We report on the observation of additional sub-Doppler lines in a saturated absorption experiment when exploring the vicinity of the $6S_{1/2}-8P_{3/2}$ transition of Cs (λ$=$388 nm). These additional lines are observed only under a relatively strong irradiation of both the pump and the probe beams. Extra narrow lines are also observed in copropagating nonlinear spectroscopy, and around the lines of the V-type three-level system $8P_{3/2}-6S_{1/2}-8P_{1/2}$ (${\lambda }_1$$=$388 nm, ${\lambda }_2$$=$389 nm). We attribute theses additional lines to a probing of high-lying molecular cesium, produced as a result of the optical excitation of Cs atoms, as the low Cs atom density (≤10${}^{12}$cm${}^{-3}$) is unable to populate significantly the dimer states in the condition of thermal equilibrium.

We have carried out calculations of the triple-differential cross section for one-photon double ionization of molecular hydrogen for a central photon energy of $75$ eV, using a fully ab initio, nonperturbative approach to solve the time-dependent Schrödinger equation in prolate spheroidal coordinates. The spatial coordinates $\xi$ and $\eta$ are discretized in a finite-element discrete-variable representation. The wave packet of the laser-driven two-electron system is propagated in time through an effective short iterative Lanczos method to simulate the double ionization of the hydrogen molecule. For both symmetric and asymmetric energy sharing, the present results agree to a satisfactory level with most earlier predictions for the absolute magnitude and the shape of the angular distributions. A notable exception, however, concerns the predictions of the recent time-independent calculations based on the exterior complex scaling method in prolate spheroidal coordinates [L. Tao et al., Phys. Rev. A 82, 023423 (2010)]. Extensive tests of the numerical implementation were performed, including the effect of truncating the Neumann expansion for the dielectronic interaction on the description of the initial bound state and the predicted cross sections. We observe that the dominant escape mode of the two photoelectrons depends dramatically on the energy sharing. In the parallel geometry, when the ejected electrons are collected along the direction of the laser polarization axis, back-to-back escape is the dominant channel for strongly asymmetric energy sharing, while it is completely forbidden if the two electrons share the excess energy equally.

Modulated solutions of the nonlocal Gross-Pitaevskii equation are studied at $T\ne 0$. Stationary states are computed by constructing a stochastic process consisting of a noisy Ginzburg-Landau equation. An order parameter is introduced to quantify the superfluid fraction as a function of the temperature. When the temperature increases the superfluid fraction is shown to vanish. This is explained qualitatively by the thermal appearance of defects that disconnect the system wave function. We also deduce an explicit formula for the introduced order parameter in terms of an Arrhenius law. This allow us to estimate the “energy of activation” to create a disconnection in the wave function.

In order to solve the many-boson Schrödinger equation we utilize the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB). To be able to attack larger systems and/or to propagate the solution for longer times, we implement a parallel version of the MCTDHB method, thereby realizing the recently proposed [Streltsov et al., Phys. Rev. A 81, 022124 (2010)] idea on how to construct efficiently the result of the action of the Hamiltonian on a bosonic state vector. As an illustrative example of its own interest, we study the real-space dynamics of repulsive bosonic systems made of $N=12$, 51, and 3003 bosons in triple-well periodic potentials. The ground state of this system is threefold fragmented. By suddenly strongly distorting the trap potential, the system performs complex many-body quantum dynamics. At long times it reveals a tendency to an oscillatory behavior around a threefold fragmented state. These oscillations are strongly suppressed and damped by quantum depletions. In spite of the richness of the observed dynamics, the three time-adaptive orbitals of MCTDHB($M=3$) are capable of describing the many-boson quantum dynamics of the system for short and intermediate times. For longer times, however, more self-consistent time-adaptive orbitals are needed to correctly describe the nonequilibrium many-body physics. The convergence of the MCTDHB($M$) method with the number $M$ of self-consistent time-dependent orbitals used is demonstrated.

We investigate the formation of a heteronuclear tetramer $A_{3}B$ by an Efimov-resonance-assisted stimulated Raman adiabatic passage scheme, which is considered a viable means of creating the homonuclear tetramer $A_4$ [H. Jing and Y. Jiang, Phys. Rev. A 77, 065601 (2008)]. The atom-molecule dark-state solution for the system is derived, and the adiabatic conversion from atoms to heteronuclear tetramers is studied via the concept of adiabatic fidelity. In addition, the effects of external field parameters (including Rabi pulse strength, width, and single photon detuning) on the conversion are discussed.

We systematically study the dynamics of a one-dimensional degenerate Fermi gas in an optical-lattice potential coupled to a single-mode cavity field. We derive an effective model to study the nonperturbative effect caused by the cavity field. Our numerical results show that due to the addition of the optical-lattice potential, the system undergoes second-order transition to a bistable density-wave steady state, where the atoms form a density wave and the cavity field is bistable. In addition, the coherent oscillating behavior of the cavity photon number can be observed. We also present a feasible experimental protocol to realize these phenomena, which may be beneficial for future quantum-information applications.

