold increase in the soft-x-ray laser output pulse energy. The high average power of these compact soft-x-ray lasers will enable applications requiring high photon flux. These results open the path to milliwatt-average-power tabletop soft-x-ray lasers.

Laser cooling of mesoscopic mechanical resonators is of great interest for both fundamental studies and practical applications. We provide a general framework to describe the cavity-assisted back-action cooling in the strong-coupling regime. By studying the cooling dynamics, we find that the temporal evolution of mean phonon number oscillates as a function of the optomechanical coupling strength depending on frequency mixing. The further analytical result reveals that the optimal cooling limit is obtained when the system eigenmodes satisfy the frequency-matching condition. The reduced instantaneous-state cooling limits with dynamic dissipative cooling approach are also presented. Our study provides a guideline for optimizing the back-action cooling of mesoscopic mechanical resonators in the strong-coupling regime.

We derive a general expression of the quantum Fisher information for a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, with the port inputs of an arbitrary pure state and a squeezed thermal state. We find that the standard quantum limit can be beaten, when even or odd states are applied to the pure-state port. In particular, when the squeezed thermal state becomes a thermal state, all the even or odd states have the same quantum Fisher information for given photon numbers. For a squeezed thermal state, optimal even or odd states are needed to approach the Heisenberg limit. As examples, we consider several common even or odd states: Fock states, even or odd coherent states, squeezed vacuum states, and single-photon-subtracted squeezed vacuum states. We also demonstrate that superprecision can be realized by implementing the parity measurement for these states.

A single photon prepared in a time-energy state described by a frequency comb combines the extreme precision of energy defined by a single tooth of the comb with a high sensitivity to small shifts in time defined by the narrowness of a single pulse in the long sequence of pulses that describe the frequency-comb state in the time domain. We show how this simultaneous suppression of time and energy uncertainties can be described by a separation of scales, and we compare this with the suppression of uncertainties in the two-particle correlations of an entangled state. To illustrate the sensitivity of the frequency-comb states to small shifts in time and frequency, we consider the Hong-Ou-Mandel dips observed in two-photon interference when both time and frequency shifts between the input photons are varied. It is shown that the interference of two photons in equivalent frequency-comb states results in a two-dimensional Hong-Ou-Mandel dip that is narrow in both time and frequency, while the corresponding entangled photon pairs are only sensitive to temporal shifts. Frequency-comb states thus represent an alternative approach to quantum operations beyond the uncertainty limit.

We establish the spaser generation conditions for nonlocal plasmonic lasers and nonlocal plasmonic core-shell lasers based on the full-wave nonlocal Mie theory. Numerical results show that the required gain threshold and the gain refractive index become large generally when the nonlocality or spatial dispersion is taken into account. This tendency can be understood by the analysis with the proposed equivalent permittivity for nonlocal metallic nanoparticles. Since the nonlocality for the compact nanoparticles is quite significant, our study will be of great importance in the design of ultrasmall nanoparticle lasers.

Long coherence times are an essential prerequisite for implementations of quantum information technology. This requires techniques to control perturbing processes and hence prolong coherence times in quantum systems. In our work, we present systematic experimental investigations on prolongation of spin coherence times in a rare-earth ion-doped crystal. The approach is based on a combination of established coherence control techniques (i.e., zero first-order Zeeman shifts and simple dynamical decoupling), supported by automatic optimization of experimental control parameters, as well as precise characterization of the optimization loop and the strongly modified complex level structure by spin echoes and high-resolution Raman heterodyne spectroscopy. The spin-echo and Raman heterodyne data clearly prove successful optimization towards proper conditions of zero first-order Zeeman shifts, finally yielding a coherence time of 1 min, i.e., close to the theoretical limit set by the population lifetime in ${\text{Pr}}^{3+}$:${\text{Y}}_2$${\text{SiO}}_5$.

