Controllable and dispersive magnetic permeability in the metamaterials (MMs) provides us more freedom to harness the propagation of ultrashort electromagnetic pulses at will. Here we discuss the controllability of the Raman soliton self-frequency shift (SSFS) in the MMs with a nonlinear electric polarization. First, we derive a generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation suitable for few-cycle pulse propagation in the MMs with delayed Raman response, and demonstrate the Raman effect, high-order Raman-related nonlinearity, and high-order nonlinear dispersion terms occurring in this equation. Second, we present a theoretical investigation on the controllability of the Raman SSFS in the MMs. In particular, we identify the combined effects of the anomalous self-steepening (SS), third-order dispersion (TOD), and Raman effect on SSFS. It is shown that the positive SS effect suppresses SSFS; however, the negative SS effect enhances SSFS, and the positive TOD leads to the deceleration of SSFS. Finally, the effects of SS on the SSFS of the second-order soliton are also discussed.

We investigate the use of shaped near-infrared (NIR) femtosecond pulses to control the generation of coherent broadband deep-ultraviolet (DUV) radiation in an atomic resonance-mediated (2+1) three-photon excitation to a broad far-from-resonance continuum. Previously, we have shown control over the total emitted DUV yield. Here, we experimentally demonstrate phase control over the spectral characteristics (central frequency and bandwidth) of the emitted broadband DUV radiation. It is achieved by tuning the linear chirp applied to the exciting NIR femtosecond pulse. The study is conducted with Na vapor.

A single Yb atom is loaded into a high-finesse optical cavity with a moving lattice, and its nuclear spin state is manipulated using a nuclear magnetic resonance technique. A highly reliable quantum state control with fidelity and purity greater than 0.98 and 0.96, respectively, is confirmed by the full quantum state tomography; a projective measurement with high speed $\left(500\mu \mathrm{s}\right)$ and high efficiency $\left(0.98\right)$ is accomplished using the cavity QED technique. Because a hyperfine coupling is induced only when the projective measurement is operational, the long coherence times ($T_1=0.49$ s and $T_2=0.10$ s) are maintained.

An analytical solution for the time evolution of decay of two identical noninteracting quantum particles seated initially within a potential of finite range is derived using the formalism of resonant states. It is shown that the wave function, and hence also the survival and nonescape probabilities, for factorized symmetric and entangled symmetric or antisymmetric initial states evolve in a distinctive form along the exponentially decaying and nonexponential regimes. Our findings show the influence of the Pauli exclusion principle on decay. We exemplify our results by solving exactly the $s$-wave $\delta$ shell potential model.

We study the Casimir force between two corrugated plates due to thermal fluctuations of a scalar field. For arbitrary corrugations and temperature $T$, we provide an analytical expression for the Casimir force, which is exact to second order in the corrugation amplitude. We study the specific case of two sinusoidally corrugated plates with corrugation wavelength $\lambda$, lateral displacement $b$, and mean separation $H$. We find that the lateral Casimir force is $F_l(T,H)\sin (2\pi b/\lambda )$. In other words, at all temperatures, the lateral force is a sinusoidal function of the lateral shift. In the limit $\lambda \gg H,F_l(T\to \infty ,H)\propto k_{B}T{H}^{-4}{\lambda }^{-1}$. In the opposite limit $\lambda \ll H,F_l(T\to \infty ,H)\propto k_{B}T{H}^{-1/2}{\lambda }^{-9/2}{e}^{-2\pi H/\lambda }$.

We present a detailed study of the partial and total cross sections for photon-induced electron emission from ${{\mathrm{H}}_2}^{+}$. By comparing the results employing exact and approximate, bounded and continuum wave functions, for one- and two-center basis functions, we find the origin and position of the Cooper-like minima in the partial cross sections and their relationship with the Young-type interference pattern.

We present an alternate version of the coupled-coherent-state method, specifically adapted for solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation for multielectron dynamics in atoms and molecules. This theory takes explicit account of the exchange symmetry of fermion particles, and it uses fermion molecular dynamics to propagate trajectories. As a demonstration, calculations in the He atom are performed using the full Hamiltonian and accurate experimental parameters. Single- and double-ionization yields by 160-fs and 780-nm laser pulses are calculated as a function of field intensity in the range 10${}^{14}$–10${}^{16}$ W/cm${}^2$, and good agreement with experiments by Walker et al. is obtained. Since this method is trajectory based, mechanistic analysis of the dynamics is straightforward. We also calculate semiclassical momentum distributions for double ionization following 25-fs and 795-nm pulses at 1.5×10${}^{15}$ W/cm${}^2$, in order to compare them with the detailed experiments by Rudenko et al. For this more challenging task, full convergence is not achieved. However, major effects such as the fingerlike structures in the momentum distribution are reproduced.

