Phase-modulated differential-phase-shift (DPS) quantum key distribution (QKD) is presented for combating sequential attacks that most severely restrict the DPS-QKD system distance. Slow phase modulation imposed onto the DPS signal obstructs the optimum unambiguous state discrimination measurement conducted in the sequential attack and improves the QKD distance as a result. The condition with which the phase modulation does not degrade the DPS-QKD system performance is also described.

The dynamic process of fragmentation of excited states of the molecular oxygen cation is investigated in a two-part study. First, using monochromatic 41.6 eV radiation and cold-target recoil-ion momentum spectroscopy detection of O${}^{+}$ + O${}^{+}$ ion pairs and associated electrons, we establish that this channel is populated only by an indirect process enabled by autoionization of excited oxygen atoms and identify the final active potential curves. Second, we probe the dynamics of this process using an attosecond pulse train of 35–42 eV EUV followed by an intense IR laser pulse. The results are compared with a model calculation.

We investigate the emergence of three-dimensional behavior in a reduced-dimension Bose-Einstein condensate trapped by a highly anisotropic potential. We handle the problem analytically by performing a perturbative Schmidt decomposition of the condensate wave function between the tightly confined (transverse) direction(s) and the loosely confined (longitudinal) direction(s). The perturbation theory is valid when the nonlinear scattering energy is small compared to the transverse energy scales. Our approach provides a straightforward way, first, to derive corrections to the transverse and longitudinal wave functions of the reduced-dimension approximation and, second, to calculate the amount of entanglement that arises between the transverse and longitudinal spatial directions. Numerical integration of the three-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equation for different cigar-shaped potentials and experimentally accessible parameters reveals good agreement with our analytical model even for relatively high nonlinearities. In particular, we show that even for such stronger nonlinearities the entanglement remains remarkably small, which allows the condensate to be well described by a product wave function that corresponds to a single Schmidt term.

We show that coherence induced by Fano interference can enhance power generated by a photovoltaic device as compared to the same system with no coherence. No additional external energy source is necessary to create such induced coherence. In the present model, coherence increases the flow of electrons through the load, which reduces radiative recombination and enhances cell power.

We present theoretical and experimental results on high-order harmonic generation in a low-density few-centimeter-long gas medium ($L_{\mathrm{med}}⩽$ 10 cm). We study the dependence with focal length of harmonic efficiency. Theoretically, we consider in detail the generation of the $25\mathrm{th}$ harmonic of a short pulse Ti:sapphire laser in argon. Within the strong-field approximation for the atomic dipole, and a complete account of the macroscopic propagation, we compute the number of photons produced as a function of the medium parameters and the focusing conditions. The simulations show that, at constant intensity, the emission of the $25\mathrm{th}$ harmonic scales with the focal length as $\sim$$f$${}^4$ at low pressure ($P=2$ Torr) and as $\sim$$f$${}^6$ at higher pressure ($P=5$ Torr). At constant laser energy, we find that the harmonic signal scales approximately as $f$${}^2$ at low pressure and as $f$${}^4$ at higher pressure. Those numerical results are compared with experimental data.

The self-Kerr-nonlinearity of a four-level $\mathsf{N}$-type atomic system is studied both experimentally and theoretically. The self-Kerr-nonlinear coefficient $n_2$ of the probe beam is greatly enhanced near atomic resonance, and can be dramatically modified by changing the switching laser power. With an increasing switching laser power, the slope of the Kerr nonlinear coefficient $n_2$ around the atomic resonance changes from negative to positive, and the value of $n_2$ varies from ∼–4 × 10${}^{-6}$ to 4 × 10${}^{-6}$ cm${}^2$/W at certain near-resonant probe frequency detunings. Such controllable Kerr nonlinearity can find applications in optoelectronic devices, such as all-optical switching and logic gates.

