Fermionic ${}^{87}$Sr has a nuclear spin of $I=9/2$, higher than any other element with a similar electronic structure. This large nuclear spin has many applications in quantum simulation and computation, for which preparation and detection of the spin state are requirements. For an ultracold ${}^{87}$Sr cloud, we show two complementary methods to characterize the spin-state mixture: optical Stern-Gerlach state separation and state-selective absorption imaging. We use these methods to optimize the preparation of a variety of spin-state mixtures by optical pumping and to measure an upper bound of the ${}^{87}$Sr spin-relaxation rate.

We study a degenerate two-species gas of bosonic atoms interacting through a $p$-wave Feshbach resonance as, for example, realized in a ${}^{85}$Rb-${}^{87}$Rb mixture. We show that, in addition to a conventional atomic and a $p$-wave molecular spinor-1 superfluidity at large positive and negative detunings, respectively, the system generically exhibits a finite-momentum atomic-molecular superfluidity at intermediate detuning around the unitary point. We analyze the detailed nature of the corresponding phases and the associated quantum and thermal phase transitions.

Raman pulse atom interferometry is an important modality for precision measurements of inertial forces and tests of fundamental physics. Typical Raman atom optics use two coherent laser fields applied at gigahertz-scale detunings from optical resonance, so that spontaneous emission produces a minor or negligible source of decoherence. An additional consequence of spontaneous emission is coherent population trapping (CPT). We show that CPT produces coherences and population differences which induce systematic effects in Raman pulse atom interferometers. We do not believe that CPT has been previously identified as an error mechanism in Raman pulse atom interferometry. We present an experimental characterization of CPT coherences and population differences induced in laser-cooled cesium atoms by application of Raman pulses at detunings near 1 GHz, commensurate with detunings used in several precision measurement experiments. We are not aware of previous demonstrations of CPT-induced population difference. We argue that CPT effects could induce phase shifts of several milliradians in magnitude for typical experimental parameters and stipulate that these errors can be suppressed by propagation direction reversal in Raman interferometer-based precision measurements.

We model the formation of stable heteronuclear molecules via pulsed Raman photoassociation of a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate near a strong Feshbach resonance, for both counterintuitive and intuitive pulse sequencing. Compared to lasers alone, weak Raman photoassociation is enhanced by as much as a factor of ten (five) for a counterintuitive (intuitive) pulse sequence, whereas strong Raman photoassociation is barely enhanced at all—regardless of pulse sequence. Stronger intra-atom, molecule, or atom-molecule collisions lead to an expected decrease in conversion efficiency, but stronger ambient inter-atom collisions lead to an unexpected increase in the efficiency of stable molecule production. Numerical results agree reasonably with an analytical approximation.

In the present work we have demonstrated a possibility for operation by orbital angular momentum (OAM) of optical beams via the Pockels effect in solid-crystalline materials. Based on the analysis of an optical Fresnel ellipsoid perturbed by a conically shaped electric field, we have shown that the point groups of crystals convenient for the conversion of spin angular momentum (SAM) to OAM should contain a threefold symmetry axis or a sixfold inversion axis. The results of our experimental studies and theoretical simulations of the SAM-to-OAM conversion efficiency carried out for LiNbO${}_3$ crystals agree well with each other.

We study a two-level system (atom, superconducting qubit, or quantum dot) strongly coupled to a single photonic mode of a cavity, in the presence of incoherent pumping and including detuning and dephasing. This system displays a striking quantum-to-classical transition. On the grounds of several approximations that reproduce to various degrees exact results obtained numerically, we separate five regimes of operations, that we term “linear,” “quantum,” “lasing,” “quenching,” and “thermal.” In the fully quantized picture, the lasing regime arises as a condensation of dressed states and manifests itself as a Mollow triplet structure in the direct emitter photoluminescence spectrum, which embeds fundamental features of the full-field quantization description of light-matter interaction.