We report the realization of a periodic array of Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) of ${}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ $F=1$ atoms trapped in a one-dimensional magnetic lattice close to the surface of an atom chip. A clear signature for the onset of BEC in the magnetic lattice is provided by in situ site-resolved radio-frequency spectra, which exhibit a pronounced bimodal distribution consisting of a narrow component characteristic of a BEC together with a broad thermal cloud component. Similar bimodal distributions are found for various sites across the magnetic lattice. The realization of a periodic array of BECs in a magnetic lattice represents a major step towards the implementation of magnetic lattices for quantum simulation of many-body condensed matter phenomena in lattices of complex geometry and arbitrary period.

‘‘The noise is the signal” [R. Landauer, Nature (London) 392, 658 (1998)] emphasizes the rich information content encoded in fluctuations. This paper assesses the dynamical role of fluctuations of a quantum system driven far from equilibrium, with laser-aligned molecules as a physical realization. Time evolutions of the expectation value and the uncertainty of a standard observable are computed quantum mechanically and classically. We demonstrate the intricate dynamics of the uncertainty that are strikingly independent of those of the expectation value, and their exceptional sensitivity to quantum properties of the system. In general, detecting the time evolution of the fluctuations of a given observable provides information on the dynamics of correlations in a quantum system.

The $L$-subshell specific electron impact ionization cross sections, near the ionization threshold ($15<E<40$ keV) of gold are calculated from the measured production cross sections in this collaborative work between an experimental and a theoretical group. Calculations are performed using the distorted wave Born approximation formalism, and the modified relativistic binary encounter Bethe model to understand the data. The observed agreements and discrepancies between the two theoretical formalisms considered and the experimental data are reported.

We report positron binding energies (PBEs) for the 20 standard amino acids in the global minimum, hydrogen-bonded, and zwitterionic forms. The calculations are performed at the any-particle molecular-orbital (APMO) Hartree-Fock (HF), Koopmans' theorem (KT), second-order Möller-Plesset (MP2), and second-order propagator (P2) levels of theory. Our study reveals that the APMO KT and APMO P2 methods generally provide higher PBEs than the APMO HF and APMO MP2 methods, respectively, with only a fraction of the computational costs of the latter. We also discuss the impact of the choice of the positronic center on the PBEs and propose a simple and inexpensive procedure, based on the condensed Fukui functions of the parent molecules, to select the most suitable expansion center. The results reported so far indicate that APMO KT and APMO P2 methods are convenient options for a qualitative or semiquantitative analysis of positron binding in medium to large polyatomic systems.

In the ionization of Li and Na by a 16.91-GHz microwave field, roughly 20% of the atoms are not actually ionized but trapped in highly excited states within one or, at most, two microwave photons of the ionization limit. The highly excited atoms appear at the same field as the onset of microwave ionization, irrespective of whether ionization occurs at the field $E=1/3n^5$ or $E=1/16n^4$. The highly excited atoms are only detected in static fields less than 35 mV/cm, a field which roughly corresponds to field ionization of an atom bound by twice the microwave frequency. We also show that Na $\left|m\right|=1$ atoms require a microwave field of $E=1/9n^4$ for ionization in zero static field, but the required field for ionization is reduced to $E=1/3n^5$ if a static field of 1 V/cm is present.

The high-harmonic spectrum simulated in a few-cycle laser pulse with spatially nonhomogeneous field presents two types of interferences, which characterize different plateaus in the spectrum. One of these plateaus is discernible with the nonequidistant peaks due to the interference of short and long trajectories, while another one is distinguished by a periodicity much larger than the laser frequency arising from trajectories modified by the nonhomogeneous field. Beside, the continuum-continuum harmonic generation appears in the spectrogram in the tunneling regime of the laser parameters. These features bear the tracking of classical trajectories and the complete characterization of emission spectrum, when using nanostructures in attoscience.