We propose a feasible scheme to cool down a mechanical resonator (MR) in a three-mirror cavity optomechanical system with controllable external optical driving fields. Under the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, the whole dynamics of the mechanical resonator and cavities is reduced to that of a time-dependent harmonic oscillator, whose effective frequency can be controlled through the optical driving fields. The fast cooling of the MR can be realized by controlling the amplitude of the optical driving fields. Significantly, we further show that the ground-state cooling may be achieved via the three-mirror cavity optomechanical system without the resolved sideband condition.

In this paper, we investigate theoretically the effect of the relative phase ($\varphi$) between the probe and driving fields on gain (absorption) and dispersion of the probe field in a Doppler-broadened $N$-type four-level system with spontaneously generated coherence from different respects. It is shown that gain (absorption) and dispersion are very sensitive to variations in the relative phase, and changing the Doppler width also has an obvious effect on the phase-dependent gain (absorption) and dispersion. When the probe and driving fields have the same propagation directions (copropagating), for the same Doppler width, the dispersion curve with $\varphi =\alpha$ is the same as the gain (absorption) curve with $\varphi =\alpha +\pi /2$; however, when the probe and driving fields have opposite propagation directions (counterpropagating), the dispersion curve and gain (absorption) curve are different and the difference becomes more considerable with an increase in Doppler width. In the co- and counterpropagating cases, gain (absorption) and dispersion always vary periodically with varying $\varphi$, and the period is 2π. By adjusting the value of $\varphi$, the largest gain (absorption) and dispersion can be obtained, and a large index of refraction without absorption can be realized. Generally speaking, gain decreases with an increase in Doppler width, but by adjusting value of $\varphi$, at some special values of Doppler width, a larger gain than that without Doppler broadening can be obtained. Our study also shows that gain in the copropagating case is much larger than that in the counterpropagating case.

Long-range charge-transfer excitations pose a major challenge for time-dependent density-functional approximations. We show that spin-symmetry breaking offers a simple solution for molecules composed of open-shell fragments, yielding accurate excitations at large separations when the acceptor effectively contains one active electron. Unrestricted exact-exchange and self-interaction-corrected functionals are performed on one-dimensional models and on the real LiH molecule within the pseudopotential approximation to demonstrate our results.

First and second derivative of the nonadiabatic coupling between the several ${}^1\Sigma {}^{+}$ adiabatic states of the KH molecule considered from accurate diabatic and adiabatic data have been evaluated. Such derivatives of the electronic wave function are determined through a numerical differentiation of the rotational matrix connecting the diabatic and adiabatic representations. The first as well as the second derivative present many peaks related to ionic-neutral and neutral-neutral coupling between the ${}^1\Sigma {}^{+}$ states. Such radial coupling has been exploited to calculate the first adiabatic correction, which corresponds to the diagonal term of the second derivative divided by the reduced mass, for the ground and some excited states of the KH molecule. The second adiabatic correction has been determined using the virial theorem. The first adiabatic correction was added to the adiabatic potential energy curves to redetermine the corrected spectroscopic constants and vibrational energy levels. The vibrational shift, which is the difference between the corrected and the adiabatic levels, has been calculated for $X$, $A$, $C$, and $D$ ${}^1\Sigma {}^{+}$ states of the KH molecule. A shift of some 10 cm${}^{-1}$ is observed for some vibrational levels showing the breakdown of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation.

We study the BCS superfluid transition in a single-component fermionic gas of dipolar particles loaded in a tight bilayer trap, with the electric dipole moments polarized perpendicular to the layers. Based on the detailed analysis of the interlayer scattering, we calculate the critical temperature of the interlayer superfluid pairing transition when the layer separation is both smaller (dilute regime) and on the order or larger (dense regime) than the mean interparticle separation in each layer. Our calculations go beyond the standard BCS approach and include the many-body contributions resulting in the mass renormalization, as well as additional contributions to the pairing interaction. We find that the many-body effects have a pronounced effect on the critical temperature and can either decrease (in the very dilute limit) or increase (in the dense and moderately dilute limits) the transition temperature as compared to the BCS approach.

We consider an array of coupled cavities with staggered intercavity couplings, where each cavity mode interacts with an atom. In contrast to large-size arrays with uniform hopping rates where the atomic dynamics is known to be frozen in the strong-hopping regime, we show that resonant atom-field dynamics with significant energy exchange can occur in the case of staggered hopping rates even in the thermodynamic limit. This effect arises from the joint emergence of an energy gap in the free photonic dispersion relation and a discrete frequency at the gap’s center. The latter corresponds to a bound normal mode stemming solely from the finiteness of the array length. Depending on which cavity is excited, either the atomic dynamics is frozen or a Jaynes-Cummings-like energy exchange is triggered between the bound photonic mode and its atomic analog. As these phenomena are effective with any number of cavities, they are prone to be experimentally observed even in small-size arrays.

