The last two decades have witnessed an increasing effort by the scientific community toward pursuing a better framework for quantum resource covariance, with the focus predominantly posed on quantum entanglement. In this work, we move the discussion one step further by analyzing the behavior of both genuine multipartite entanglement and quantum coherence under Lorentz boosts. Specifically, we conduct a case study for the problem of an electron-positron pair created in a superposed multipartite pure state. Our approach is different from the standard treatments also in that we consider all the components of the four-momentum, thus allowing for an inspection of scenarios wherein entanglement can be encoded among these degrees of freedom as well. Our analysis reveals interesting subtleties in this problem, such as the fact that genuine 4-partite entanglement in the laboratory frame transforms into genuine 8-partite entanglement plus quantum coherence in the perspective of the Lorentz-boosted frame. Moreover, a given combination of these quantum resources is shown to form a Lorentz invariant. Although our findings are not able to determine, via first principles, an information-theoretic Lorentz invariant, they pave the way for fundamental incursions along this line.

Unitary evolution under a time-dependent Hamiltonian is a key component of simulation on quantum hardware. Synthesizing the corresponding quantum circuit is typically done by breaking the evolution into small time steps, also known as Trotterization, which leads to circuits the depth of which scales with the number of steps. When the circuit elements are limited to a subset of $SU\left(4\right)$—or equivalently, when the Hamiltonian may be mapped onto free fermionic models—several identities exist that combine and simplify the circuit. Based on this, we present an algorithm that compresses the Trotter steps into a single block of quantum gates using algebraic relations between adjacent circuit elements. This results in a fixed depth time evolution for certain classes of Hamiltonians. We explicitly show how this algorithm works for several spin models, and demonstrate its use for adiabatic state preparation of the transverse field Ising model.

We consider the optimal discrimination of bipartite quantum states and provide an upper bound for the maximum success probability of optimal local discrimination. We also provide a necessary and sufficient condition for a measurement to realize the upper bound. We further establish a necessary and sufficient condition for this upper bound to be saturated. Finally, we illustrate our results using an example.

We study the conditions under which a semigroup is obtained upon convex combinations of channels. In particular, we study the set of Pauli and generalized Pauli channels. We find that mixing only semigroups can never produce a semigroup. Counterintuitively, we find that for a convex combination to yield a semigroup, most of the input channels have to be noninvertible.

The formalism of quantum estimation theory is applied to estimate the disorders in the positions of two membranes positioned in a driven optical cavity. We consider the coupled-cavity and transmissive-regime models to obtain effective descriptions of this system for different reflectivity values of the membranes. Our models consist also of high-temperature Brownian motions of the membranes, losses of the cavity fields, the input-output formalism, and a balanced homodyne photodetection of the cavity output field. In this two-parameter estimation scenario, we compare the classical and quantum Fisher information matrices and evaluate the accuracies of the estimations. We show that models offer very different estimation strategies and the temperature does not have a detrimental effect on the estimation accuracies but makes it more difficult to attain the quantum optimal limit. Our analysis, based on recent experimental parameter values, also reveals that the best estimation strategies with unit efficient detectors are measurements of the quadratures of the output field.

We present a general scheme for a family of linear-optical quantum control gates, including controlled-not and controlled-swap gates for two or three qubits. Our approach utilizes polarization-path-entangled pairs of photons and encodes qubits in mixed degrees of freedom with the control qubit specifically occupying the polarization degree of freedom. By exploiting multiple degrees of freedom and initial state entanglement of the two photons, the proposed control gates do not require any ancilla photons or measurement-induced nonlinearities. Since our gates are purely linear and we implicitly use nonlinearities in a standard manner to create entanglement via parametric nonlinear process, our work demonstrates that a need to have nonlinearities in the photonic gates can be shifted to the state preparation stage; the cost of such shift is that the construction of a certain class of single-qubit operations, such as Hadamard, needs to be probabilistic. In particular, we focus on a deterministic linear-optical quantum Fredkin (controlled-swap) gate and perform a full characterization of the gate performance with a high fidelity typically well above $99\%$ under realistic conditions. The proposed control gates rely on simple linear-optical elements and polarization-entangled photon pairs readily generated from ubiquitous sources, making the gates experimentally feasible with current technologies.

