We study the self-trapping of the superposition of two-dimensional vector dipole solitons in nonlocal media with an arbitrary degree of nonlocality. We apply the variational approach to find the exact solution of such vector dipole solitons and investigate their stability by using directly numerical simulations. The dynamics of such vector solitons are also compared with a scalar vortex. We show the nonlocality induces an attractive force which can completely stabilize the vector dipole solitons.

We report the decomposition of the enhanced backscattering cone into its constitutive interference fringes. These fringes are due to the constructive interference between reciprocal paths of any multiply scattered wave after ensemble averaging. An optical setup combining a two-point continuous-wave illumination and matching detection allows the observation of the fringes and, therefore, the quantitative characterization of the Green’s function for light propagation between the two points in a multiple-scattering media.

Two coherent frequency combs are used to measure the full complex response of a sample in a configuration analogous to a dispersive Fourier transform spectrometer, infrared time domain spectrometer, or a multiheterodyne laser spectrometer. This dual-comb spectrometer retains the frequency accuracy and resolution of the reference underlying the stabilized combs. We discuss the specific design of our coherent dual-comb spectrometer and demonstrate the potential of this technique by measuring the overtone vibration of hydrogen cyanide, centered at THz ( nm). We measure the fully normalized, complex response of the gas over a THz bandwidth at MHz frequency resolution yielding resolution elements. The average spectral signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) over the THz bandwidth is for both the magnitude and phase of the measured spectral response and the peak SNR is . This peak SNR corresponds to a fractional absorption sensitivity of and a phase sensitivity of microradians. As the spectral coverage of combs expands, coherent dual-comb spectroscopy could provide high-frequency accuracy and resolution measurements of a complex sample response across a range of spectral regions. Work of U. S. government, not subject to copyright.

We propose an exactly solvable model to reveal the physics of the interplay between interaction and disorder in bosonic systems. Considering interacting bosons in a double-well potential, in which disorder is mimicked by taking the energy level mismatch between the two wells to be randomly distributed, we find a “two negatives make a positive” effect. While disorder or interaction by itself suppresses the phase coherence between the two wells, both together enhance the phase coherence. This model captures several striking features of the disordered Bose-Hubbard model found in recent numerical simulations. Results at finite temperatures may help explain why a recent experiment did not find any evidence for the enhancement of phase coherence in a disordered bosonic system.

We present a theory for the reflection phase and amplitude of the lowest-order TEM mode in an annular aperture at the end of a metal plate. This reflection coefficient determines the frequency and peak width of the Fabry-Perot transmission resonances. The theory assumes that the width of the aperture is subwavelength; however, the annular radius can be quite large, and we show that the theory reproduces the reflection of a linear slit in the limit of infinite radius. Finite-difference time-domain calculations agree well with the theory, in terms of both the transmission resonance frequency values and the extracted reflectivity. The theory presented shows that both the phase and amplitude of reflection can vary substantially with changes in geometry and frequency, and that both are modulated by transverse resonances. This work has implications for filters, near-field aperture probes, sensors, and metamaterials.

Nonclassical states that are characterized by their nonpositive quasiprobabilities in phase space are known to be the basis for various quantum effects. In this work, we investigate the interrelation between the nonclassicality and entanglement, and then characterize the nonclassicality that precisely corresponds to entanglement. The results naturally follow from two findings: one is the general structure among nonclassical, entangled, separable, and classical states over Hermitian operators, and the other a general scheme to detect nonclassical states.

The ability of fully reconstructing quantum maps is a fundamental task of quantum information, in particular when coupling with the environment and experimental imperfections of devices are taken into account. In this context, we carry out a quantum process tomography approach for a set of non-trace-preserving maps. We introduce an operator $\mathcal{P}$ to characterize the state-dependent probability of success for the process under investigation. We also evaluate the result of approximating the process with a trace-preserving one.