Self-compression of multi-millijoule laser pulses during filamentary propagation is usually explained by the interplay of self-focusing and defocusing effects, causing a substantial concentration of energy on the axis of the propagating optical pulse. Recently, it has been argued that cell windows may play a decisive role in the self-compression mechanism. As such windows have to be used for media other than air their presence is often unavoidable, yet they present a sudden nonadiabatic change in dispersion and nonlinearity that should lead to a destruction of the temporal and spatial integrity of the light bullets generated in the self-compression mechanism. We now experimentally prove that there is, in fact, a self-healing mechanism that helps to overcome the potentially destructive consequences of the cell windows. We show in two carefully conducted experiments that the cell window position decisively influences activation or inhibition of the self-healing mechanism. A comparison with a windowless cell shows that the presence of this mechanism is an important prerequisite for the exploitation of self-compression effects in windowed cells filled with inert gases.

We analyze the effect of the position-dependent excitation phase on the properties of entanglement between two qubits formed in atomic systems. We show that the excitation phase induces a vacuum-mediated quantum interference in the system that affects the dynamical behavior of entanglement between the qubits. It is also found that the quantum interference leads to a coherent population transfer between the symmetric and antisymmetric states that can considerably modify the dynamics of two-qubit entanglement and can even prevent finite-time disentanglement (sudden death) under certain conditions.

We propose two schemes for generating entanglement and quantum-state transfer (QST) between two spatially separated semiconductor quantum dot molecules (QDMs) based on voltage-controlled tunneling effects. In the present schemes, two QDMs are trapped in two spatially separated cavities connected by a fiber. By numerically simulating the evolution of the system, we show that the generation of entanglement and QST can be controlled by an external gate voltage in our schemes. Moreover, proposed schemes are robust against the noise of system parameters.

It is well known that von Neumann entropy is nonmonotonic, unlike Shannon entropy (which is monotonically nondecreasing). Consequently, it is difficult to relate the entropies of the subsystems of a given quantum state. In this paper, we show that if we consider quantum secret-sharing states arising from a class of monotone span programs, then we can partially recover the monotonicity of entropy for the so-called unauthorized sets. Furthermore, we can show for these quantum states that the entropy of the authorized sets is monotonically nonincreasing.

We have measured photon emission cross sections from neutral fragments produced by collisions of 50–350 keV protons with ${\mathrm{H}}_2$O molecules. Balmer $\alpha -\delta$ emissions from both the target and projectile were recorded. We also analyzed $A\hspace{0.5em}{}^2{\Sigma }^{+}-X\hspace{0.5em}{}^2\Pi$ (0,0) and (1,0) emission from the excited OH fragment produced during target dissociation. Trends in the cross sections revealed two key properties of the collision process: (1) The Bethe theory accurately describes target emission from both H and OH fragments and (2) the ratio of any two Balmer emission cross sections for both the target and projectile can be approximated by simple functions of the respective optical oscillator strengths. Finally, we provide the Bethe fit parameters necessary to calculate the target emission cross sections at all nonrelativistic impact energies.

We study the deterministic generation of single guided-mode photons from an atom in the vicinity of a nanofiber with two fiber-Bragg-grating (FBG) mirrors. The technique is based on a cavity-enhanced Raman scattering process involving an adiabatic passage. We take into account the scattering of the pump field from the fiber, the multilevel structure of the atom, and the surface-induced van der Waals potential in describing the photon generation process. We find that, due to the confinement of the cavity field in the transverse plane of the fiber and in the space between the FBG mirrors, the probability of the generation of a single guided-mode photon can be close to unity even when the finesse of the nanofiber cavity is moderate. We show the possibilities of saturation and power broadening in the behavior of the number of photons emitted into the nanofiber.

Spectral singularities are among generic mathematical features of complex scattering potentials. Physically they correspond to scattering states that behave like zero-width resonances. For a simple optical system, we show that a spectral singularity appears whenever the gain coefficient coincides with its threshold value and other parameters of the system are selected properly. We explore a concrete realization of spectral singularities for a typical semiconductor gain medium and propose a method of constructing a tunable laser that operates at threshold gain.

The contact parameter in unitary Fermi gases governs the short-range correlations and high-momentum properties of the system. We perform accurate quantum Monte Carlo calculations with highly optimized trial functions to precisely determine this parameter at $T=0$, demonstrate its universal application to a variety of observables, and determine the regions of momentum and energy over which the leading short-range behavior is dominant. We derive Tan’s expressions for the contact parameter using just the short-range behavior of the ground-state many-body wave function, and use this behavior to calculate the two-body distribution function, one-body density matrix, and the momentum distribution of unitary Fermi gases; providing a precise value of the contact parameter that can be compared to experiments.