The electronic stopping power of low-energy He projectile particles moving through an Al film under channeling and off-channeling trajectories and its temperature dependence are studied by combining the time-dependent density-functional-theory method with molecular dynamics simulations. The results show that the effect of target temperature on target stopping power can be divided into two aspects which are derived from the target electron and target ion. Below 500 K, the effect of the target-electron temperature on target stopping power is almost negligible. The influence of the target-ion temperature on target stopping power can be divided into two aspects which are derived from the displacement and energy dissipation of target ions. The displacement of the target ion can result in two trends that change the target stopping power: (1) The target ion is closer to the center of lattice channel after displacement, which leads to the increase of target stopping power. (2) The target ion is farther away from the center of the lattice channel after displacement, which leads to the decrease in target stopping power. As the temperature increases, the target ions are more likely to appear farther away from the lattice channel than closer to the center of the lattice channel, so the average displacement of the target ions will lead to a decreasing trend of the target stopping power with the increase of temperature. Under the condition of a given ionic density in the target, the energy dissipation capacity of target ions increases with the increase of temperature, resulting in the tendency of the target stopping power to increase with the increase of temperature. Our calculated stopping powers are in good agreement with the experimental data and reproduced the deviation from velocity proportionality found in the experimental results for a ${\mathrm{He}}^{+}$ ion in Al, validating our approach and numerical implementation.

The photoprocessing of astrophysically relevant small polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) molecules, namely, anthracene, phenanthrene, and pentacene, under intense UV field is experimentally studied to explore the formation of smaller ions upon their dissociative ionization and the effect of their size and structure on the dynamics of dissociative ionization. The molecules are UV processed in the multiphoton regime using a 266-nm nanosecond laser pulse. The dissociative ionization spectra at different laser intensities reveal distinct dissociation dynamics of these PAHs based on their size and structures.

We show how to measure a steady-state magnon population in the magnetostatic mode of a ferromagnet or ferrimagnet, such as yttrium iron garnet. We adopt an optomechanical approach and utilize the magnetoelasticity of the ferromagnet. The magnetostrictive force dispersively couples magnons to the deformation displacement of the ferromagnet, which is proportional to the magnon population. By further coupling the mechanical displacement to an optical cavity that is resonantly driven by a weak laser, the magnetostrictively induced displacement can be sensed by measuring the phase quadrature of the optical field. The phase shows excellent linear dependence on the magnon population for a not very large population and can thus be used as a “magnometer” to measure the magnon population. We further study the effect of thermal noises and find a high signal-to-noise ratio even at room temperature. At cryogenic temperatures, the resolution of magnon excitation numbers is essentially limited by the vacuum fluctuations of the phase, which can be significantly improved by using a squeezed light.

We propose an extended version of the symmetry-adapted variational-quantum-eigensolver (VQE) and apply it to a two-component Fermi-Hubbard model on a bipartite lattice. In the extended symmetry-adapted VQE method, the Rayleigh quotient for the Hamiltonian and a parametrized quantum state in a properly chosen subspace is minimized within the subspace and is optimized among the variational parameters implemented on a quantum circuit to obtain variationally the ground state and the ground-state energy. The corresponding energy derivative with respect to a variational parameter is expressed as a Hellmann-Feynman-type formula of a generalized eigenvalue problem in the subspace, which thus allows us to use the parameter-shift rules for its evaluation. The natural-gradient-descent method is also generalized to optimize variational parameters in a quantum-subspace-expansion approach. As a subspace for approximating the ground state of the Hamiltonian, we consider a Krylov subspace generated by the Hamiltonian and a symmetry-projected variational state, and therefore the approximated ground state can restore the Hamiltonian symmetry that is broken in the parametrized variational state prepared on a quantum circuit. We show that spatial symmetry operations for fermions in an occupation basis can be expressed as a product of the nearest-neighbor fermionic swap operations on a quantum circuit. We also describe how the spin and charge symmetry operations, i.e., rotations, can be implemented on a quantum circuit. By numerical simulations, we demonstrate that the spatial, spin, and charge symmetry projections can improve the accuracy of the parametrized variational state, which can be further improved systematically by expanding the Krylov subspace without increasing the number of variational parameters.

Quantum optimal control is an important technology that enables fast state preparation and gate design. In the absence of an analytic solution, most quantum optimal control methods rely on an iterative scheme to update the solution estimate. At present, the convergence rate of existing solvers is, at most, superlinear. This paper develops a general-purpose solver for quantum optimal control based on the projection operator Newton method for trajectory optimization, or PRONTO. Specifically, the proposed approach uses a projection operator to incorporate the Schrödinger equation directly into the cost function, which is then minimized using Newton's descent method. At each iteration, the descent direction is obtained by computing the analytic solution to a linear-quadratic trajectory-optimization problem. The resulting method guarantees monotonic convergence at every iteration and quadratic convergence in the proximity of the solution. The potential of PRONTO is showcased by solving the optimal state-to-state mapping problem for a qubit and providing comparisons to a state-of-the-art quantum optimal control method.

