We theoretically study a spinor condensate of ${}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ atoms in a $F=1$ hyperfine state confined in an optical dipole trap. Putting initially all atoms in an $m_F=1$, component we observe a significant transfer of atoms to other, initially empty Zeeman states exclusively due to dipolar forces. Because of conservation of a total angular momentum the atoms going to other Zeeman components acquire an orbital angular momentum and circulate around the center of the trap. This is a realization of the Einstein-de Haas effect in a system of cold gases. We show that the transfer of atoms via dipolar interactions is possible only when the energies of the initial and the final sates are equal. This condition can be fulfilled utilizing a resonant external magnetic field, which tunes energies of involved states via the linear Zeeman effect. We found that there are many final states of different spatial density, which can be tuned selectively to the initial state. We show a simple model explaining high selectivity and controllability of weak dipolar interactions in the condensate of ${}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ atoms.

The forward four-wave-mixing (FWM) processes are considered in a typical three-level $\Lambda$ scheme of electromagnetically induced transparency. The effective conversion of monochromatic drive radiation to the polychromatic field with correlated (entangled) components is predicted. The generation is characterized by narrow frequency band and low threshold for drive intensity. The nonlinear semiclassical analysis of the effect is presented. The two connected FWM processes are described via two-dimensional Hamiltonian with one varying parameter.

We calculate the stability diagram for a trapped normal Bose gas with dipole-dipole interactions. Our study characterizes the roles of trap geometry, temperature, and short-range interactions on the stability. We predict a robust double instability feature in oblate trapping geometries arising from the interplay of thermal gas saturation and the anisotropy of the interaction. Our results are relevant to current experiments with polar molecules and will be useful in developing strategies to obtain a polar molecule Bose-Einstein condensate.

We compare the relativistic time evolution of an initially localized quantum particle obtained from the relativistic Schrödinger, the Klein-Gordon and the Dirac equations. By computing the amount of the spatial probability density that evolves outside the light cone we quantify the amount of causality violation for the relativistic Schrödinger Hamiltonian. We comment on the relationship between quantum field theoretical transition amplitudes, commutators of the fields and their bilinear combinations outside the light cone as indicators of a possible causality violation. We point out the relevance of the relativistic localization problem to this discussion and comment on ideas about the supposed role of quantum field theory as a vehicle of making a theory causal by introducing antiparticles.

Restricting one particle on the rim of a Möbius strip (Möbius wire), its wave functions are explicitly calculated through the nonrelativistic quantum theory. Demanding the wave function to be single valued, it is proven that in the case of a narrow strip the orbital angular momentum of the particle takes both integer and half-integer values of $\hslash$. In addition, the energy values of two chiral Möbius wires are proven to be equal.

Using spectral joint measurements of the qubits, we propose a scheme to test the tripartite Mermin inequality with three qubits dispersively coupled to a driven cavity. First, we show how to generate a three-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state by only one-step quantum operation. Then spectral joint measurements are introduced to directly confirm such tripartite entanglement. Assisted by a series of single-qubit operations, these measurements are further utilized to test the Mermin inequality. The feasibility of the proposal is robustly demonstrated by the present numerical experiments.

We establish that if a scheme can control a time-independent system arbitrarily coupled to a generic finite bath over a short period of time $T$ with control precision $O(T^{N+1})$, it can also realize the control with the same order of precision on smoothly time-dependent systems. This result extends the validity of various universal dynamical control schemes to arbitrary analytically time-dependent systems.

An extensible experimental design for optical continuous-variable cluster states of arbitrary size using four offline (vacuum) squeezers and six beam splitters is presented. This method has all the advantages of a temporal-mode encoding [Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 250503 (2010)], including finite requirements for coherence and stability even as the computation length increases indefinitely, with none of the difficulty of inline squeezing. The extensibility stems from a construction based on Gaussian projected entangled pair states. The potential for use of this design within a fully fault-tolerant model is discussed.

