Theoretical consideration of the propagation of femtosecond Gaussian pulses in a one-dimensional composite medium, consisting of alternating self-focusing and self-defocusing waveguide segments with normal group-velocity dispersion, predicts the generation of trains of bright solitons when an optical pulse first propagates in the self-focusing segment, followed by the self-defocusing one. The multiple temporal compression process, based on this setting, offers a method for controllable generation of multiple ultrashort temporal solitons. Numerical solutions of the generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation modeling this system demonstrate that the intrapulse Raman scattering plays a major role in the temporal and spectral dynamics. Collisions between ultrashort solitons with different central wavelengths are addressed too. The paper provides a procedure for producing controllable trains of ultrashort temporal solitons by incident optical pulses propagating in a composite medium.

The measurement of vector magnetic fields with high sensitivity and spatial resolution is important for both fundamental science and engineering applications. In particular, magnetic-field sensing with nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond is a promising approach that can outperform existing methods. Recent studies have demonstrated vector dc magnetic-field sensing with perfectly aligned NV centers, which showed a higher readout contrast than NV centers having four equally distributed orientations. However, to estimate the azimuthal angle of the target magnetic field with respect to the NV axis in these previous approaches, it is necessary to apply a strong reference dc magnetic field, which can perturb the system to be measured. This is a crucial problem, especially when attempting to measure vector magnetic fields from materials that are sensitive to applied dc magnetic fields. Here, we propose a method to measure vector dc magnetic fields using perfectly aligned NV centers without reference dc magnetic fields. This method can be performed even with a single NV center. More specifically, we use the direction of linearly polarized microwave fields to induce Rabi oscillation as a reference and we estimate the azimuthal angle of the target fields from the Rabi frequency. We further demonstrate the potential of our method to improve sensitivity by using entangled states to overcome the standard quantum limit. Our method of using a reference microwave field is an alternative technique for sensitive vector dc magnetic-field sensing.

Quantum machine learning is the field that aims to integrate machine learning with quantum computation. In recent years, the field has emerged as an active research area with the potential to bring new insights to classical machine learning problems. One of the challenges in the field is to explore the expressibility of parametrized quantum circuits and their ability to be universal function approximators, as classical neural networks are. Recent works have shown that, with a quantum supervised learning model, we can fit any one-dimensional Fourier series, proving their universality. However, models for multidimensional functions have not been explored in the same level of detail. In this work, we study the expressibility of various types of circuit Ansätze that generate multidimensional Fourier series. We found that, for some Ansätze, the degrees of freedom required for fitting such functions grow faster than the available degrees in the Hilbert space generated by the circuits. For example, single-qudit models have limited power to represent arbitrary multidimensional Fourier series. Despite this, we show that we can enlarge the Hilbert space of the circuit by using more qudits or higher local dimensions to meet the degrees of freedom requirements, thus ensuring the universality of the models.

Mode-pairing quantum key distribution (MP-QKD) is an easy-to-implement scheme that transcends the Pirandola-Laurenza-Ottaviani-Banchi bound without using quantum repeaters. In this paper, we present an improvement of the performance of MP-QKD using an advantage distillation method. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme extends the transmission distance significantly with a channel loss exceeding 7.6 dB. Moreover, the scheme tolerates a maximum quantum bit error rate of 8.9%, which is nearly twice that of the original MP-QKD. In particular, as the system misalignment error increases, the expandable distance of the proposed scheme also increases. The proposed system is expected to promote the practical implementation of MP-QKD in a wide range of applications, particularly in scenarios involving high channel losses and system errors.

Laboratory-scale precision experiments are a promising approach to searching for physics beyond the standard model. Noncentrosymmetric solids offer favorable statistical sensitivity for efforts that search for new fields, whose interactions violate the discrete parity and time-reversal symmetries. One example is the cosmic axion spin precession experiment (CASPEr), which can be sensitive to the defining interaction of the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) axion dark matter with gluons in atomic nuclei. The effective electric field is the parameter that quantifies the sensitivity of such experiments to new physics. We describe the theoretical approach to calculating the effective electric field for noncentrosymmetric sites in ionic insulating solids. We consider the specific example of the ${\mathrm{EuCl}}_3·6{\mathrm{H}}_2\mathrm{O}$ crystal, which is a particularly promising material. The optimistic estimate of the effective electric field for the ${}^{153}\mathrm{Eu}$ isotope in this crystal is $10\mathrm{MV}/\mathrm{cm}$. The calculation uncertainty is estimated to be two orders of magnitude, dominated by the evaluation of the europium nuclear Schiff moment.