We discuss an approach to determine averages of the work, dissipated heat, and variation of internal energy of an open quantum system driven by an external classical field. These quantities are measured by coupling the quantum system to a quantum detector at different times. This approach allows us to preserve the full quantum features of the evolution. From the measured phase, we are able to obtain a quasicharacteristic function and a quasiprobability density function for the corresponding observables. Despite the fact that these quasiprobability density functions are not the results of direct measurements, they reproduce the expected value of the physical quantities. Analogously to the Wigner function, the negative regions of these quasiprobability density functions are directly related to pure quantum processes which are not interpretable in classical terms. We use this feature to show that in the limit of fast dissipation, the quantum features vanish and interpret this as the emergence of the classical limit of the energy exchange process. Our analysis explains and confirms the behavior observed in recent experiments performed on IBMQ devices [P. Solinas et al., Phys. Rev. A 103, L060202 (2021)]. The possibility to discriminate between classical and quantum features makes the proposed approach an excellent tool to determine if, and in which conditions, quantum effects can be exploited to increase the efficiency in an energy exchange process at the quantum level.

The ${}^{133}\mathrm{Ba}^{+}$ ion is a promising candidate as a high-fidelity qubit, and the ${}^{137}\mathrm{Ba}^{+}$ isotope is promising as a high-fidelity qudit $(d>2)$. Barium metal is very reactive, and ${}^{133}\mathrm{Ba}^{+}$ is radioactive and can only be sourced in small quantities, so the most commonly used loading method, oven heating, is less suited for barium and is currently not possible for ${}^{133}\mathrm{Ba}^{+}$. Pulsed laser ablation solves both of these problems by utilizing compound barium sources while also giving some distinct advantages, such as fast loading, less displaced material, and lower heat load near the ion trap. Because of the relatively low abundances of the isotopes of interest, a two-step photoionization technique is used, which gives us the ability to selectively load isotopes. Characterization of the ablation process for our ${\mathrm{BaCl}}_2$ targets are presented, including observation of neutral and ion ablation-fluence regimes, preparation and conditioning, lifetimes of ablation spots, and plume velocity distributions. We show that by using laser ablation on ${\mathrm{BaCl}}_2$ salt targets with a two-step photoionization method, we can produce and trap barium ions reliably. Furthermore, we demonstrate that with our photoionization method, we can trap ${}^{137}\mathrm{Ba}^{+}$ with an enhanced selectivity compared to its natural abundance.

We investigate formation of Bose-Einstein condensates under nonequilibrium conditions using numerical simulations of the three-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equation. For this, we set initial random weakly nonlinear excitations and the forcing at high wave numbers and study propagation of the turbulent spectrum toward the low wave numbers. Our primary goal is to compare the results for the evolving spectrum with the previous results obtained for the kinetic equation of weak wave turbulence. We demonstrate existence of a regime for which good agreement with the wave turbulence results is found in terms of the main features of the previously discussed self-similar solution. In particular, we find a reasonable agreement with the low-frequency and the high-frequency power-law asymptotics of the evolving solution, including the anomalous power-law exponent $x^{*}\approx 1.24$ for the three-dimensional wave action spectrum. We also study the regimes of very weak turbulence when the evolution is affected by the discreteness of the Fourier space, and the strong turbulence regime when the emerging condensate modifies the wave dynamics and leads to formation of strongly nonlinear filamentary vortices.

We have realized the optical excitation of krypton to a metastable level with an efficiency as high as $23\%$ using near-resonant 124-nm light produced by four-wave mixing in mercury vapor. Self-absorption in mercury is circumvented by adjusting the detuning and phase matching according to experimental and theoretical characterizations. Density-matrix calculations of the metastable krypton generation agree with the measured dependencies of the excitation efficiency, indicating pathways towards a further improvement. The obtained excitation efficiency, being one order of magnitude higher than that of previously demonstrated techniques, enables an extension of the metastable density regime for atomic physics applications, including magnetometry, atom lithography, and radioisotope dating.

