The electron dynamics in $p\text{-He}$ and ${\text{He}}^{2+}\text{-He}$ collisions have been investigated on the level of the independent electron model by using the two-center basis generator method. Projectile angular-differential cross sections for various one- and two-electron processes involving electron transfer have been calculated with the eikonal approximation. Overall, the calculated cross sections are in good agreement with the most recent experimental cold target recoil ion momentum spectroscopy data taken at impact energies in the range from 40 to 630 keV/amu. This demonstrates, somewhat surprisingly, that electron correlations play but a minor role for the processes and the energies considered.

A characteristic dependence of the proton-induced $2s$ subshell ionization cross section generated by the nodal structure of the $2s$ wave function was probed via high-resolution measurements of the $L{\beta }_3$ $\left(L_1\text{−}{M}_3\right)$ and $L{\beta }_6$ $\left(L_3\text{−}{N}_1\right)$ x-ray lines of Ag. The intensity ratio of the measured lines depends strongly on the proton energy exhibiting a pronounced maximum around 0.4 MeV. The experimental intensities are critically compared to the theoretically predicted values. The latter were obtained using the ionization cross sections calculated within the semiclassical approximation employing hydrogenlike and Dirac-Fock electron wave functions.

We present here a four-body model for transfer-excitation collisions, which we call the four-body transfer-excitation (4BTE) model. Each two-body interaction is explicitly included in the 4BTE model, allowing us to study the effects of individual two-body interactions. We apply our model to fully differential cross sections for $\text{proton}+\text{helium}$ collisions, and study the effect of the incident projectile-atom interaction, the scattered projectile-ion interaction, the projectile-nuclear interaction, and electron correlation within the target atom.

We demonstrate a method of adiabatic population transfer from a single quantum state into a coherent superposition of states. The transfer is executed with femtosecond pulses, spectrally shaped in a simple and intuitive manner, which does not require iterative feedback-controlled loops. In contrast to nonadiabatic methods of excitation, our approach is not sensitive to the exact value of laser intensity. We show that the population transfer is complete, and analyze the possibility of controlling the relative phases and amplitudes of the excited eigenstates. We discuss the limitations of the proposed control methods due to the dynamic level shifts and suggest ways of reducing their influence.

We investigate population dynamics in $N$-level systems driven beyond the linear regime by a strong external field, which couples to the system through an operator with nonzero diagonal elements. As concrete example we consider the case of dipolar molecular systems. We identify limiting cases of the Hamiltonian leading to wave functions that can be written in terms of ordinary exponentials, and focus on the limits of slowly and rapidly varying fields of arbitrary strength. For rapidly varying fields we prove for arbitrary $N$ that the population dynamics is independent of the sign of the projection of the field onto the dipole coupling. In the opposite limit of slowly varying fields the population of the target level is optimized by a dipole resonance condition. As a result population transfer is maximized for one sign of the field and suppressed for the other one, so that a switch based on flopping the field polarization can be devised. For significant sign dependence the resonance linewidth with respect to the field strength is small. In the intermediate regime of moderate field variation, the integral of lowest order in the coupling can be rewritten as a sum of terms resembling the two limiting cases, plus correction terms for $N>2$, so that a less pronounced sign-dependence still exists.

We have observed Stückelberg oscillations in the dipole-dipole interaction between Rydberg atoms with an externally applied radio-frequency field. The oscillating rf field brings the interaction between cold Rydberg atoms in two separated volumes into resonance. We observe multiphoton transitions when varying the amplitude of the rf field and the static electric field offset. The angular momentum states we use show a quadratic Stark shift, which leads to a fundamentally different behavior than linearly shifting states. Both cases are studied theoretically using the Floquet approach and are compared. The amplitude of the sidebands, related to the interaction strength, is given by the Bessel function in the linearly shifting case and by the generalized Bessel function in the quadratically shifting case. The oscillatory behavior of both functions corresponds to Stückelberg oscillations, an interference effect described by the semiclassical Landau-Zener-Stückelberg model. The measurements prove coherent dipole-dipole interaction during at least $0.6\mu \text{s}$.

We investigate the two-dimensional weakly interacting rotating Bose-Einstein condensate by the tools of quantum information theory. The critical exponents of the ground-state fidelity susceptibility and the correlation length of the system are obtained for the sudden change of the ground state when the first vortex is formed. This sudden change can also be indicated by the ground state entanglement. We also find the single-particle entanglement can be an indicator of the angular momentums for some real ground states. The single-particle entanglement of fractional quantum Hall states such as Laughlin state and Pfaffian state is also studied.

