Diffraction patterns produced by grazing scattering of fast N atoms from a Ag(111) surface are investigated by employing the surface eikonal approximation. This method is a distorted-wave theory that takes into account the coherent addition of contributions coming from different projectile paths. In the model the projectile-surface potential is obtained from an accurate density-functional theory calculation. The dependence of the scattered projectile spectra on impact energy and incidence channel is analyzed, and possible incident direction and energy range for the observation of the interference patterns are predicted. In addition, it is found that as a result of the high reactivity of N atoms, asymmetries of the surface potential might be detected through their effects on diffraction patterns.

We show that a Bragg resonance is substantially incapacitated in short-pulse, matter-wave superradiant scatterings and both positive- and negative-order scatterings contribute equally. We further show that propagation gain is small and scattering events primarily occur at the ends of the condensate where the generated field has maximum strength. This explains the apparent “asymmetry” in the scattered components with respect to the condensate center. In contrast to long-pulse excitation, we prove that the generated field travels near the speed of light in vacuum and show that this has a significant impact on scattering. Finally, we show that when the excitation rate increases, the front-edge steepening and forward shifting of the peak of the generated field are due to depletion of the condensate.

We introduce equations of motion for spin dynamics in a ferromagnetic Bose-Einstein condensate with magnetic dipole-dipole interaction, written using a vector expressing the superfluid velocity and a complex scalar describing the magnetization. This simple hydrodynamical description extracts the dynamics of spin wave and affords a straightforward approach by which to investigate the spin dynamics of the condensate. To demonstrate the advantages of the description, we illustrate dynamical instability and magnetic fluctuation preference, which are expressed in analytical forms.

This paper introduces a general theoretical description of femtosecond pump-probe spectroscopy with chirped pulses whose joint spectral and temporal profile is expressed by Wigner spectrograms. We demonstrate that the actual experimental time resolution intimately depends on the pulse-sample interaction and that the commonly used instrumental response function needs to be replaced by a sample-dependent effective response function. We also show that, using the proper configurations in excitation and/or detection, it is possible to overcome the temporal smearing of the measured dynamics due to chirp-induced pulse broadening and recover the temporal resolution that would be afforded by the transform-limited pulses. We verify these predictions with experiments using broadband chirped pump and probe pulses. Our results allow optimization of the temporal resolution in the common case when the chirp of the pump and/or probe pulse is not corrected and may be extended to a broad range of time-resolved experiments.

Scattering-induced mode splitting in active microcavities is demonstrated. Below the lasing threshold, quality factor enhancement by optical gain allows resolving, in the wavelength-scanning transmission spectrum, of resonance dips of the split modes which otherwise would not be detected in a passive resonator. In the lasing regime, mode splitting manifests itself as two lasing modes with extremely narrow linewidths. Mixing these lasing modes in a detector leads to a heterodyne beat signal whose frequency corresponds to the mode-splitting amount. Lasing regime not only allows ultra-high sensitivity for mode-splitting measurements but also provides an easily accessible scheme by eliminating the need for wavelength scanning around resonant modes. Mode splitting in active microcavities has an immediate impact in enhancing the sensitivity of subwavelength scatterer detection and in studying light-matter interactions in a strong-coupling regime.

We have theoretically studied the conditions of the behavior of a high Rydberg electron as a spectator to an ion-molecule reaction in high Rydberg neutral collisions. Adoption of a circular high Rydberg atom in the initial channel of the high Rydberg neutral collisions ensures the behavior of the high Rydberg electron as the spectator to interaction between an ion core of the high Rydberg atom and an incoming neutral species; i.e., the ion-molecule reaction. This theoretical consideration leads to equivalence between the high Rydberg neutral collision and the ion-molecule reaction with high accuracy. This equivalence gives us a possibility of probing the ion-molecule reaction at low energies without space-charge effects encountered in ion-beam experiments.

We propose a measurement strategy which can, probabilistically, reproduce the statistics of any observable for spatially encoded photonic qubits. It comprises the implementation of a two-outcome positive operator-valued measure followed by a detection in a fixed transverse position, making the displacement of the detection system unnecessary, unlike previous methods. This strategy generalizes a scheme recently demonstrated by one of us and co-workers, restricted to measurement of observables with equatorial eigenvectors only. The method presented here can be implemented with the current technology of programmable multipixel liquid-crystal displays. In addition, it can be straightforwardly extended to high-dimensional qudits and may be a valuable tool in optical implementations of quantum information protocols with spatial qubits and qudits.