In the four-dimensional Hilbert space, there exist 16 Heisenberg-Weyl (HW) covariant symmetric informationally complete positive-operator-valued measures (SIC POVMs) consisting of 256 fiducial states on a single orbit of the Clifford group. We explore the structure of these SIC POVMs by studying the symmetry transformations within a given SIC POVM and among different SIC POVMs. Furthermore, we find 16 additional SIC POVMs by a suitable regrouping of the 256 fiducial states, and show that they are unitarily equivalent to the original 16 SIC POVMs by establishing an explicit unitary transformation. We then reveal the additional structure of these SIC POVMs when the four-dimensional Hilbert space is taken as the tensor product of two-qubit Hilbert spaces. In particular, when either the standard product basis or the Bell basis are chosen as the defining basis of the HW group, in eight of the 16 HW covariant SIC POVMs, all fiducial states have the same concurrence of $\sqrt{2/5}$. These SIC POVMs are particularly appealing for an experimental implementation, since all fiducial states can be connected to each other with just local unitary transformations. In addition, we introduce a concise representation of the fiducial states with the aid of a suitable tabular arrangement of their parameters.

We present a configuration interaction (CI) method based on the Sturmian expansion for bound states of a two-electron atomic system. These Sturmian functions are solutions of one-electron quantum mechanical problems, where the eigenvalue is the magnitude of a short-range potential. Also, they fulfill the long-range boundary conditions of Coulomb potentials. We choose to expand the Sturmians of the CI basis using $L^2$ Laguerre-type functions. We compute ground and single-excited states energies for He and ${\mathrm{H}}^{-}$. Moreover, we are able to obtain energies and widths of double excited states of He, using a Sturmian basis with outgoing boundary conditions. In all cases, our ansatz outperforms other CI calculations, for similar basis size.

We report a precise measurement of the hyperfine interval in the $2P_{1/2}$ state of ${}^7\mathrm{Li}$. The transition from the ground state ($D_1$ line) is accessed using a diode laser and the technique of saturated-absorption spectroscopy in hot Li vapor. The interval is measured by locking an acousto-optic modulator to the frequency difference between the two hyperfine peaks. The measured interval of 92.040(6) MHz is consistent with an earlier measurement reported by us using an atomic-beam spectrometer [Das and Natarajan, J. Phys. B 41, 035001 (2008)]. The interval yields the magnetic dipole constant in the $P_{1/2}$ state as $A=46.047(3)$, which is discrepant from theoretical calculations by $>80$ kHz.

We have extended the multiconfiguration Hartree-Fock method for electron-impact ionization of atoms to investigate the effects of polarization and electron correlation of the target in the initial state. As a test case, the method is applied to calculate triple differential cross sections for electron-impact ionization of He atom at an excess energy of 2 eV for the coplanar ${\theta }_{12}=\pi$ geometry for equal and unequal energies of two final-state outgoing electrons. To determine the effects of electron correlation between the two outgoing electrons in the final state, the variationally determined screening potential approximation is used. It is found that target correlation in the initial state has smaller effect on the triple differential cross section but the polarization of the target by the incident electron has considerable effect on the triple differential cross section at low incident energy. The results are compared with absolute measurement and other available theoretical results.

We here report a theoretical study about the orientation effect on the total ionization cross sections for a single oriented water molecule. The theoretical description of the ionization process is performed within the first Born framework with a collisional system including an initial state composed of a projectile and a water target molecule described by a plane wave and an accurate one-center molecular wave function, respectively, and a final state constituted by a slow ejected electron represented by a Coulomb wave and a scattered (fast) electron projectile described by a plane wave. Secondary electron energetic distributions as well as total cross sections are then compared for particular target configurations pointing out strong alignment and orientation effects on the description of the ionization process.

The convergent close-coupling method has been applied to positron scattering on a helium atom in the $2\hspace{0.5em}{}^{3}S$ metastable state. For this system the positronium (Ps) formation channel is open even at zero scattering energy making the inclusion of the Ps channels especially important. Spin algebra is presented for the general case of arbitrary spins. A proof is given of the often-used assumption about the relationship between the amplitudes for ortho-positronium and para-positronium formation. The cross sections for scattering from $2\hspace{0.5em}{}^{3}S$ are shown to be significantly larger than those obtained for the ground state.