The spectral expansion of the Green's tensor for a planar multilayered structure allows us to semianalytically obtain the angular spectrum representation of the field scattered by an arbitrary dielectric perturbation present in the structure. In this paper we present a method to find the expansion coefficients of the scattered field, given that the electric field inside the perturbation is available. The method uses a complete set of orthogonal vector wave functions to solve the structure's vector wave equation. In the two semi-infinite bottom and top media, those vector wave functions coincide with the plane-wave basis vectors, including both propagating and evanescent components. The technique is used to obtain the complete angular spectrum of the field scattered by a nanohole in a metallic film under Gaussian illumination. We also show how the obtained formalism can easily be extended to spherically and cylindrically multilayered media. In those cases, the expansion coefficients would multiply the spherical and cylindrical vector wave functions.

We show that an ensemble of polar molecules trapped in an optical lattice can be considered as a controllable open quantum system. The coupling between collective rotational excitations and the motion of the molecules in the lattice potential can be controlled by varying the strength and orientation of an external dc electric field as well as the intensity of the trapping laser. The system can be described by a generalized Holstein Hamiltonian with tunable parameters and can be used as a quantum simulator of excitation energy transfer and polaron phenomena. We show that the character of excitation energy transfer can be modified by tuning experimental parameters.

We discuss fast frictionless cooling techniques in the framework of sympathetic cooling of cold atomic mixtures. It is argued that optimal cooling of an atomic species—in which the deepest quantum degeneracy regime is achieved—may be obtained by means of sympathetic cooling with another species whose trapping frequency is dynamically changed to maintain constancy of the Lewis-Riesenfeld adiabatic invariant. Advantages and limitations of this cooling strategy are discussed, with particular regard to the possibility of cooling Fermi gases to a deeper degenerate regime.

Motivated by recent experiments on quantum mechanical charge pumping in a Cooper pair sluice, we present a measurement scheme for observing shifts of transition frequencies in two-level quantum systems induced by broadband environmental fluctuations. In contrast to quantum optical and related setups based on cavities, the impact of a thermal phase reservoir is considered. A thorough analysis of Lamb and Stark shifts within weak-coupling master equations is complemented by nonperturbative results for the model of an exactly solvable harmonic system. The experimental protocol to measure the Lamb shift in experimentally feasible superconducting circuits is analyzed in detail and supported by numerical simulations.

We analytically study the effects of periodically alternating magnetic fields on the dynamics of a tight-binding ring. It is shown that an arbitrary quantum state can be frozen coherently at will by the very frequent square-wave field as well as the monochromatic-wave field when the corresponding optimal amplitudes are taken. Numerical simulations show that the average fidelity depends on not only the system parameters, but also the features of the quantum state. Moreover, taking the initial zero-momentum Gaussian wave packets as examples, we show the dependence of the threshold frequency on the width of the packet for the given average fidelities. These observations provide a means to perform the quantum-state engineering.

We have observed the ionization of a cold gas of Rb Rydberg atoms which occurs when $nsns$ van der Waals pairs of $ns$ atoms of $n\approx$ 40 on a weakly repulsive potential are transferred to an attractive dipole-dipole $nsnp$ potential by a microwave transition. Comparing the measurements to a simple model shows that the initial 300-$\mu$K thermal velocity of the atoms plays an important role. Excitation to a repulsive dipole-dipole potential does not lead to more ionization on a 15-$\mu$s time scale than leaving the atoms in the weakly repulsive $nsns$ state. This observation is slightly surprising since a radiative transition must occur to allow ionization in the latter case. Finally, by power broadening of the microwave transition, to allow transitions from the initial $nsns$ state to the $nsnp$ state over a broad range of internuclear spacings, it is possible to accelerate markedly the evolution to a plasma.

In this work, we have developed and characterized a laser-pulse-train technique to observe cold Rb${}_2$ molecules trapped in an optical dipole trap. The molecules are produced in a magneto-optical trap, and then loaded into a crossed optical dipole trap. The time evolution of the molecular population is obtained by applying a laser pulse train, which photoionizes the ground-state molecules through intermediate molecular bands. Our results show that this technique allows us to obtain a faster data acquisition rate of the time evolution of the molecule population than other techniques.

