We investigate a classical phase-space approach of matter-wave propagation based on the truncated Wigner equation (TWE). We show that such a description is suitable for ideal matter waves in quadratic time-dependent confinement as well as for harmonically trapped Bose-Einstein condensates in the Thomas-Fermi regime. In arbitrary interacting regimes, the TWE combined with the moment method yields the low-energy spectrum of a condensate as predicted by independent variational methods. TWE also gives the right breathing-mode frequency for long-ranged interactions decaying as $1/r^2$ in three dimensions and for a contact potential in two dimensions. Quantum signatures, beyond the TWE, may only be found in the condensate dynamics beyond the regimes of classical phase-space propagation identified here.

We examine the relation between second-order coherence and resolution in the interferometric detection of phase shifts. While for classical thermal light resolution and second-order coherence are synonymous, we show that for quantum light beams reaching optimum precision second-order coherence and resolution become antithetical.

We propose a detailed study of the geometric entanglement properties of pure symmetric $N$-qubit states, focusing more particularly on the identification of symmetric states with a high geometric entanglement and how their entanglement behaves asymptotically for large $N$. We show that much higher geometric entanglement with improved asymptotical behavior can be obtained in comparison with the highly entangled balanced Dicke states studied previously. We also derive an upper bound for the geometric measure of entanglement of symmetric states. The connection with the quantumness of a state is discussed.

We have computed angular distributions of scattered ground-state hydrogen atoms after interaction of $49$-, $25$-, $6.25$-, and $1$-keV proton beams with an Al($111$) surface under a grazing angle of incidence of $0.56$${}^{°}$. Capture and loss for resonant and Auger processes are taken into account, as well as the surface-plasmon-assisted electron-capture mechanism. Consideration of all these processes makes it possible to obtain a good agreement with the available experimental result at $25$ keV ($v=1$ a.u.). For the other impact energies considered, our predictive results have to be compared to measurements; such comparisons could make it possible to discriminate between the various theoretical results available in the literature for the resonant process which are used in the present dynamical calculations.

Both linear and nonlinear scattering and absorption of a laser pulse by spherical nanoclusters with free electrons and with a diffuse surface are considered in the collisionless hydrodynamics approximation. The developed model of forced collective motion of electrons confined to a cluster permits one consistently to introduce into the theory all the sources of nonlinearity, as well as the inhomogeneity of the cluster near its boundary. Two different perturbation theories corresponding to different laser intensity ranges are developed in this context, and both cold metal clusters and hot laser-heated or -ionized clusters are considered within the same approach. In the present article, after developing the full nonlinear model, the linear response to the laser field of the free-electron cluster with diffuse surface is investigated in detail, especially the properties of the linear Mie resonance (width and position). Under certain conditions, depending on the various cluster parameters secondary resonances are found. The properties of resonance-enhanced third-order harmonic generation and nonlinear laser absorption and their dependence on the shape of the diffuse surface will be presented separately.

We report an observation of spectral gain narrowing of a high-order harmonic amplified by a soft-x-ray optical-field-ionized plasma. The temporal coherence and spectral linewidth of both the seeded and unseeded soft-x-ray lasers were experimentally measured using a varying-path-difference interferometer. The results showed that the high-order harmonic is subject to a strong spectral narrowing during its propagation in the plasma amplifier without rebroadening at saturation. This is in good agreement with a radiative transfer calculation including gain narrowing and saturation rebroadening.

An observation of the internal structure of the $L$-shell hypersatellite x rays resulting from the one-photon decay of $L^{-2}$ double-vacancy states in palladium multiply ionized by oxygen ions is reported. The Pd $L_3\to M_{4,5}$ x-ray spectrum was measured with a von Hamos high-resolution crystal spectrometer. The complex shape of the observed spectrum could be interpreted in detail using relativistic multiconfiguration Dirac-Fock calculations. The relative intensities of the measured x rays were found to be in good agreement with semiclassical approximation calculations using relativistic Dirac-Hartree-Fock wave functions.

We study how entanglement among the register qubits affects the gate fidelity in the one-way quantum computation if a measurement is inaccurate. We derive an inequality that shows that the mean gate fidelity is upper bounded by a decreasing function of the magnitude of the error of the measurement and the amount of the entanglement between the measured qubit and other register qubits. The consequence of this inequality is that, for a given amount of entanglement, which is theoretically calculated once the algorithm is fixed, we can estimate from this inequality how small the magnitude of the error should be in order not to make the gate fidelity below a threshold, which is specified by a technical requirement in a particular experimental setup or by the threshold theorem of the fault-tolerant quantum computation.

We trap atoms in versatile two-dimensional (2D) arrays of optical potentials, prepare flexible 2D spin configurations, perform site-selective coherent manipulation, and demonstrate the implementation of simultaneous measurements of different system properties, such as dephasing and decoherence. This approach for the flexible manipulation of atomic quantum systems is based on the combination of 2D arrays of microlenses and 2D arrays of liquid crystal light modulators. This offers extended types of control for the investigation of quantum degenerate gases, quantum information processing, and quantum simulations.

