We present analytical investigation of the nonlinear dynamics of a degenerate optical parametric oscillator with periodic modulation of transverse refraction index. By a proper choice of the injected external field that must compensate for losses and match with the modulation period, nonlinear optical cavities can exhibit dissipative Bloch waves which are attracting solutions of nonequilibrium system. This allows us to propose method of experimental visualization of the band structure of the cavity medium. Using multiple-scale expansion near the leasing threshold, we obtain the equation of evolution of the small-amplitude envelop of the signal field which appears strongly affected by the periodic modulation of the refractive index. We discuss the physical meaning of the obtained equation.

Generation of polarization-entangled photon pairs with a precise timing through down-conversion of femtosecond pulses is often faced with a degraded polarization entanglement quality. In a previous experiment, we have shown that this degradation is induced by spectral distinguishability between the two decay paths, in accordance with theoretical predictions. Here, we present an experimental study of the spectral compensation scheme proposed and first implemented by Kim and Grice [J. Mod. Opt. 49, 2309 (2002)]. By measuring the joint spectral properties of the polarization correlations of the photon pairs, we show that the spectral distinguishability between the down-converted components is eliminated. This scheme results in a polarization visibility of $97.9\pm 0.5\%$ without any spectral filtering.

We experimentally demonstrate that thermal radiation from a micron-sized dielectric particle depends sensitively on its size and shape through the cavity quantum-electrodynamic effect. Our laser trapping technique levitated a high-temperature microsphere of ${\text{Al}}_2{\text{O}}_3$ and enabled emission spectroscopy of the single particle. As the particle becomes smaller, a blackbodylike spectrum turns into a spectrum dominated by multiple peaks resonant with whispering gallery modes of the spherical resonator. The observed sharp frequency selectivity is applicable to spectral control of thermal radiation.

We present a general and versatile technique of population transfer based on parallel adiabatic passage by femtosecond shaped pulses. Their amplitude and phase are specifically designed to optimize the adiabatic passage corresponding to parallel eigenvalues at all times. We show that this technique allows the robust adiabatic population transfer in a Raman system with the total pulse area as low as $3\pi$, corresponding to a fluence of one order of magnitude below the conventional stimulated Raman adiabatic passage process. This process of short duration, typically picosecond and subpicosecond, is easily implementable with the modern pulse shaper technology and opens the possibility of ultrafast robust population transfer with interesting applications in quantum information processing.

A generalized theoretical description of a light-matter interaction beyond a dipole approximation is developed on the basis of the multipolar Hamiltonian with the aim of understanding the near-field excitation of molecules at the 1 nm scale. The theory is formulated for a system consisting of a molecule and a near field, where a nonuniform electric field plays a crucial role. The nonuniform light-matter interaction is expressed in terms of a spatial integral of the inner product of the total polarization of a molecule and an electric field so that the polarization is treated rigorously without invoking the conventional dipole approximation. A nonuniform electronic excitation of a molecule is demonstrated by solving a time-dependent Kohn-Sham equation in real space and real time with an implementation of the nonuniform light-matter interaction. The computations are performed to a linear chain molecule of dicyanodiacetylene $\left({\text{NC}}_6\text{N}\right)$. The nonuniform electronic excitation clearly shows inhomogeneous electron dynamics in sharp contrast to the dynamics induced by a uniform electronic excitation under the dipole approximation. Despite the inversion symmetry of ${\text{NC}}_6\text{N}$, the nonuniform excitation generates even harmonics in addition to the odd ones. Higher-order nonlinear optical response and quadrupole excitation are also observed.

We consider the dynamics of a movable mirror (cantilever) of a cavity coupled through radiation pressure to the light scattered from ultracold atoms in an optical lattice. Scattering from different atomic quantum states creates different quantum states of the scattered light, which can be distinguished by measurements of the displacement spectrum of the cantilever. We show that for large pump intensities the steady-state displacement of the cantilever shows bistable behavior. Due to atomic back action, the displacement spectrum of the cantilever is modified and depends on the position of the condensate in the Brillouin zone. We further analyze the occurrence of splitting of the normal mode into three modes due to mixing of the mechanical motion with the fluctuations of the cavity field and the fluctuations of the condensate with finite atomic two-body interaction.