We derive a generalized Gross-Pitaevskii density-functional equation appropriate to study the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of dimers formed of singlet spin-half Fermi pairs in the BEC-unitarity crossover while the dimer-dimer scattering length $a$ changes from 0 to $\infty$. Using an effective one-dimensional form of this equation, we study the phenomenon of dynamical self-trapping of a cigar-shaped Fermi superfluid in the entire BEC-unitarity crossover in a double-well potential. A simple two-mode model is constructed to provide analytical insights. We also discuss the consequence of our study on the self-trapping of an atomic BEC in a double-well potential.

The spatial and time evolutions of superradiant scattering are studied theoretically for a weak pump beam with different frequency components traveling along the long axis of an elongated Bose-Einstein condensate. Resulting from the analysis for mode competition between the different resonant channels and the local depletion of the spatial distribution in the superradiant Rayleigh scattering, a method of getting a large number of high-order forward modes by resonant frequency components of the pump beam is provided, which is beneficial to a lager momentum transfer in atom manipulation for the atom interferometry and atomic optics.

Particle sensing in optical tweezers systems provides information on the position, velocity, and force of the specimen particles. The conventional quadrant detection scheme is applied ubiquitously in optical tweezers experiments to quantify these parameters. In this paper, we show that quadrant detection is nonoptimal for particle sensing in optical tweezers and propose an alternative optimal particle sensing scheme based on spatial homodyne detection. A formalism for particle sensing in terms of transverse spatial modes is developed and numerical simulations of the efficacies of both quadrant and spatial homodyne detection are shown. We demonstrate that 1 order of magnitude improvement in particle sensing sensitivity can be achieved using spatial homodyne over quadrant detection.

Basing on the nonlinear wave equation as the reflection-free approximation, we study the self-focusing dynamics of laser pulses under rather general assumptions about media dispersion. The methods for qualitative investigation of the self-action dynamics of ultrashort pulses are developed. It is shown that a new effect here is steepening of the longitudinal pulse profile, which is determined by the dependence of group velocity on the amplitude. Results of numerical simulation in media without dispersion and with anomalous dispersion confirm the conclusion about outrunning formation of a shock wave during pulse self-focusing. The formation of a power spectrum of the field, which is characteristic for a shock wave, is retained also when medium ionization is taken into account. In the case of a normal-dispersion medium, nonlinear dispersion leads to a violation of the symmetry in the longitudinal splitting of the pulse in the process of self-focusing. The possibility of tuning of the optical-pulse frequency into the short-wave area is shown for the pulse self-action near the zero-dispersion point.

The polarization behavior of the electromagnetic waves under external electric field in the periodically poled optical superlattice is experimentally observed, which reveals that for the QPM wavelengths [fulfilling the quasi-phase-matched (QPM) condition] the evolution of the polarization exhibits generated paths along the Poincare sphere, but for the NQPM wavelength (not fulfilling the QPM condition) it will split into discrete paths. These phenomena are likely to promote a novel method for a precise polarization control.

It is shown that an efficient, well-directional single-photon source can be realized via a four-wave mixing process in a cavity. The probability of producing a single-photon state nearly approaches 50%. The bandwidth of single-photons generated in this way is controllable, which is determined by that of the input pulse. Furthermore, we propose a scheme to generate a coherent multichannel single-photon source, which might have significant applications in wavelength division multiplexing quantum key distribution.

We derive an expression for the magnetic blackbody shift of hyperfine transitions such as the cesium primary reference transition which defines the second. The shift is found to be a complicated function of temperature, and has a $T^2$ dependence only in the high-temperature limit. We also calculate the shift of ground-state $p_{1/2}$ hyperfine transitions which have been proposed as new atomic clock transitions. In this case interaction with the $p_{3/2}$ fine-structure multiplet may be the dominant effect.

Spatial qudit states can be realized by using multislits to discretize the transverse momentum of a photon. The merit of this kind of spatial qudit states is that the implementation of higher-dimensional qudits is relatively easy. As we have recently shown, the quantum states of these spatial qudits can be analyzed by scanning a single interference pattern. This method of single scan tomography can also be applied at higher dimensions, but the reconstruction becomes more sensitive to smaller details of the scanned patterns as the dimensions increase. In this paper, we investigate the effect of finite measurement resolution on the single scan tomography of spatial qutrits. Realistic measurement operators describing the spatial resolution of the measurement are introduced and the corresponding pattern functions for quantum state reconstruction are derived. We use the pattern functions to analyze experimental results for entangled pairs of spatial qutrits generated by spontaneous parametric downconversion. It is shown that a reliable reconstruction of the quantum state can be achieved with finite measurement resolution if this limitation of the measurement is included in the pattern functions of single scan tomography.