We present a cold-atom gravimeter operating with a sample of Bose-condensed ${}^{87}$Rb atoms. Using a Mach-Zehnder configuration with the two arms separated by a two-photon Bragg transition, we observe interference fringes with a visibility of ($83\pm 6$)% at $T=3$ ms. We exploit large momentum transfer (LMT) beam splitting to increase the enclosed space-time area of the interferometer using higher-order Bragg transitions and Bloch oscillations. We also compare fringes from condensed and thermal sources and observe a reduced visibility of ($58\pm 4$)% for the thermal source. We suspect the loss in visibility is caused partly by wave-front aberrations, to which the thermal source is more susceptible due to its larger transverse momentum spread. Finally, we discuss briefly the potential advantages of using a coherent atomic source for LMT, and we present a simple mean-field model to demonstrate that with currently available experimental parameters, interaction-induced dephasing will not limit the sensitivity of inertial measurements using freely falling, coherent atomic sources.

We present a numerical method for solving the Maxwell-Bloch equations describing pulse propagation for a two-level medium. The method is accurate, efficient, stable, and well suited for this type of simultaneous equations. By applying the numerical scheme we investigate the evolutions of pulse area, pulse propagation, pulse velocity, and spectral shapes under both homogeneous and inhomogeneous broadening conditions. The results show that the area evolution and pulse-reshaping procedure are significantly influenced by detuning and inhomogeneous line shape, which also impact the oscillation tail and pulse peak. In addition, the pulse-peak traces indicated the pulse velocity always increases with greater deviation in pulse-area value from the value 2π. We also demonstrate the pulse velocity increased for a larger detuning or a wider inhomogeneous line shape. Furthermore, the spectral feature shows that pulse spectra evolve into an oscillating shape.

We experimentally observe formation of narrow laser beams behind the woodpile photonic crystal, when the beam remains well collimated in free propagation behind the crystal. We show that the collimation depends on the input laser beam's focusing conditions, and we interpret theoretically the observed effect by calculating the spatial dispersion of propagation eigenmodes and by numerical simulation of paraxial propagation model.

Following prior work on the lower-energy resonances, we apply techniques of momentum imaging and ab initio scattering calculations to the process of dissociative electron attachment to water via the highest-energy ${}^2{B}_2$ resonance. We focus on the H${}^{-}$ anion fragment, which is produced via dynamics passing through and avoiding the conical intersection with the lower $A_1$ state, leading to OH (${}^2\Pi$) and OH (${}^2\Sigma$), respectively. The momentum imaging technique, when combined with theoretical calculations on the attachment amplitude and dissociation dynamics, demonstrates that the angular distributions provide a signature of the location of the conical intersection in the space of nuclear configurations.

We address estimation of temperature for a micromechanical oscillator lying arbitrarily close to its quantum ground state. Motivated by recent experiments, we assume that the oscillator is coupled to a probe qubit via Jaynes-Cummings interaction and that the estimation of its effective temperature is achieved via quantum-limited measurements on the qubit. We first consider the ideal unitary evolution in a noiseless environment and then take into account the noise due to nondissipative decoherence. We exploit local quantum estimation theory to assess and optimize the precision of estimation procedures based on the measurement of qubit population and to compare their performances with the ultimate limit posed by quantum mechanics. In particular, we evaluate the Fisher information (FI) for population measurement, maximize its value over the possible qubit preparations and interaction times, and compare its behavior with that of the quantum Fisher information (QFI). We found that the FI for population measurement is equal to the QFI, i.e., population measurement is optimal, for a suitable initial preparation of the qubit and a predictable interaction time. The same configuration also corresponds to the maximum of the QFI itself. Our results indicate that the achievement of the ultimate bound to precision allowed by quantum mechanics is in the capabilities of the current technology.

We present an entanglement purification protocol and an entanglement concentration protocol for electron-spin entangled states, resorting to quantum-dot spin and optical-microcavity-coupled systems. The parity-check gates (PCGs) constructed by the cavity-spin-coupling system provide a different method for the entanglement purification of electron-spin entangled states. This protocol can efficiently purify an electron ensemble in a mixed entangled state. The PCGs can also concentrate electron-spin pairs in less-entangled pure states efficiently. The proposed methods are more flexible as only single-photon detection and single-electron detection are needed.

Recently there has been much study on the application of spin chains to quantum state transfer and communication. Here we discuss the utilization of spin chains (set up for perfect quantum state transfer) for the knitting of distributed cluster-state structures, between spin qubits repeatedly injected and extracted at the ends of the chain. The cluster states emerge from the natural evolution of the system across different excitation number sectors. We discuss the decohering effects of errors in the injection and extraction process as well as the effects of fabrication and random errors.