Previously, we have proposed a lensless coherent imaging using a nonholographic and noniterative phase-retrieval method that allows the object reconstruction from a single diffraction intensity pattern measured with an aperture-array filter. The proof-of-concept experiment of this method has been demonstrated at optical wavelengths. Here we investigate the possibility of the application of the method to the reconstructions of atomic-size objects with the illumination of an x-ray or an electron beam. The results show that such application is practicable and that the resolution of the objects is limited by both the illumination wavelength and the extent of each aperture in the array filter. In computer simulations, we demonstrate the object reconstructions at subnanometer resolution with the illumination of a subangstrom wavelength and the aperture's extent of a few hundred nanometers and then treat the problem of a deficiency of central data in a diffraction pattern owing to a beam stop that is practically used to block an intense direct beam.

We combine traditional pointer-based simultaneous measurements of conjugate observables with the concept of quantum Brownian motion of multipartite systems to phenomenologically model simultaneous measurements of conjugate observables in a thermal environment. This approach provides us with a formal solution of the complete measurement dynamics for quadratic Hamiltonians and we can therefore discuss the measurement uncertainty and optimal measurement times. As a main result, we obtain a lower bound for the uncertainty of a noisy measurement, which is an extension of a previously known uncertainty relation and in which the squeezing of the system state to be measured plays an important role. This also allows us to classify minimal uncertainty states in more detail.

We study the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of ultracold bosons in a double- and triple-well potential within the Bose-Hubbard model by means of the semiclassical Herman-Kluk propagator and compare the results to the frequently applied “classical dynamics” calculation in terms of the truncated Wigner approximation (TWA). For the double-well system we find the semiclassical results in excellent agreement with the numerically exact ones, while the TWA is not able to reproduce any revivals of the wave function. The triple-well system turns out to be more difficult to handle due to the irregularity of the corresponding classical phase space. Here, deviations of the TWA from the exact dynamics appear even for short times, while better agreement is obtained using the semiclassical approach presented in this article.

We construct two spin models on lattices (both two and three dimensional) to study the capability of quantum computational power as a function of temperature and the system parameter. There exists a finite region in the phase diagram such that the thermal equilibrium states are capable of providing a universal fault-tolerant resource for measurement-based quantum computation. Moreover, in such a region the thermal resource states on the three-dimensional lattices can enable topological protection for quantum computation. The two models behave similarly in terms of quantum computational power. However, they have different properties in terms of the usual phase transitions. The first model has a first-order phase transition only at zero temperature whereas there is no transition at all in the second model. Interestingly, the transition in the quantum computational power does not coincide with the phase transition in the first model.

Recently, a new class of quantum codes based on hypermaps has been proposed. These codes are obtained from embeddings of hypergraphs as opposed to surface codes which are obtained from the embeddings of graphs. It is natural to compare these two classes of codes and their relation to each other. In this context two related questions are addressed in this paper: Can the parameters of hypermap-homology codes be superior to those of surface codes, and what is precisely the relation between these two classes of quantum codes? We show that a canonical hypermap code is identical to a surface code, whereas a noncanonical hypermap code can be transformed to a surface code by cnot gates alone. Our approach is constructive; we construct the related surface code and the transformation involving cnot gates.

We recently demonstrated that the spectroscopic accuracy and resolution of optical frequency combs can be obtained from a series of Ramsey-like measurements using only two amplified frequency comb pulses at variable delays. In this work we present a comprehensive analytical framework of this Ramsey-comb method in both time and frequency domains. It is shown that as opposed to traditional forms of spectroscopy, the signal analysis can be performed purely in the time domain, based on the temporal phases of the individual Ramsey signals. We give a detailed description of the robust fitting algorithm relying solely on this phase information and discuss special features such as an insensitivity to (transition-independent) spectral line-broadening mechanisms and constant phase shifts, e.g., due to the ac Stark effect from the excitation pulses themselves. The precision and resolution of the Ramsey-comb fitting method is assessed via numerical simulations, including cases of transition-dependent broadening mechanisms and phase shifts.