We show that a quantum-state transfer, previously studied as a continuous-time process in networks of interacting spins, can be achieved within the model of discrete-time quantum walks with a position-dependent coin. We argue that, due to additional degrees of freedom, discrete-time quantum walks allow one to observe effects which cannot be observed in the corresponding continuous-time case. First, we study a discrete-time version of the engineered coupling protocol due to Christandl et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 187902 (2004)] and then we discuss the general idea of conversion between continuous-time quantum walks and discrete-time quantum walks.

Although repulsive effects have been predicted for quantum vacuum forces between bodies with nontrivial electromagnetic properties, such as between a perfect electric conductor and a perfect magnetic conductor, realistic repulsion seems difficult to achieve. Repulsion is possible if the medium between the bodies has a permittivity in value intermediate to those of the two bodies, but this may not be a useful configuration. Here, inspired by recent numerical work, we initiate analytic calculations of the Casimir-Polder interaction between an atom with anisotropic polarizability and a plate with an aperture. In particular, for a semi-infinite plate, and, more generally, for a wedge, the problem is exactly solvable, and for sufficiently large anisotropy, Casimir-Polder repulsion is indeed possible, in agreement with the previous numerical studies. In order to achieve repulsion, what is needed is a sufficiently sharp edge (not so very sharp, in fact) so that the directions of polarizability of the conductor and the atom are roughly normal to each other. The machinery for carrying out the calculation with a finite aperture is presented. As a motivation for the quantum calculation, we carry out the corresponding classical analysis for the force between a dipole and a metallic sheet with a circular aperture, when the dipole is on the symmetry axis and oriented in the same direction.

This work presents a theoretical study of fully differential cross sections (FDCSs) for the double ionization of an He target by ion impact within a distorted wave model. The initial atomic system is described by two approximated wave functions of different accuracy proposed by Bonham and Kohl. For the final channel several models are considered based upon improvements and simplifications of the well-known three-body Coulomb (3C) model. The influence of the receding projectile on the resulting fragments is also studied by implementing a model with effective charges that depend on the momenta of the four particles. The FDCSs resulting for different electron energy sharing are discussed. The sensitivity of the FDCSs to the projectile charge sign and magnitude is explored over the energy range 700 keV/amu through 6 MeV/amu.

We report on a method that can control molecular photoionization in both space and time domains. The directionally asymmetric molecular tunneling ionization induced by intense (5.0 × 10${}^{13}$ W/cm${}^2$) phase-controlled two-color laser pulses consisting of fundamental and second-harmonic light achieves the selective ionization of asymmetric molecules in the space domain, and manipulates the birth time and direction of photoelectron emission on an attosecond time scale. This method provides a powerful tool for tracking the quantum dynamics of photoelectrons by using phase-dependent oriented molecules as a phase reference in simultaneous ion-electron detection.

We study the effect of noise on the axial mode of an electron in a Penning trap under parametric-resonance conditions. Our approach, based on the application of averaging techniques to the description of the dynamics, provides an understanding of the random phase flips detected in recent experiments. The observed correlation between the phase jumps and the amplitude collapses is explained. Moreover, we discuss the actual relevance of noise color to the identified phase-switching mechanism. Our approach is then generalized to analyze the persistence of the stochastic phase flips in the dynamics of a cloud of $N$ electrons. In particular, we characterize the detected scaling of the phase-jump rate with the number of electrons.

We demonstrate that the ($s$-wave) geometric spectrum of the Efimov energy levels in the unitary limit is generated by the radial motion of a primitive periodic orbit (and its harmonics) of the corresponding classical system. The action of the primitive orbit depends logarithmically on the energy. It is shown to be consistent with an inverse-squared radial potential with a lower cutoff radius. The lowest-order WKB quantization, including the Langer correction, is shown to reproduce the geometric scaling of the energy spectrum. The (WKB) mean-squared radii of the Efimov states scale geometrically like the inverse of their energies. The WKB wave functions, regularized near the classical turning point by Langer’s generalized connection formula, are practically indistinguishable from the exact wave functions even for the lowest ($n=0$) state, apart from a tiny shift of its zeros that remains constant for large $n$.