Quantum state transport is an important way to study the energy or information flow. By combining the unconventional Rydberg pumping mechanism and the diagonal form of van der Waals interactions, we construct a theoretical model via second-order perturbation theory to realize a long-range coherent transport inside the ground-state manifold of neutral atoms systems. With the adjustment of the Rabi frequencies and the interatomic distance, this model can be used to simulate various single-body physics phenomena such as a Heisenberg $XX$ spin chain restricted in the single-excitation manifold, coherently perfect quantum state transfer, the parameter-adjustable Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model, and chiral motion of atomic excitation in a triangle by varying the geometrical arrangement of the three atoms, which effectively avoids the influence of atomic spontaneous emission at the same time. Moreover, the influence of atomic position fluctuation on the fidelity of quantum state transmission is discussed in detail, and the corresponding numerical results show that our work provides a robust and easily implemented scheme for quantum state transport with neutral atoms.

Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) describes the structure of hadrons such as the proton at a fundamental level. The precision of calculations in QCD limits the precision of the values of many physical parameters extracted from collider data. For example, uncertainty in the parton distribution function is the dominant source of error in the $W$ mass measurement at the Large Hadron Collider. Improving the precision of such measurements is essential in the search for new physics. Quantum simulation offers an efficient way of studying quantum field theories (QFTs) such as QCD nonperturbatively. Previous quantum algorithms for simulating QFTs have qubit requirements that are well beyond the most ambitious experimental proposals for large-scale quantum computers. Can the qubit requirements for such algorithms be brought into range of quantum computation with several thousand logical qubits? We show how this can be achieved by using the light-front formulation of quantum field theory. This work was inspired by the similarity of the light-front formulation to quantum chemistry, first noted by Wilson [Nucl. Phys. B, Proc. Suppl. 17, 82 (1990)].

We propose a logical qubit based on the Blume-Capel model: A higher-spin generalization of the Ising chain which allows for an on-site anisotropy-preserving rotational invariance around the Ising axis. We show that such a spin-3/2 Blume-Capel model can also support localized Majorana zero modes at the ends of the chain. Inspired by known braiding protocols of these Majorana zero modes, upon appropriate manipulation of the system parameters, we demonstrate a set of universal gate operations which act on qubits encoded in the doubly degenerate ground states of the chain.

This comment on the paper by Karlovets and Pupasov-Maksimov [Phys. Rev. A 103, 012214 (2021)] addresses their criticism of the combined experimental and theoretical study by Remez et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 060401 (2019)]. We show, by means of simple optical arguments as well as numerical simulations, that the arguments raised by Karlovets and Pupasov-Maksimov do not hold in the experimental regime reported by Remez et al. Further, we discuss a clarification for the theoretical derivations presented by Karlovets and Pupasov-Maksimov, as they hold only when the final state of the emitting electron is observed in coincidence with the emitted photon. Although this scenario is feasible and may stimulate new experimental regimes that do correspond to the predictions reported by Karlovets and Pupasov-Maksimov, it is not the common scenario in cathodoluminescence, where only the light is measured. Upon lifting the concerns regarding the experimental regime reported by Remez et al., and explicitly clarifying the electron postselection, we believe that the paper by Karlovets and Pupasov-Maksimov may constitute a valuable contribution to the problem of spontaneous emission by shaped electron wave functions, as it presents new expressions for the emission rates beyond the ubiquitous paraxial approximation.

We argue that although the experiment of Remez et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 060401 (2019)] is interesting, and its conclusions may well be correct, the observed lack of dependence of the measured angular distributions on the electron's transverse coherence length could have been expected for the parameters chosen. This is because for Smith-Purcell radiation it is the coherence length of a virtual photon ${\sigma }_{\perp }^{\left(\gamma \right)}\approx \beta \gamma \lambda \lesssim \lambda$ that plays a role of the radiation formation width and not the entire electron's coherence length that can well be orders of magnitude larger than the former. This is a common feature for all the radiation processes in which a photon is emitted not directly by the electron packet, which can be delocalized in space, but rather by a much better localized atom or a conduction electron on a surface. Therefore, in our opinion the results of Remez et al. cannot rule out the alternative hypothesis of the delocalized charge. The question, mainly addressed in the Comment by Karnieli et al., of whether the measurements were performed in the wave zone or not is interesting but somewhat secondary. We emphasize that the measured azimuthal distributions are unusually wide and there exists a family of classical effects that could also have resulted in the measured distributions. Such alternative classical hypotheses include: (i) effects of the beam sizes, of its angular divergence, of the temporal coherence of the radiation process, which is also related to how the wave zone is defined, and (ii) influence of the grating shape and of its material—the effects that are known to be of crucial importance for Smith-Purcell radiation from nonrelativistic electrons. Finally, we propose to repeat the experiment and to measure diffraction radiation from a thin metallic semiplane (or a strip) in which case the aforementioned classical effects play a much smaller role.