We generalize the recently proposed Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger tripartite protocol [A. Galiautdinov and J. M. Martinis, Phys. Rev. A 78, 010305(R) (2008)] to fully connected networks of weakly coupled qubits interacting by way of anisotropic Heisenberg exchange $g\left(XX+YY\right)+\tilde{g}ZZ$. Our model differs from the more familiar Ising-Heisenberg chain in that here every qubit interacts with every other qubit in the circuit. The assumption of identical couplings on all qubit pairs allows an elegant proof of the protocol for arbitrary $N$. In order to further make contact with experiment, we study fidelity degradation due to coupling imperfections by numerically simulating the $N=3$ and 4 cases. Our simulations indicate that the best fidelity at unequal couplings is achieved when (a) the system is initially prepared in the uniform superposition state (similarly to how it is done in the ideal case) and (b) the entangling time and the final rotations on each of the qubits are appropriately adjusted.

We report a prolonged coherence time of the collective spin wave of a thermal ${}^{87}\text{R}\text{b}$ atomic ensemble in a paraffin-coated cell. The spin wave is prepared through a stimulated Raman process. The long coherence time is achieved by prolonging the lifetime of the spins with paraffin coating and minimize dephasing with optimal experimental configuration. The observation of the long-time-delayed-stimulated Stokes signal in the writing process suggests the prolonged lifetime of the prepared spins; a direct measurement of the decay of anti-Stokes signal in the reading process shows the coherence time is up to $300\mu \text{s}$ after minimizing dephasing. This is 100 times longer than the reported coherence time in the similar experiments in thermal atomic ensembles based on the Duan-Lukin-Cirac-Zoller and its improved protocols. This prolonged coherence time sets the upper limit of the memory time in quantum repeaters based on such protocols, which is crucial for the realization of long-distance quantum communication. The previous reported fluorescence background in the writing process due to collision in a sample cell with buffer gas is also reduced in a cell without buffer gas.

Entanglement between two macroscopic atomic ensembles induced by measurement on an ancillary light system has proven to be a powerful method for engineering quantum memories and quantum state transfer. Here we investigate the feasibility of such methods for generation, manipulation, and detection of genuine multipartite entanglement (Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger and clusterlike states) between mesoscopic atomic ensembles without the need of individual addressing of the samples. Our results extend in a nontrivial way the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen entanglement between two macroscopic gas samples reported experimentally in [B. Julsgaard, A. Kozhekin, and E. Polzik, Nature (London) 413, 400 (2001)]. We find that under realistic conditions, a second orthogonal light pulse interacting with the atomic samples, can modify and even reverse the entangling action of the first one leaving the samples in a separable state.

We develop a geometric approach to quantify the capability of creating entanglement for a general physical interaction acting on two qubits. We use the entanglement measure proposed by us for $N$-qubit pure states [Ali Saif M. Hassan and Pramod S. Joag, Phys. Rev. A 77, 062334 (2008)]. This geometric method has the distinct advantage that it gives the experimentally implementable criteria to ensure the optimal entanglement production rate without requiring a detailed knowledge of the state of the two qubit system. For the production of entanglement in practice, we need criteria for optimal entanglement production, which can be checked in situ without any need to know the state, as experimentally finding out the state of a quantum system is generally a formidable task. Further, we use our method to quantify the entanglement capacity in higher level and multipartite systems. We quantify the entanglement capacity for two qutrits and find the maximal entanglement generation rate and the corresponding state for the general isotropic interaction between qutrits, using the entanglement measure of $N$-qudit pure states proposed by us [Ali Saif M. Hassan and Pramod S. Joag, Phys. Rev. A 80, 042302 (2009)]. Next we quantify the genuine three qubit entanglement capacity for a general interaction between qubits. We obtain the maximum entanglement generation rate and the corresponding three qubit state for a general isotropic interaction between qubits. The state maximizing the entanglement generation rate is of the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger class. To the best of our knowledge, the entanglement capacities for two qutrit and three qubit systems have not been reported earlier.

We report on experimental implementation of the optimal universal asymmetric $1\to 2$ quantum cloning machine for qubits encoded into polarization states of single photons. Our linear-optical machine performs asymmetric cloning by partially symmetrizing the input polarization state of signal photon and a blank copy idler photon prepared in a maximally mixed state. We show that the employed method of measurement of mean clone fidelities exhibits strong resilience to imperfect calibration of the relative efficiencies of single-photon detectors used in the experiment. Reliable characterization of the quantum cloner is thus possible even when precise detector calibration is difficult to achieve.