We experimentally demonstrate coherent control of two light filaments in air generated by ultrafast laser pulses, as proposed by Xi et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 025003 (2006)]. We show that depending on the relative phase and the incidence angle, the filaments can experience fusion, repulsion, energy redistribution, and spiral motion for propagation in air. By translating the initial beams on subwavelength scales, we achieve $~1$-mm transverse deflection of approximately $0.5$-mJ energy for parallel propagation and $7$${}^{°}$ angular deflection for spiral motion in $3$-m propagation. Our approach using the relative beam phases to reliably control propagation of femtosecond light filaments is potentially applicable to remote sensing and lightning guiding.

We show that an optical parametric oscillator which is simultaneously resonant for several modes, either spatial or temporal, generates both below and above threshold a multimode nonclassical state of light consisting of squeezed vacuum states in all the nonoscillating modes. We confirm this prediction by an experiment dealing with the degenerate TEM${}_{01}$ and TEM${}_{10}$ modes. We show the conservation of nonclassical properties when the threshold is crossed. The experiment is made possible by the implementation of a new method to lock the relative phase of the pump and the injected beam.

We construct exact solutions of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation for solitary vortices, and approximate ones for fundamental solitons, in two-dimensional models of Bose-Einstein condensates with a spatially modulated nonlinearity of either sign and a harmonic trapping potential. The number of vortex-soliton (VS) modes is determined by the discrete energy spectrum of a related linear Schrödinger equation. The VS families in the system with the attractive and repulsive nonlinearity are mutually complementary. Stable VSs with vorticity $S⩾2$ and those corresponding to higher-order radial states are reported, in the case of the attraction and repulsion, respectively.

Quantum walks are powerful tools not only for constructing the quantum speedup algorithms but also for describing specific models in physical processes. Furthermore, the discrete time quantum walk has been experimentally realized in various setups. We apply the concept of the quantum walk to the problems in quantum foundations. We show that randomness and the arrow of time in the quantum walk gradually emerge by periodic projective measurements from the mathematically obtained limit distribution under the time-scale transformation.

We use the Unruh effect to analyze the dynamics of classical and quantum correlations for a two-qubit system when one of them is uniformly accelerated for a finite amount of proper time. We show that the quantum correlation is completely destroyed in the limit of infinite acceleration, while the classical one remains nonzero. In particular, we show that such correlations exhibit the so-called sudden-change behavior as a function of acceleration. Eventually, we discuss how our results can be interpreted when the system lies in the vicinity of the event horizon of a Schwarzschild black hole.

We demonstrate that there exists a universal, near-optimal recovery map—the transpose channel—for approximate quantum error-correcting codes, where optimality is defined using the worst-case fidelity. Using the transpose channel, we provide an alternative interpretation of the standard quantum error correction (QEC) conditions and generalize them to a set of conditions for approximate QEC (AQEC) codes. This forms the basis of a simple algorithm for finding AQEC codes. Our analytical approach is a departure from earlier work relying on exhaustive numerical search for the optimal recovery map, with optimality defined based on entanglement fidelity. For the practically useful case of codes encoding a single qubit of information, our algorithm is particularly easy to implement.

The goal of this paper is to extend the framework of finite-size analysis recently developed for quantum key distribution to continuous-variable protocols. We do not solve this problem completely here, and we mainly consider the finite-size effects on the parameter estimation procedure. Despite the fact that some questions are left open, we are able to give an estimation of the secret key rate for protocols which do not contain a postselection procedure. As expected, these results are significantly more pessimistic than those obtained in the asymptotic regime. However, we show that recent continuous-variable protocols are able to provide fully secure secret keys in the finite-size scenario, over distances larger than $50$ km.

Through concurrence, we characterize the entanglement properties of optical coherent-state qubits subject to an amplitude damping channel. We investigate the distillation capabilities of known error-correcting codes and obtain upper bounds on the entanglement depending on the nonorthogonality of the coherent states and the channel damping parameter. This work provides a full quantitative analysis of these photon-loss codes which are naturally reminiscent of the standard qubit codes against Pauli errors.

We report a cluster of results on $k$-QSAT, the problem of quantum satisfiability for $k$-qubit projectors which generalizes classical satisfiability with $k$-bit clauses to the quantum setting. First we define the $\mathit{NP}$-complete problem of product satisfiability and give a geometrical criterion for deciding when a QSAT interaction graph is product satisfiable with positive probability. We show that the same criterion suffices to establish quantum satisfiability for all projectors. Second, we apply these results to the random graph ensemble with generic projectors and obtain improved lower bounds on the location of the SAT-unSAT transition. Third, we present numerical results on random, generic satisfiability which provide estimates for the location of the transition for $k=3$ and $k=4$ and mild evidence for the existence of a phase which is satisfiable by entangled states alone.

We study the evolution of quantum entanglement during exciton energy transfer (EET) in a network model of the Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) complex, a biological pigment-protein complex involved in the early steps of photosynthesis in sulfur bacteria. The influence of Markovian as well as spatially and temporally correlated (non-Markovian) noise on the generation of entanglement across distinct chromophores (site entanglement) and different excitonic eigenstates (mode entanglement) is studied for different injection mechanisms, including thermal and coherent laser excitation. Additionally, we study the entangling power of the FMO complex under natural operating conditions. While quantum information processing tends to favor maximal entanglement, near unit EET is achieved as the result of an intricate interplay between coherent and noisy processes where the initial part of the evolution displays intermediate values of both forms of entanglement.