A four-component Fermi gas in one dimension with a short-range four-body interaction is shown to exhibit a one-dimensional analog of the BCS-BEC crossover. Its low-energy physics is governed by a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid with three spin gaps. The spin gaps are exponentially small in the weak coupling (BCS) limit where they arise from the charge-density-wave instability, and become large in the strong coupling (BEC) limit because of the formation of tightly bound tetramers. We investigate the ground-state energy, the sound velocity, and the gap spectrum in the BCS-BEC crossover and discuss exact relationships valid in our system. We also show that a one-dimensional analog of the Efimov effect occurs for five bosons while it is absent for fermions. Our work opens up a very rich field of universal few-body and many-body physics in one dimension.

We investigate the structure and stability of Bose-Einstein condensates of ${}^7\mathrm{Li}$ atoms with realistic van der Waals interactions by using the potential harmonic expansion method. Besides the known low-density metastable solution with a contact $\delta$-function interaction, we find a stable branch at a higher density which corresponds to the formation of an atomic cluster. Comparison with the results of a nonlocal effective interaction is also presented. We analyze the effect of trap size on the transition between the two branches of solutions. We also compute the loss rate of a Bose condensate due to two- and three-body collisions.

We investigate the quantum statistical properties of the light emitted by a quantum well interacting with squeezed light from a degenerate subthreshold optical parametric oscillator. We obtain analytical solutions for the pertinent quantum Langevin equations in the strong-coupling and low-excitation regimes. Using these solutions we calculate the intensity spectrum, autocorrelation function, and quadrature squeezing for the fluorescent light. We show that the fluorescent light exhibits bunching and quadrature squeezing. We also show that the squeezed light leads to narrowing of the width of the spectrum of the fluorescent light.

Breaking time-reversal symmetry is a prerequisite for accessing certain interesting many-body states such as fractional quantum Hall states. For polaritons, charge neutrality prevents magnetic fields from providing a direct symmetry-breaking mechanism and, similar to the situation in ultracold atomic gases, an effective magnetic field has to be synthesized. We show that in the circuit-QED architecture, this can be achieved by inserting simple superconducting circuits into the resonator junctions. In the presence of such coupling elements, constant parallel magnetic and electric fields suffice to break time-reversal symmetry. We support these theoretical predictions with numerical simulations for realistic sample parameters, specify general conditions under which time reversal is broken, and discuss the application to chiral Fock-state transfer, an on-chip circulator, and tunable band structure for the Kagome lattice.

We propose a simplified scheme for efficient 200-nm pulse generation in isotropic medium using 800-nm radiation. The observation and optimization of the fourth-order harmonic generation during two-color filamentation in air are reported. This parametric process is based on four-wave mixing of the fundamental and the second-order harmonic radiation of the Ti:sapphire laser. A systematic study of the influence of the laser intensity, the polarization, the chirp, and the pulse duration on the fourth-order harmonic output from the filaments has been carried out. The fourth-order harmonic conversion efficiency was estimated to be of the order of ${10}^{-4}$.

We investigate the four-wave mixing (FWM) phenomenon in a three-level bichromatic electromagnetically induced transparency system. Theoretical results predict that the FWM will exhibit a multipeak structure under bichromatic coupling fields. The stronger the coupling fields are, the more FWM the peaks should exhibit. Results of an experiment carried out with cold ${}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ atoms in a magneto-optical trap agree with the theoretical prediction.

The Turaev-Viro invariants are scalar topological invariants of compact, orientable $3$-manifolds. We give a quantum algorithm for additively approximating Turaev-Viro invariants of a manifold presented by a Heegaard splitting. The algorithm is motivated by the relationship between topological quantum computers and $(2+1)$-dimensional topological quantum field theories. Its accuracy is shown to be nontrivial, as the same algorithm, after efficient classical preprocessing, can solve any problem efficiently decidable by a quantum computer. Thus approximating certain Turaev-Viro invariants of manifolds presented by Heegaard splittings is a universal problem for quantum computation. This establishes a relation between the task of distinguishing nonhomeomorphic $3$-manifolds and the power of a general quantum computer.