Experiments with vortex beams have shown a surge of interest in controlling cold atoms. Most of the controlling protocols are dominated by circularly polarized light due to its ability to induce vector polarization at atoms, which is impossible for paraxial linearly polarized light. Here we develop a theory for frequency dependent polarizability of an atomic state interacting with a focused linearly polarized vortex beam. The naturally induced spin-orbit coupling in this type of linearly polarized beam produces vector component of the valence polarizability to an atomic state, obeying the total angular-momentum conservation of the beam. The theory is employed on ${}^{87}\mathrm{Sr}^{+}$ to accurately calculate the magic wavelengths for the clock transitions and tune-out wavelengths for the clock states using the relativistic coupled-cluster method. The induced vector component in the dynamic polarizability due to the linearly polarized focused vortex beam promotes a fictitious magnetic field to the atomic state. We demonstrate that this fictitious magnetic field, depending on the focusing angle and orbital angular momentum of the beam, improves the flexibility of the coherent heteronuclear spin oscillations in a spin-1 mixture of ${}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ and ${}^{23}\mathrm{Na}$ atoms.

We report fractional revival phenomena in an ultracold matter wave inside a ring waveguide. The specific fractional revival times are precisely identified and corresponding spatial density patterns are depicted. Thorough analyses of the autocorrelation function and quantum carpet provide clear evidence of their occurrence. The exhibited theoretical model is in exact conformity of our numerical results. We also investigate the stability of the condensate and a variation of revival time with the diameter of the ring.

We present a study of how macroscopic flow can be produced in Bose-Einstein condensates confined in a “racetrack” potential by stirring with a wide rectangular barrier. This potential consists of two half-circle channels separated by straight channels of length $L$ and reduces to a ring potential if $L=0$. We present the results of a flow-production study where racetrack condensates were stirred with a barrier under varying conditions of barrier height, stir speed, racetrack geometry, and temperature. The result was that stirring was readily able to produce flow in ring and nonring geometries but that the exact amount of flow produced depended on all of the study parameters. We therefore investigated the mechanism by which flow was produced in the stirring process. The basic mechanism that we discovered was that when the sweeping barrier potential height reached a critical value a series of phase slip (i.e., a sudden change in the phase winding around the condensate midtrack) events occurred. Phase slipping stopped when the flow produced overtook the speed of the stirring barrier. Disturbances generated at each phase slip circulated around the channel and served to convert the initially localized velocity distribution into smooth macroscopic flow. This picture of the mechanism for making flow should facilitate the design of closed-channel atom circuits for creating a desired amount of quantized smooth flow on demand.

In this work, we investigate effects of weak interactions on a bosonic complete flat-band system. By employing a band projection method, the flat-band Hamiltonian with weak interactions is mapped to an effective Hamiltonian. The effective Hamiltonian indicates that doublons behave as well-defined quasiparticles, which acquire itinerancy through the hopping induced by interactions. When we focus on a two-particle system, from the effective Hamiltonian, an effective subspace spanned only by doublon bases emerges. The effective subspace induces spreading of a single doublon and we find an interesting property: The dynamics of a single doublon keeps short-range density-density correlation in sharp contrast to a conventional two-particle spreading. Furthermore, when introducing a modulated weak interaction, we find an interaction-induced topological subspace embedded in the full Hilbert space. We elucidate the embedded topological subspace by observing the dynamics of a single doublon and show that the embedded topological subspace possesses a bulk topological invariant. We further expect that for the system with open boundary the embedded topological subspace has an interaction induced topological edge mode described by the doublon. The bulk-edge correspondence holds even for the embedded topological subspace.

Conventional incoherent imaging based on measuring the spatial intensity distribution in the image plane faces the resolution hurdle described by the Rayleigh diffraction criterion. Here, we demonstrate theoretically using the concept of the Fisher information that quadrature statistics measured by means of array homodyne detection enables estimation of the distance between two incoherent point sources well below the Rayleigh limit for sufficiently high signal-to-noise ratio. This capability is attributed to the availability of spatial coherence information between individual detector pixels acquired using the coherent detection technique. A simple analytical approximation for the precision attainable in the sub-Rayleigh region is presented. Furthermore, an estimation algorithm is proposed and applied to Monte Carlo simulated data.

We generalize the concept of optical state truncation and noiseless linear amplification to enable truncation of the Fock-state expansion of an optical state to higher order and to simultaneously amplify it using linear optics. The resulting generalized quantum scissors are more efficient for noiseless linear amplification than employing multiple scissors in parallel and are experimentally practical. As a particular example, we focus on a third-order scissor device and demonstrate advantages in terms of fidelity with the target state, probability of success, distillable entanglement, and the amount of non-Gaussianity introduced.

As an energy storing and converting device near atomic size, a quantum battery (QB) promises enhanced charging power and extractable work using quantum resources. However, the ubiquitous decoherence causes its cyclic charging-storing-discharging process to become deactivated, which is called aging of the QB. Here, we propose a mechanism to overcome the aging of a QB. It is found that the decoherence of the QB is suppressed when two Floquet bound states (FBSs) are formed in the quasienergy spectrum of the total system consisting of the QB-charger setup and their respective environments. As long as either the quasienergies of the two FBSs are degenerate or the QB-charger coupling is large in the presence of two FBSs, the QB exposed to the dissipative environments returns to its near-ideal cyclic stage. Our result supplies an insightful guideline to realize the QB in practice using Floquet engineering.