The condition for a negative index of refraction with respect to the vacuum index is established in terms of permittivity and permeability susceptibilities. It is found that the imposition of analyticity to satisfy the Kramers-Kronig relations is a sufficiently general criterion for a physical negative index. The satisfaction of the Kramers-Kronig relations is a manifestation of the principle of causality and the predicted frequency region of negative index agrees with the Depine-Lakhtakia condition for the phase velocity being antidirected to the Poynting vector, although the conditions presented here do not assume a priori a negative solution branch for $n$.

We study coherent energy transfer of a single excitation and quantum entanglement in a dimer, which consists of a donor and an acceptor modeled by two two-level systems. Between the donor and the acceptor, there exists a dipole-dipole interaction, which provides the physical mechanism for coherent energy transfer and entanglement generation. The donor and the acceptor couple to two independent heat baths with diagonal couplings that do not dissipate the energy of the noncoupling dimer. Special attention is paid to the effect on single-excitation energy transfer and entanglement generation of the energy detuning between the donor and the acceptor and the temperatures of the two heat baths. It is found that, the probability for single-excitation energy transfer largely depends on the energy detuning in the low temperature limit. Concretely, the positive and negative energy detunings can increase and decrease the probability at steady state, respectively. In the high temperature limit, however, the effect of the energy detuning on the probability is negligibly small. We also find that the probability is negligibly dependent on the bath temperature difference of the two heat baths. In addition, it is found that quantum entanglement can be generated in the process of coherent energy transfer. As the bath temperature increases, the generated steady-state entanglement decreases. For a given bath temperature, the steady-state entanglement decreases with the increase of the absolute value of the energy detuning.

Entanglement evolution of two independent Jaynes-Cummings atoms without the rotating-wave approximation (RWA) is studied by a numerically exact approach. Previous results based on the RWA are essentially modified in the strong-coupling regime ($g⩾0.1$), which has been reached in the recent experiments on the flux qubit coupled to the $\mathit{LC}$ resonator. For the initial Bell state with anticorrelated spins, entanglement sudden death (ESD) is absent in the RWA but does appear in the present numerical calculation without the RWA. Aperiodic entanglement evolution in the strong-coupling regime is observed. The strong atom-cavity coupling facilitates the ESD. The sign of the detuning plays an essential role in the entanglement evolution for strong coupling, which is irrelevant in the RWA. Analytical results based on an unitary transformation are also given, which could not modify the RWA picture essentially. It is suggested that the activation of the photons may be the origin of ESD in this system.

We present a family of loss-tolerant quantum strong-coin-flipping protocols, each protocol differing in the number of qubits employed. For a single qubit we obtain a bias of 0.4, reproducing the result of Berlín et al. [Phys. Rev. A 80, 062321 (2009)], while for two qubits we obtain a bias of 0.3975. Numerical evidence based on semidefinite programming indicates that the bias continues to decrease as the number of qubits increases but at a small rate.

The energy of the photoelectron experiences a red or blue Doppler shift when the molecule recedes from the detector or approaches him. This results in a broadening of the photoelectron line due to the translational thermal motion. However, the molecules also have rotational degrees of freedom and we show that the translational Doppler effect has its rotational counterpart. This rotational Doppler effect leads to an additional broadening of the spectral line of the same magnitude as the Doppler broadening caused by translational thermal motion. The rotational Doppler broadening as well as the rotational recoil broadening is sensitive to the molecular orbital from which the photoelectron is ejected. This broadening should be taken into account in analysis of x-ray photoemission spectra of super-high resolution and it can be directly observed using x-ray pump-probe spectroscopy.

We study the electromagnetic Casimir interaction of a compact object contained inside a closed cavity of another compact object. We express the interaction energy in terms of the objects’ scattering matrices and translation matrices that relate the coordinate systems appropriate to each object. When the enclosing object is an otherwise empty metallic spherical shell, much larger than the internal object, and the two are sufficiently separated, the Casimir force can be expressed in terms of the static electric and magnetic multipole polarizabilities of the internal object, which is analogous to the Casimir-Polder result. Although it is not a simple power law, the dependence of the force on the separation of the object from the containing sphere is a universal function of its displacement from the center of the sphere, independent of other details of the object’s electromagnetic response. Furthermore, we compute the exact Casimir force between two metallic spheres contained one inside the other at arbitrary separations. Finally, we combine our results with earlier work on the Casimir force between two spheres to obtain data on the leading-order correction to the proximity force approximation for two metallic spheres both outside and within one another.