We investigate the impact of a finite response time of Kerr nonlinearities over the onset of spontaneous oscillations (self-pulsing) occurring in a nanocavity. The complete characterization of the underlying Hopf bifurcation in the full parameter space allows us to show the existence of a critical value of the response time and to envisage different regimes of competition with bistability. The transition from a stable oscillatory state to chaos is found to occur only in cavities which are detuned far off-resonance, which turns out to be mutually exclusive with the region where the cavity can operate as a bistable switch.

We present a study of semiconductor cavity QED effects with squeezed light. We investigate the effects of external squeezed light produced by a subthreshold optical parametric down conversion on the quantum features of the cavity as well as output radiation in the presence of exciton-exciton scattering. It turns out that the width of the spectrum of the cavity field strongly depends on the degree of squeezing. This effect is observed both in weak- and strong-coupling regimes. Moreover, we show that the external squeezed light has a profound effect on the amount of squeezing of the output field.

We studied the quantum correlation of the photon pairs generated by biexciton cascade decays of self-assembled quantum dots, and determined the correlation sudden-change temperature, which is shown to be independent of the background noise, far lower than the entanglement sudden-death temperature, and therefore, easier to be observed in experiments. The relationship between the fine-structure splitting and the sudden-change temperature is also provided.

We propose a scheme of an all-optical transistor based on a coupled Bose-Einstein condensate cavity system. The calculated results show that, in such an optomechanical system, the transmission of the probe beam is strongly dependent on the optical pump power. Therefore, the optical pump field can serve as a “gate” field of the transistor, effectively controlling the propagation of the probe field (the “signal” field). The scheme proposed here may have potential applications in optical communication and quantum information processing.

We discuss and make an experimental test of a probabilistic Hadamard gate for coherent state qubits. The scheme is based on linear optical components, nonclassical resources, and the joint projective action of a photon counter and a homodyne detector. We experimentally characterize the gate for the coherent states of the computational basis by full tomographic reconstruction of the transformed output states. Based on the parameters of the experiment, we simulate the fidelity for all coherent state qubits on the Bloch sphere.

In this paper a bound localized Dirac particle is shown to exhibit a revival of the zitterbewegung (ZB) oscillation amplitude. These revivals go beyond the known quasiclassical regenerations in which the ZB oscillation amplitude is decreasing from period to period. This phenomenon is studied in a Dirac oscillator and it is shown that it is possible to set up wave packets in which there is a regeneration of the initial ZB amplitude.

Variational minimization of the ground-state energy as a function of the two-electron reduced density matrix (2-RDM), constrained by necessary $N$-representability conditions, provides a polynomial-scaling approach to studying strongly correlated molecules without computing the many-electron wave function. Here we introduce a route to enhancing necessary conditions for $N$ representability through rank restriction of the 2-RDM. Rather than adding computationally more expensive $N$-representability conditions, we directly enhance the accuracy of two-particle (2-positivity) conditions through rank restriction, which removes degrees of freedom in the 2-RDM that are not sufficiently constrained. We select the rank of the particle-hole 2-RDM by deriving the ranks associated with model wave functions, including both mean-field and antisymmetrized geminal power (AGP) wave functions. Because the 2-positivity conditions are exact for quantum systems with AGP ground states, the rank of the particle-hole 2-RDM from the AGP ansatz provides a minimum for its value in variational 2-RDM calculations of general quantum systems. To implement the rank-restricted conditions, we extend a first-order algorithm for large-scale semidefinite programming. The rank-restricted conditions significantly improve the accuracy of the energies; for example, the percentages of correlation energies recovered for HF, CO, and N${}_2$ improve from 115.2%, 121.7%, and 121.5% without rank restriction to 97.8%, 101.1%, and 100.0% with rank restriction. Similar results are found at both equilibrium and nonequilibrium geometries. While more accurate, the rank-restricted $N$-representability conditions are less expensive computationally than the full-rank conditions.