We present a theoretical investigation of an efficient method for generating macroscopic high-order harmonics with a smooth broadband continuous spectrum structure driven by a temporal asymmetric laser field. Our study demonstrates that selected continuous high-order harmonic spectra can support isolated attosecond pulses (IAPs) in the extreme ultraviolet region. Time-frequency analysis of high-order harmonics reveals that the smooth broadband continuous spectrum is dominated by long-trajectory electron emissions. The quantitative analysis of the phase mismatching reveals that the generation of the IAP is caused by the favorable transient phase matching of the long-trajectory electron emissions in the macroscopic medium, which can be attributed to the spatiotemporal reshaping of the laser waveform at high gas pressure. Furthermore, we also investigate the dependency of IAP on gas pressure and laser chirp parameters and find that the pulse width of the generated IAPs can be controlled by adjusting the gas pressure and the chirp parameters.

Collisions of particles prepared in non-plane-wave states with a nontrivial phase structure, such as vortex states carrying an adjustable orbital angular momentum (OAM), offer novel opportunities in atomic, nuclear, and high-energy physics unavailable for traditional scattering experiments. Recently, it was argued that photoinduced processes such as $\gamma d\to pn$ and $\gamma p\to {\mathrm{\Delta }}^{+}$ initiated by a high-energy vortex photon should display a remarkable threshold shift and a sizable cross-section enhancement as the impact parameter $b$ of the target hadron with respect to the vortex photon axis goes to zero. In this work we explore theoretically whether this effect exists within the quantum-field-theoretic treatment of the scattering process. We do not rely on the semiclassical assumption of a pointlike nonspreading target particle and instead consider the toy process of heavy-particle pair production in collisions of two light particles prepared as Laguerre-Gaussian and compact Gaussian wave packets, paying particular attention to the threshold behavior of the cross section. We observe threshold smearing due to nonmonochromaticity of the wave packets, but we do not confirm the near-threshold enhancement. Instead we find an OAM-related dip at $b\to 0$ compared with the two-Gaussian-wave-packet collision.

Recently, it was shown that fractional quantum Hall states can be defined on fractal lattices. Proposed exact parent Hamiltonians for these states are nonlocal and contain three-site terms. In this work, we look for simpler, approximate parent Hamiltonians for bosonic Laughlin states at half filling, which contain only onsite potentials and two-site hopping with the interaction generated implicitly by hardcore constraints (as in the Hofstadter and Kapit-Mueller models on periodic lattices). We use an “inverse method” to determine such Hamiltonians on finite-generation Sierpiński carpet and triangle lattices. The ground states of some of the resulting models display relatively high overlap with the model states if up to third-neighbor hopping terms are considered, and by increasing the maximum hopping distance one can achieve nearly perfect overlaps. When the number of particles is reduced and additional potentials are introduced to trap quasiholes, the overlap with a model quasihole wave function is also high in some cases, especially for the nonlocal Hamiltonians. We also study how the small system size affects the braiding properties for the model quasihole wave functions and perform analogous computations for Hamiltonian models.

Ring-shaped superfluids with weak links provide a perfect environment for studying persistent currents and dynamic stirring protocols. Here, we investigate the effects of a weak-link system on dipolar supersolids. By calculating the ground-state energy at fixed angular momenta, we find that metastable persistent currents may exist in the supersolid phase near the superfluid transition point. When stirring the weak link rapidly enough, we show that vortices can enter the supersolid. These vortex entries cause phase slips, emitting solitonic excitations that interfere with the crystalline structure of the supersolid, leading to a continuous melting and recrystallization of the droplets. Finally, we examine the release of vortex-carrying supersolids from the trap, observing that the released density exhibits a discrete structure associated with the density modulation and a central hole resulting from the vortex core.

We propose a theoretical scheme for quantum sensing of temperature close to absolute zero in a quasi-one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). In our scheme, a single-atom impurity qubit is used as a temperature sensor. We investigate the sensitivity of the single-atom sensor in estimating the temperature of the BEC. We demonstrate that the sensitivity of the temperature sensor can saturate the quantum Cramér-Rao bound by means of measuring quantum coherence of the probe qubit. We study the temperature sensing performance by using quantum signal-to-noise ratio (QSNR). It is indicated that there is an optimal encoding time at which the QSNR can reach its maximum in the full-temperature regime. In particular, we find that the QSNR reaches a finite upper bound in the weak coupling regime even when the temperature is close to absolute zero, which implies that the sensing-error-divergence problem is avoided in our scheme. Our work opens a way for quantum sensing of temperature close to absolute zero in the BEC.