We present a scheme aiming at improving the sensitivity of a torsion pendulum by means of radiation-pressure-induced optical spring. Two partial-reflective mirrors are installed on the opposite sides of a torsion pendulum, and one high-reflective mirror is mounted at the end of the torsion beam so that two identical Fabry-Perot cavities can be formed and aligned in series. Due to the antisymmetric radiation pressures acting on the opposite sides of the torsion beam, a negative restoring coefficient can be generated within a certain dynamic range, such that both the resultant torsional rigidity and the resonant frequency of the torsion pendulum are reduced, and the minimum detectable response torque in high-frequency region can be reduced accordingly.

We investigate harmonic generation from $\text{H}_2{}^{+}$ molecules driven by intense few-cycle laser pulses whose linearly polarization axis makes an arbitrary angle $\chi$ with respect to the molecular axis. The $\text{H}_2{}^{+}$ molecule is considered initially in various orbitals with nodal planes. It is found that a strong enhancement of high-order harmonics (HOHs) occurs when the laser polarization axis overlaps with major axes of electron distribution in the active orbital, while broad suppression of HOHs occurs when the laser polarization axis is parallel to a nodal plane of the active molecular orbital. We show that this harmonic suppression is enhanced by destructive interferences when the nodal and the laser polarization axes are parallel to the internuclear axis, which leads to a shortening of the harmonic cutoff. It follows that the orientation dependence of HOHs intensities mimics the electronic density in active orbitals through the angular dependence of ionization and recombination processes.

We studied spin-dependent two-body inelastic collisions in $F=2$ ${}^{87}\text{R}\text{b}$ Bose-Einstein condensates both experimentally and theoretically. The ${}^{87}\text{R}\text{b}$ condensates were confined in an optical trap and selectively prepared in various spin states in the $F=2$ manifold at a magnetic field of 3.0 G. The measured atom loss rates depend on the spin states of colliding atoms. We measured two fundamental loss coefficients for two-body inelastic collisions with total spins of 0 and 2. The loss coefficients determine the loss rates of all the spin pairs. The experimental results for mixtures of all spin combinations are in good agreement with numerical solutions of the Gross-Pitaevskii equations that include the effect of a magnetic field gradient.

We study the propagation of a density wave in a magnetically trapped Bose-Einstein condensate at finite temperatures. The thermal cloud is in the hydrodynamic regime and the system is therefore described by the two-fluid model. A phase-contrast imaging technique is used to image the cloud of atoms and allows us to observe small density excitations. The propagation of the density wave in the condensate is used to determine the speed of sound as a function of the temperature. We find the speed of sound to be in good agreement with calculations based on the Landau two-fluid model.

We observe the formation of shock waves in a Bose-Einstein condensate containing a large number of sodium atoms. The shock wave is initiated with a repulsive blue-detuned light barrier, intersecting the Bose-Einstein condensate, after which two shock fronts appear. We observe breaking of these waves when the size of these waves approaches the healing length of the condensate. At this time, the wave front splits into two parts and clear fringes appear. The experiment is modeled using an effective one-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii-like equation and gives excellent quantitative agreement with the experiment, even though matter waves with wavelengths two orders of magnitude smaller than the healing length are present. In these experiments, no significant heating or particle loss is observed.

Quantum imaging with a thermal source of fermions is analyzed and compared with that of bosons. Due to the Pauli exclusive principle and Fermi-Dirac statistics, fermions can manifest antibunching effects in the second-order correlation function. Our analysis finds that quantum imaging with free fermions can construct dark patterns against a bright intensity background. This distinguishing feature highlights the quantum nature of fermions without any classical analog. A scheme of magnifying ghost imaging of an electron microscope is also proposed.

We establish a general propagation model to describe the spin Hall effect of light beam in left-handed materials (LHMs). A spin-dependent shift of the beam centroid perpendicular to the refractive index gradient for the light beam through an air-LHM interface is demonstrated. For a certain circularly polarized component, whether the transverse shift is positive or negative depends on the magnitude of the refractive index gradient. Very surprisingly, the spin Hall effect in the LHM is unreversed, although the sign of refractive index gradient is reversed. The physics underlying this counterintuitive effect is that the spin angular momentum of photons is unreversed. Further, we reveal that the angular shift in the LHM is reversed due to the negative diffraction. These findings provide alternative evidence for that the linear momentum of photons is reversed, while the spin angular momentum is unreversed in the LHM.