Using an effective-medium approach, we demonstrate that the Casimir interaction of structured metal-dielectric metamaterial slabs which effectively behave as either uniform nongyrotropic materials or bi-isotropic materials is attractive at all distances, independent of the emergence of artificial magnetism or strong magnetoelectric coupling, when the slabs stand in a vacuum. In particular, it is shown that the magnetic response of a metal-dielectric metamaterial is always diamagnetic at imaginary frequencies, and this explains in simple physical terms the impossibility of Casimir repulsion.

A design of trapped scattering is proposed and related theoretical calculation is performed to evaluate the weak three-body interactions among neutral atoms and molecules. Different from traditional experiments of scattering, the design has three incident channels; three-body collisions would occur in a trap repeatedly, and the number of collisions can be controlled. Hence, the effect of each collision can be accumulated and eventually enlarged. Therefore the design is particularly suitable for the cases with very weak interactions. Results of the calculation demonstrate that, once the two-body force of a species has been known, information on the three-body force can be thereby obtained.

We analyze the van der Waals interaction of an atom with the internal surface of a metal or dielectric submicrometer-sized cylinder and derive closed analytical equations for the van der Waals surface potential and force in the electrostatic approximation. We show that for a concave cylindrical surface the van der Waals potential energy can be up to four times larger than for a flat surface. This result is qualitatively explained by a reduction in the effective distance between the atom and the concave surface compared to that for a flat surface. We also evaluate the shape of an atomic beam propagating inside a hollow dielectric submicrometer-sized cylinder and we propose a scheme that will enable a precise measurement of the van der Waals constant $C_3$.

Spin-changing collisions may lead under proper conditions to the parametric amplification of matter waves in spinor Bose-Einstein condensates. Magnetic dipole-dipole interactions, although typically very weak in alkali-metal atoms, are shown to play a very relevant role in the amplification process. We show that these interactions may lead to a strong dependence of the amplification dynamics on the angle between the trap axis and the magnetic-field orientation. We analyze as well the important role played by magnetic-field gradients, which also modify strongly the amplification process. Magnetic-field gradients, hence, must be carefully controlled in future experiments, in order to observe clearly the effects of the dipolar interactions in the amplification dynamics.

We show that the measure of the so-called release energy, which is an experimentally accessible quantity, makes it possible to assess the value of the Mott gap in the presence of the unavoidable confinement potential in the actual experimental setup. Indeed, the curve of the release energy as a function of the total number of particles shows kinks that are directly related to the existence of excitation gaps. Calculations are presented within the Gutzwiller approach, but the final results go beyond this simple approximation and represent a genuine feature of the real system. In the case of harmonic confinement, the Mott gaps may be renormalized with respect to the uniform case. On the other hand, in the case of the recently proposed off-diagonal confinement, our results show good agreement with the homogeneous case.

We consider a binary Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) described by a system of two-dimensional (2D) Gross-Pitaevskii equations with the harmonic-oscillator trapping potential. The intraspecies interactions are attractive, while the interaction between the species may have either sign. The same model applies to the copropagation of bimodal beams in photonic-crystal fibers. We consider a family of trapped hidden-vorticity (HV) modes in the form of bound states of two components with opposite vorticities $S_{1,2}=\pm 1$, the total angular momentum being zero. A challenging problem is the stability of the HV modes. By means of a linear-stability analysis and direct simulations, stability domains are identified in a relevant parameter plane. In direct simulations, stable HV modes feature robustness against large perturbations, while unstable ones split into fragments whose number is identical to the azimuthal index of the fastest growing perturbation eigenmode. Conditions allowing for the creation of the HV modes in the experiment are discussed too. For comparison, a similar but simpler problem is studied in an analytical form, viz., the modulational instability of an HV state in a one-dimensional (1D) system with periodic boundary conditions (this system models a counterflow in a binary BEC mixture loaded into a toroidal trap or a bimodal optical beam coupled into a cylindrical shell). We demonstrate that the stabilization of the 1D HV modes is impossible, which stresses the significance of the stabilization of the HV modes in the 2D setting.

The tremendous development of cold atom physics has opened up a whole new opportunity to study novel states of matter which are not easily accessible in solid-state systems. Here we propose to realize the $f$-wave pairing superfluidity of spinless fermions in $p_{x,y}$-orbital bands of two-dimensional honeycomb optical lattices. The nontrivial orbital band structure, rather than strong correlation effects, gives rise to the unconventional pairing with the nodal lines of the $f$-wave symmetry. With a confining harmonic trap, zero-energy Andreev bound states appear around the circular boundary with a sixfold symmetry. The experimental realization and detection of this novel pairing state are feasible.