We suggest and demonstrate a scheme for coherent nonlocal compensation of pure phase objects based on two-photon polarization and momentum entangled states. The insertion of a single phase object on one of the beams reduces the purity of the overall detected state and the amount of shared entanglement, whereas the original entanglement can be retrieved by adding a suitable phase object on the other beam. In our setup polarization and momentum entangled states are generated by spontaneous parametric downconversion and then purified using a programmable spatial light modulator, which may be also used to impose arbitrary space-dependent phase functions on the beams.

The existence and stability of fundamental, dipole, and tripole solitons in Kerr nonlinear media with parity-time-symmetric Gaussian complex potentials are reported. Fundamental solitons are stable not only in deep potentials but also in shallow potentials. Dipole and tripole solitons are stable only in deep potentials, and tripole solitons are stable in deeper potentials than for dipole solitons. The stable regions of solitons increase with increasing potential depth. The power of solitons increases with increasing propagation constant or decreasing modulation depth of the potentials.

We report on an experiment to detect nonclassical correlations in a highly mixed state. The correlations are characterized by the quantum discord and are observed using four qubits in a liquid-state nuclear magnetic resonance quantum information processor. The state analyzed is the output of a DQC1 computation, whose input is a single quantum bit accompanied by $n$ maximally mixed qubits. This model of computation outperforms the best known classical algorithms and, although it contains vanishing entanglement, it is known to have quantum correlations characterized by the quantum discord. This experiment detects nonvanishing quantum discord, ensuring the existence of nonclassical correlations as measured by the quantum discord.

We present a correction method for the pair density (PD) to get close to the ground-state one. The PD is corrected to be a variationally best PD within the search region that is extended by adding the uniformly scaled PDs to its elements. The corrected PD is kept $N$-representable and satisfies the virial relation rigorously. The validity of the present method is confirmed by numerical calculations of neon atom. It is shown that the root-mean-square error of the electron-electron interaction and external potential energies, which is a good benchmark for the error of the PD, is reduced by 69.7% without additional heavy calculations.

We prove a generalization of the van Leeuwen theorem toward quantum electrodynamics, providing the formal foundations of a time-dependent Kohn-Sham construction for coupled quantized matter and electromagnetic fields. We circumvent the symmetry-causality problems associated with the action-functional approach to Kohn-Sham systems. We show that the effective external four-potential and four-current of the Kohn-Sham system are uniquely defined and that the effective four-current takes a very simple form. Further we rederive the Runge-Gross theorem for quantum electrodynamics.

We address the propagation of a single-photon pulse with two polarization components, i.e., a polarization qubit, in an inhomogeneously broadened “phaseonium” $\Lambda$-type three-level medium. We combine some of the nontrivial propagation effects characteristic for this kind of coherently prepared systems and the controlled reversible inhomogeneous broadening technique to propose several quantum information-processing applications, such as a protocol for polarization qubit filtering and sieving as well as a tunable polarization beam splitter. Moreover, we show that by imposing a spatial variation of the atomic coherence phase, an efficient quantum memory for the incident polarization qubit can be also implemented in $\Lambda$-type three-level systems.

One of the most precisely determined upper limits for the electron electric dipole moment (EDM) is set by the thallium (Tl) atomic beam experiment. One way to enhance the sensitivity of the atomic beam setup is to laser cool the Tl atoms to reduce the EDM-like phase caused by the E$\times$v effect. In this report, a cooling scheme based on the $6P_{3/2}(F=2)\leftrightarrow 6D_{5/2}(F^{\prime }=3)$ transition in Tl is proposed. The absolute frequency measurement of this nearly closed-cycle transition was performed in an atomic beam apparatus. Two Ti:sapphire lasers were frequency-doubled using enhancement cavities in X-type configurations to provide the needed 377- and 352-nm light sources for the optical pumping and cooling transitions, respectively. The absolute frequency of this cooling transition is determined to be 851 634 646(56) MHz.