We study the speed at which information propagates through systems of interacting quantum particles moving on a regular lattice and show that for a certain class of initial conditions there exists a maximum speed of sound at which information can propagate. Our argument applies equally to quantum spins, bosons such as in the Bose-Hubbard model, fermions, anyons, and general mixtures thereof, on arbitrary lattices of any dimension. It also pertains to dissipative dynamics on the lattice, and generalizes to the continuum for quantum fields. Our result can be seen as an analog of the Lieb-Robinson bound for strongly correlated models.

We present a general theory for the construction of witnesses that detect genuine multipartite entanglement in graph states. First, we present explicit witnesses for all graph states of up to six qubits which are better than all criteria so far. Therefore, lower fidelities are required in experiments that aim at the preparation of graph states. Building on these results, we develop analytical methods to construct two different types of entanglement witnesses for general graph states. For many classes of states, these operators exhibit white noise tolerances that converge to 1 when increasing the number of particles. We illustrate our approach for states such as the linear and the 2D cluster state. Finally, we study an entanglement monotone motivated by our approach for graph states.

We formulate a framework for discrete-time quantum walks, motivated by classical random walks with memory. We present a specific representation of the classical walk with memory 2, on which this is based. The framework has no need for coin spaces, it imposes no constraints on the evolution operator other than unitarity, and is unifying of other approaches. As an example we construct a symmetric discrete-time quantum walk on the semi-infinite binary tree. The generating function of the amplitude at the root is computed in closed form, as a function of time and the initial level $n$ in the tree, and we find the asymptotic and a full numerical solution for the amplitude. It exhibits a sharp interference peak and a power-law tail, as opposed to the exponentially decaying tail of a broadly peaked distribution of the classical symmetric random walk on a binary tree. The probability peak is orders of magnitude larger than it is for the classical walk (already at small $n$). The quantum walk shows a polynomial algorithmic speedup in $n$ over the classical walk, which we conjecture to be of the order $2/3$, based on strong trends in data.

We consider the problem of distinguishing, with minimum probability of error, two optical beam-splitter channels with unequal complex-valued reflectivities using general quantum probe states entangled over $M$ signal and $M^{\prime }$ idler mode pairs of which the signal modes are bounced off the beam splitter while the idler modes are retained losslessly. We obtain a lower bound on the output state fidelity valid for any pure input state. We define number-diagonal signal (NDS) states to be input states whose density operator in the signal modes is diagonal in the multimode number basis. For such input states, we derive series formulas for the optimal error probability, the output state fidelity, and the Chernoff-type upper bounds on the error probability. For the special cases of quantum reading of a classical digital memory and target detection (for which the reflectivities are real valued), we show that for a given input signal photon probability distribution, the fidelity is minimized by the NDS states with that distribution and that for a given average total signal energy $N_s$, the fidelity is minimized by any multimode Fock state with $N_s$ total signal photons. For reading of an ideal memory, it is shown that Fock state inputs minimize the Chernoff bound. For target detection under high-loss conditions, a no-go result showing the lack of appreciable quantum advantage over coherent state transmitters is derived. A comparison of the error probability performance for quantum reading of number state and two-mode squeezed vacuum state (or EPR state) transmitters relative to coherent state transmitters is presented for various values of the reflectances. While the nonclassical states in general perform better than the coherent state, the quantitative performance gains differ depending on the values of the reflectances. The experimental outlook for realizing nonclassical gains from number state transmitters with current technology at moderate to high values of the reflectances is argued to be good.

We present a lower bound on the entropic uncertainty relation for the distinguished measurements of two observables in a d-dimensional Hilbert space for d up to 5. This bound provides an improvement over the best one yet available. The feasibility of the obtained bound presenting an improvement for higher dimensions is also discussed.

We have demonstrated transport of ${}^9$Be${}^{+}$ions through a two-dimensional Paul-trap array that incorporates an X junction, while maintaining the ions near the motional ground state of the confining potential well. We expand on the first report of the experiment in Blakestad et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 153002 (2009)], including a detailed discussion of how the transport potentials were calculated. Two main mechanisms that caused motional excitation during transport are explained, along with the methods used to mitigate such excitation. We reduced the motional excitation below the results in the above reference by a factor of approximately 50. The effect of a mu-metal shield on qubit coherence is also reported. Finally, we examined a method for exchanging energy between multiple motional modes on the few-quanta level, which could be useful for cooling motional modes without directly accessing the modes with lasers. These results establish how trapped ions can be transported in a large-scale quantum processor with high fidelity.