The noncontextuality of quantum mechanics can be directly tested by measuring two entangled particles with more than two outcomes per particle. The two associated contexts are “interlinked” by common observables.

We introduce a fundamental property of waveguides induced by the forces of the guided light, namely, the ability to self-align or be in instability. A nanoscale waveguide broken by an offset and a gap may tend to self-align to form a continuous waveguide. Conversely, depending on the geometry and light polarization, the two parts of the waveguide may be deflected away from each other, thus, being in an unstable state. These effects are unique as they rely on the presence of both the guided mode and the scattered light. Strong self-alignment forces, in both the transverse and longitudinal directions, may be facilitated by near field interaction with polarization surface charges.

We demonstrate and characterize two coherent phenomena that can mitigate the effects of laser phase noise for electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT): a laser-power-broadening-resistant resonance in the transmitted intensity cross correlation between EIT optical fields, and a resonant suppression of the conversion of laser phase noise to intensity noise when one-photon noise dominates over two-photon-detuning noise. Our experimental observations are in good agreement with both an intuitive physical picture and numerical calculations. The results have wide-ranging applications to spectroscopy, atomic clocks, and magnetometers.

We investigate an entanglement purification protocol with double-selection process, which works under imperfect local operations. Compared with the usual protocol with single selection, this double-selection method has higher noise thresholds for the local operations and quantum communication channels and achieves higher fidelity of purified states. It also provides a yield comparable to that of the usual protocol with single selection. We discuss on general grounds how some of the errors which are introduced by local operations are left as intrinsically undetectable. The undetectable errors place a general upper bound on the purification fidelity. The double selection is a simple method to remove all the detectable errors in the first order, so that the upper bound on the fidelity is achieved in the low-noise regime. The double selection is further applied to purification of multipartite entanglement such as two-colorable graph states.

Two-photon transitions between atomic states of total electronic angular-momentum $J_a=0$ and $J_b=1$ are forbidden when the photons are of the same energy. This selection rule is analogous to the Landau-Yang theorem in particle physics that forbids decays of vector particle into two photons. It arises because it is impossible to construct a total angular-momentum $J_{2\gamma }=1$ quantum-mechanical state of two photons that is permutation symmetric, as required by Bose-Einstein statistics. In atoms with nonzero nuclear spin, the selection rule can be violated due to hyperfine interactions. Two distinct mechanisms responsible for the hyperfine-induced two-photon transitions are identified, and the hyperfine structure of the induced transitions is evaluated. The selection rule is also relaxed, even for zero-nuclear-spin atoms, by application of an external magnetic field. Once again, there are two similar mechanisms at play: Zeeman splitting of the intermediate-state sublevels, and off-diagonal mixing of states with different total electronic angular momentum in the final state. The present theoretical treatment is relevant to the ongoing experimental search for a possible Bose-Einstein-statistics violation using two-photon transitions in barium, where the hyperfine-induced transitions have been recently observed, and the magnetic-field-induced transitions are being considered both as a possible systematic effect, and as a way to calibrate the measurement.

An alternating-gradient electric guide provides a way to transport a wide variety of polar molecules, including those in high-field-seeking states. We investigate the motion of polar molecules in such a guide by measuring the transmission of CaF molecules in their high-field-seeking ground state, with the guide operating at a variety of switching frequencies and voltages. We model the guide using analytical and numerical techniques and compare the predictions of these models to the experimental results and to one another. The analytical results are approximate but provide simple and useful estimates for the maximum phase-space acceptance of the guide and for the switching frequency required. The numerical methods provide more accurate results over the full range of switching frequencies. Our investigation shows that, even when the fields are static, some high-field-seeking molecules are able to pass through the guide on metastable trajectories. We show that the maximum possible transmission requires accurate alignment within the guide and between the guide and detector.

We examine the superfluid properties of a one-dimensional (1D) Bose gas in a ring trap based on the model of Lieb and Liniger. While the 1D Bose gas has nonclassical rotational inertia and exhibits quantization of velocities, the metastability of currents depends sensitively on the strength of interactions in the gas: the stronger the interactions, the faster the current decays. It is shown that the Landau critical velocity is zero in the thermodynamic limit due to the first supercurrent state, which has zero energy and finite probability of excitation. We calculate the energy dissipation rate of ring currents in the presence of weak defects, which should be observable on experimental time scales.