Cavity magnomechanics (CMM) has rapidly become a new research field of cavity quantum electrodynamics for studying quantum information processing and sensing. Here, we theoretically study the magnomechanically induced transparency effect in a cavity magnomechanical system, focusing on the role of magnon squeezing in enhancing and controlling the group delay of the transmitted light. As a result, we find that the magnon number can be strongly affected by magnon squeezing, accompanied by a steerable transmission rate and controllable fast-to-slow light switching. In particular, in the photon-magnon strong-coupling scenario, the group delay of the probe field can be enhanced by about three times by using magnon squeezing compared to the case without magnon squeezing. Moreover, due to the presence of magnon squeezing, the efficiency of the second-order sideband in the photon-magnon weak-coupling scenario can also be enhanced compared to the case without magnon squeezing. These results provide tools to engineer CMM devices with magnon squeezing for, e.g., light propagation and storage, and precision measurements of weak signals.

We investigate the possibility of a Markovian quantum master equation (QME) that consistently describes a finite-dimensional system, a part of which is weakly coupled to a thermal bath. To preserve complete positivity and trace, such a QME must be of Lindblad form. For physical consistency, it should additionally preserve local conservation laws and be able to show thermalization. We search for Lindblad equations satisfying these additional criteria. First, we show that the microscopically derived Bloch-Redfield equation violates complete positivity unless in extremely special cases. We then prove that imposing complete positivity and demanding preservation of local conservation laws enforces the Lindblad operators and the lamb-shift Hamiltonian to be local, i.e., to be supported only on the part of the system directly coupled to the bath. We then cast the problem of finding local Lindblad QMEs which can show thermalization into a semidefinite program. We call this the thermalization optimization problem (TOP). For given system parameters and temperature, the solution of the TOP conclusively shows whether the desired type of QME is possible up to a given precision. Whenever possible, it also outputs a form for such a QME. For an XXZ chain of a few qubits, fixing a reasonably high precision, we find that such a QME is impossible over a considerably wide parameter regime when only the first qubit is coupled to the bath. Remarkably, we find that when the first two qubits are attached to the bath, such a QME becomes possible over much of the same parameter regime, including a wide range of temperatures.

When a quantum state traverses a path, while being under the influence of a gauge potential, it acquires a geometric phase that is often more than just a scalar quantity. The variety of unitary transformations that can be realized by this form of parallel transport depends crucially on the number of particles involved in the evolution. Here, we introduce a particle-number threshold (PNT) that assesses a system's capabilities to perform purely geometric manipulations of quantum states. This threshold gives the minimal number of particles necessary to fully exploit a system's potential to generate non-Abelian geometric phases. Therefore, the PNT might be useful for evaluating the resource demands of a holonomic quantum computer. We benchmark our findings on bosonic systems relevant to linear and nonlinear quantum optics.

Dephasing in quantum systems is typically the result of their interaction with environmental degrees of freedom. We investigate within a spin-boson model the influence of a super-Ohmic environment on the dynamics of a quantum two-state system. A super-Ohmic environment thereby models typical bulk phonons which are a common disturbance for solid state quantum systems as, for example, nitrogen-vacancy centers. By applying the numerically exact quasiadiabatic path-integral approach we show that for strong system-bath coupling, pseudocoherent dynamics emerges, i.e., oscillatory dynamics at short times due to slaving of the quantum system to the bath dynamics. We extend the phase diagram known for sub-Ohmic and Ohmic environments into the super-Ohmic regime and observe a pronounced nonmonotonous behavior. Super-Ohmic purely dephasing fluctuations strongly suppress the amplitude of coherent dynamics at very short times with no subsequent further decay at later times. Nevertheless, they render the dynamics overdamped. The corresponding phase separation line shows also a nonmonotonous behavior, very similar to the pseudocoherent dynamics.

A protocol for transmission of information between two parties introduced by Salih et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 170502 (2013)] involves sending quantum amplitude back and forth through a quantum channel in a series of steps, rather than simply sending a signal in one direction. The authors claimed that their protocol was “counterfactual” in the sense that while a quantum channel is needed to connect the parties, its actual usage becomes vanishingly small in the asymptotic limit as the number of steps tends to infinity. Here we show that this claim is incorrect because it uses probabilistic reasoning that is not valid at intermediate times in the presence of quantum interference. When ill-defined probabilities are replaced with a well-defined measure of channel usage, here called “Cost,” equal to the absolute square of the amplitude sent through the channel, the total Cost does not go to zero in the asymptotic limit of a large number of steps, but is bounded below by a rigorous inequality. A detailed analysis shows that this bound is satisfied in the protocol of Salih et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 170502 (2013)]. The analysis leading to the bound uses the fact that the Gram matrix formed by inner products of a collection of pure quantum states is additive over Hilbert subspaces and invariant under unitary time transformations. Its off-diagonal elements, which in general are not positive, play a significant role in the formal argument as well as providing a somewhat strange way of visualizing the transfer of information.

Continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD) is a mature technology that can theoretically provide an unconditional security guarantee. However, a practical CVQKD system may be vulnerable to various quantum hacking attacks due to imperfect devices and insufficient assumptions. In this paper, we propose a universal defense strategy called a machine-learning-based attack detection scheme (MADS). Leveraging the combined advantages of density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN) and multiclass support vector machines (MCSVMs), MADS demonstrates remarkable effectiveness in detecting quantum hacking attacks. Specifically, we first establish a set of attack-related features to extract feature vectors. These vectors are then utilized as input data for DBSCAN to identify and remove any noise or outliers. Finally, the trained MCSVMs are employed to classify and predict the processed data. The predicted results can immediately determine whether or not to generate a final secret key. Simulation results show that the proposed MADS can efficiently detect most quantum hacking attacks and revise the overestimated secret key rates caused by a CVQKD system without any defense strategy to obtain a tighter security bound.

The Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code encodes a qubit into a bosonic mode using periodic wave functions. This periodicity makes the GKP code a natural setting for the Zak transform, which is tailor-made to provide a simple description for periodic functions. We review the Zak transform and its connection to a Zak basis of states in Hilbert space, decompose the shift operators that underpin the stabilizers and the correctable errors, and find that Zak transforms of the position wave function appear naturally in GKP error correction. We construct a bosonic subsystem decomposition (SSD)—the modular variable SSD—by dividing a mode's Hilbert space, expressed in the Zak basis, into that of a virtual qubit and a virtual gauge mode. Tracing over the gauge mode gives a logical-qubit state, and preceding the trace with a particular logical-gauge interaction gives a different logical state—that associated to GKP error correction.

A quantum many-body approach to treat the postcollision interaction (PCI) effect in the process of inner-shell atomic photoionization followed by sequential x-ray radiative and electron Auger decays of inner-shell vacancies has been developed. The energy spectra of both the emitted photoelectrons and Auger electrons have been calculated, compared with experimental measurements, and its PCI distortion has been analyzed. The energy sharing between three emitted particles, photoelectron, Auger electron, and photon, drastically changes the energy distribution of electron emission compared to the case of single Auger decay of inner vacancy. Experimentally, the photoelectron energy distribution has been measured in argon $1s$ ionization in coincidences with $L_{2,3}-M_{2,3}{M}_{2,3}$ Auger electrons and doubly charged ions. Comparison of calculated and experimental spectra confirms the validity of the developed theory. Calculated line shapes of the Auger electrons also fairly reproduce the measured earlier $LMM$ Auger lines in Ar atom.

In addition to longitudinal spin angular momentum (SAM) along the axis of propagation of light, spatially structured electromagnetic fields such as evanescent waves and focused beams have recently been found to possess transverse SAM in the direction perpendicular to the axis of propagation. In particular, the SAM of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) with spatial structure has been extensively studied in the last decade after it became clear that evanescent fields with spatially structured energy flow generate three-dimensional spin texture. Here we present numerical calculations of the space-time surface plasmon polariton (ST-SPP) wave packet, a plasmonic bullet that propagates at an arbitrary group velocity while maintaining its spatial distribution. ST-SPP wave packets with complex spatial structure and energy flow density distribution determined by the group velocity are found to propagate with accompanying three-dimensional spin texture and finite topological charge density. Furthermore, the spatial distribution of the spin texture and topological charge density determined by the spatial structure of the SPP is controllable, and the deformation associated with propagation is negligible. ST-SPP wave packets, which can stably transport customizable three-dimensional spin textures and topological charge densities, can be excellent subjects of observation in studies of spin photonics and optical topological materials.

Optimizing the brightness of a spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) source is an important task for many quantum information applications. We investigate the optimal focusing conditions to maximize the number of photons produced in an SPDC process and coupled with single-mode fibers. We provide a general expression for the two-photon wave function, generalizing previous known results, by considering collinear and noncollinear emission. We present analytical expressions for our results in the thin-crystal limit and clarify the relation between different focusing conditions already existing in the literature. Differently from what was previously reported, we show that the optimal ratio between the pump waist and the generated photons waist depends on the emission angle: It is $1/\sqrt{2}$ for collinear degenerate emission and approaches $1/2$ for larger collection angles. The role of spectral filters is also analyzed. We support and enrich our discussion with numerical simulations, performed for type-I SPDC in a $\beta$ barium borate crystal. For this type of emission, we also investigate the role of the transverse walk-off outside the thin-crystal regime.