The robustness of fractional quantum Hall states is measured as the energy gap separating the Laughlin ground state from excitations. Using thermodynamic approximations for the correlation functions of the Laughlin state and the quasihole state, we evaluate the gap in a two-dimensional system of dipolar atoms exposed to an artificial gauge field. For Abelian fields, our results agree well with the results of exact diagonalization for small systems but indicate that the large value of the gap predicted [Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 070404 (2005)] was overestimated. However, we are able to show that the small gap found in the Abelian scenario dramatically increases if we turn to non-Abelian fields squeezing the Landau levels.

We study an ultracold atom-cavity coupling system, which had been implemented in an experiment to display weak light nonlinearity [S. Gupta, K. L. Moore, K. W. Murch, and D. M. Stamper-Kurn, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 213601 (2007)]. The model is described by a noninteracting Bose-Einstein condensate contained in a Fabry-Pérot optical resonator, in which two incommensurate standing-wave modes are excited and thus form a quasiperiodic optical lattice potential for the atoms. Special emphasis is paid to the variation of the atomic wave function induced by the cavity light field. We show that bistability between the atomic localized and extended states can be generated under appropriate conditions.

The hydrodynamic equation of a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) gives a simple description of spin dynamics in the condensate. We introduce the hydrodynamic equation of a ferromagnetic BEC with dissipation originating from the energy dissipation of the condensate. The dissipative hydrodynamic equation has the same form as an extended Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (LLG) equation, which describes the magnetization dynamics of conducting ferromagnets in which localized magnetization interacts with spin-polarized currents. Employing the dissipative hydrodynamic equation, we demonstrate the magnetic domain pattern dynamics of a ferromagnetic BEC in the presence and absence of a current of particles, and discuss the effects of the current on domain pattern formation. We also discuss the characteristic lengths of domain patterns that have domain walls with and without finite magnetization.

Motivated by the recent rapid development of the field of quantum gases in optical lattices, we present a comprehensive study of the spectrum of ultracold atoms in a one-dimensional optical lattice subjected to a periodic lattice modulation. Using the time-dependent density matrix renormalization group method, we study the dynamical response due to lattice modulations in different quantum phases of the system with varying density. For the Mott-insulating state, we identify several excitation processes, which provide important information about the density profile of the gases. For the superfluid, the dynamical response can be well described in a local density approximation. This simplification can be valuable in understanding the strong-correlated superfluid in a slow-varying harmonic potential. All these spectroscopic features of an inhomogeneous system can be used as a test for the validity of the Bose-Hubbard model in a parabolic trapping potential.

Using two crossed 1064-nm optical-dipole-trap lasers to be the Raman beams, an effective vector gauge potential for Bose-Einstein condensed ${}^{87}$Rb in the $F=2$ hyperfine ground state is experimentally created. The moderate strength of the Raman coupling still can be achieved when the detuning from atomic resonance is larger than the excited-state fine structure, since rubidium has 15 nm energy-level spitting. The atoms at the far detuning of the Raman coupling are loaded adiabatically into the dressed states by ramping the homogeneous bias magnetic field with different paths and the dressed states with different energies are studied experimentally. The experimental scheme can be easily extended to produce the synthetic magnetic or electric field by means of a spatial or time dependence of the effective vector potential.

Controlled manipulation by atomic- and molecular-scale quantum systems has attracted a lot of research attention in recent years. A fundamental problem is to provide deterministic methods for controlled engineering of arbitrary quantum states. This work proposes a deterministic method for engineering arbitrary pure and mixed states of a wide class of quantum systems. The method exploits a special combination of incoherent and coherent controls (incoherent and coherent radiation) and has two properties which are specifically important for manipulating by quantum systems: it realizes the strongest possible degree of their state control, complete density matrix controllability, meaning the ability to steer arbitrary pure and mixed initial states into any desired pure or mixed final state, and it is all-to-one, such that each particular control transfers all initial system states into one target state.

We study the superdense coding capacity in the presence of quantum channels with correlated noise. We investigate both the cases of unitary and nonunitary encoding. Pauli channels for arbitrary dimensions are treated explicitly. The superdense coding capacity for some special channels and resource states is derived for unitary encoding. We also provide an example of a memory channel where nonunitary encoding leads to an improvement in the superdense coding capacity.