We theoretically investigate a proposed scheme to use an atomic $\delta$-kicked rotor resonance for high-precision measurements of accelerations and the photon recoil frequency. Although the technique offers rapid scaling of the measurement sensitivity with pulse number, it also features a high sensitivity to initial atomic momentum. We find that for realistic atom sources, the momentum sensitivity significantly limits the achievable precision. We consider several different variations on the technique, but find similar limitations in all cases.

Experimental progress in the study of strongly interacting ultracold atoms has recently allowed the observation of Efimov trimers. We study theoretically a nonconventional observable for these trimer states, which may be accessed experimentally, the momentum distribution $n(\mathbf{k})$ of the constitutive bosonic particles. The large momentum part of the distribution is particularly intriguing: In addition to the expected $1/k^4$ tail associated with contact interactions, it exhibits a subleading tail $1/k^5$ which is a hallmark of Efimov physics and leads to a breakdown of a previously proposed expression of the energy as a functional of the momentum distribution.

The ponderomotive force is derived for a relativistic charged particle entering an electromagnetic standing wave with a general three-dimensional field distribution and a nonrelativistic intensity, using a perturbation expansion method. It is shown that the well-known ponderomotive gradient force expression does not hold for this situation. The modified expression is still of simple gradient form but contains additional polarization-dependent terms. These terms arise because the relativistic translational velocity induces a quiver motion in the direction of the magnetic force, which is the direction of large field gradients. Consistent perturbation expansion of the equation of motion leads to an effective doubling of this magnetic contribution. The derived ponderomotive force generalizes the polarization-dependent electron motion in a standing wave obtained earlier [A. E. Kaplan and A. L. Pokrovsky, Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 053601 (2005)]. Comparison with simulations in the case of a realistic, nonidealized, three-dimensional field configuration confirms the general validity of the analytical results.

We consider two-component “spinor” slow light in an ensemble of atoms coherently driven by two pairs of counterpropagating control laser fields in a double tripod-type linkage scheme. We derive an equation of motion for the spinor slow light (SSL) representing an effective Dirac equation for a massive particle with the mass determined by the two-photon detuning. By changing the detuning the atomic medium acts as a photonic crystal with a controllable band gap. If the frequency of the incident probe light lies within the band gap, the light experiences reflection from the sample and can tunnel through it. For frequencies outside the band gap, the transmission and reflection probabilities oscillate with the increasing length of the sample. In both cases the reflection takes place into the complementary mode of the probe field. We investigate the influence of the finite excited state lifetime on the transmission and reflection coefficients of the probe light. We discuss possible experimental implementations of the SSL using alkali-metal atoms such as rubidium or sodium.

We report the experimental observation of simultaneous control of two four-wave-mixing fields via an induced atomic spin coherence formed by a Raman process with one coupling field and one probe field in a triple-Λ-type ${}^{85}\mathrm{Rb}$ atomic system. It is shown that by changing the atomic density, intensity, or detuning of the coupling field, the relative intensities of the two four-wave-mixing fields can be manipulated. This behavior can be explained as the change in the spin coherence for varying the coupling field intensity and the large difference in the attenuation coefficients of the two produced four-wave-mixing fields for varying the atomic density. This controlling process may find applications in coherent control of nonlinear optical processes and quantum information processing.

We explore how the focusing of axial-symmetry-broken vector fields is associated with a sector aperture whose apex coincides with the field axis. Its focused field is azimuthally split into a pair of orthogonal right- and left-handed circularly polarized partial rings which are rotated by angles of $\pm \pi /2$ with respect to the input vector field carrying no orbital angular momentum (OAM) and no spin angular momentum (SAM), respectively. Each member of the pair of partial rings carries not only the opposite OAM but also the opposite SAM. We unveil the underlying physics behind such an effect.