The fraction of positronium (Ps) emitted from a surface of a germanium single crystal at high temperature is usually assumed to approach unity at zero positron implantation energy. In the experiment, however, the determination of the absolute Ps fraction is not straightforward since recording a reference spectrum with $100\%$ Ps formation remains demanding. We use geant4-simulated detector responses to $2\gamma$ and $3\gamma$ radiation sources mimicking positron and Ps annihilation inside the (coincidence) Doppler-broadening spectrometer at NEPOMUC, FRM II, in order to derive a reliable value for the Ps fraction reemitted from a Ge(100) target heated close to its melting point. Analysis of the measured spectra by fitting the simulated spectra shows an absolute value of $72\pm 4\%$ maximum Ps formation, contradicting the $100\%$ assumption.

We investigate the quantum diffusion of a periodically kicked particle subjected to both nonlinearity-induced self-interactions and $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric potentials. We find that, due to the interplay between the nonlinearity and non-Hermiticity, the expectation value of the mean square of momentum scales with time in a superexponential form $\langle p^2\left(t\right)\rangle \propto exp[\beta exp\left(\alpha t\right)]$, which is faster than any known rates of quantum diffusion. In the $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry-breaking phase, the intensity of a state increases exponentially with time, leading to the exponential growth of the interaction strength. The feedback of the intensity-dependent nonlinearity further turns the interaction energy into the kinetic energy, resulting in a superexponential growth of the mean energy. These theoretical predictions are in good agreement with numerical simulations in a $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric nonlinear kicked particle. Our discovery establishes a mechanism of diffusion in interacting and dissipative quantum systems. Important implications and possible experimental observations are discussed.

We report on electron removal calculations for 2.81 keV/amu ${\mathrm{Li}}^{3+}$ and ${\mathrm{O}}^{3+}$ ion collisions with neon dimers. The target is described as two independent neon atoms fixed at the dimer's equilibrium bond length, whose electrons are subjected to the time-dependent bare and screened Coulomb potentials of the classically moving ${\mathrm{Li}}^{3+}$ and ${\mathrm{O}}^{3+}$ projectile ions, respectively. Three mutually perpendicular orientations of the dimer with respect to the rectilinear projectile trajectories are considered and collision events for the two ion-atom subsystems are combined in an impact parameter by impact parameter fashion and are orientation averaged to calculate probabilities and cross sections for the ion-dimer system. The coupled-channel two-center basis generator method is used to solve the ion-atom collision problems. We concentrate the ion-dimer analysis on one-electron and two-electron removal processes which can be associated with interatomic Coulomb decay, Coulomb explosion, and radiative charge transfer. We find that the calculated relative yields are in fair agreement with recent experimental data for ${\mathrm{O}}^{3+}\text{−}{\mathrm{Ne}}_2$ collisions if we represent the projectile by a screened Coulomb potential, but disagree markedly for a bare Coulomb potential, i.e., for ${\mathrm{Li}}^{3+}$ impact. In particular, our calculations suggest that interatomic Coulomb decay is a significant reaction channel in the former case only, since capture of a $\mathrm{Ne}(2s$) electron to form hydrogenlike ${\mathrm{Li}}^{2+}$ is unlikely.

A recent experiment [L. De Marco, G. Valtolina, K. Matsuda, W. G. Tobias, J. P. Covey, and J. Ye, A degenerate Fermi gas of polar molecules, Science 363, 853 (2019)] reported for the first time the preparation of a Fermi degenerate gas of polar molecules and observed a suppression of their chemical reaction rate compared to the one expected from a treatment assuming classical Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics. While it was hypothesized that the suppression in the ultracold regime had its roots in the Fermi statistics of the molecules, this argument is inconsistent with the fact that the Fermi pressure should set a lower bound for the chemical reaction rate. Here we develop a simple model of chemical reactions that occur via the formation and decay of molecular complexes. We indeed find that pure two-body molecule losses are unable to explain the observed suppression. Instead we extend our description beyond two-body physics by including multibody complex-molecule interactions. Although our model is able to quantitatively reproduce recent experimental observations, it requires parameters physically unlikely for direct microscopic interactions. The underlying processes, however, might emerge effectively from many-body or medium effects. A detailed understanding of the direct microscopic mechanisms responsible for these higher-order interaction processes is therefore still pending.

Recent investigations on optical nonlinearities of plasmonic materials suggest their responses may be even beyond the usual perturbative description. To better understand these surprisingly strong responses, we develop here a simple but general approach to describe the nonlinear optical response of plasmonic materials up to $n\mathrm{th}$ perturbation order. We apply the approach to understand spectral broadening occurring in resonant metasurfaces and investigate the enhancement of multiharmonic generation from multiply resonant metasurfaces, predicting an over $1\times {10}^6$-fold enhancement of higher harmonics.

Two basic ingredients in the quantum formalism are the concepts of states and observables, and apart from the average value (which includes the Born probability as a paramountly important case), the variance is the most fundamental and prominent quantity arising from the coupling of a state and an observable. Given the simplicity and ubiquity of the variance, it seems surprising that we can still exploit the variance to gain conceptually different insight into the quantum substratum. The purpose of the present work is to advocate the following idea: By inputting a general quantum state as the observable in the variance and incorporating a resolution of identity induced by coherent states, we obtain a mathematically simple and physically intuitive method for quantifying nonclassicality. We reveal its fundamental properties and highlight its connection with phase-space quantification of nonclassicality. The idea further suggests a whole family of appealing quantifiers of nonclassicality involving deep mathematical subtlety and an intriguing conjecture with physical significance. Some prototypical examples are worked out to illustrate the concept. This approach of regarding states as observables presents an opportunity for investigating quantum features from an alternative perspective of uncertainty.

We show how a tensor-network-based machine learning algorithm can learn the structures of generic, non-Markovian, quantum stochastic processes. First, a process is represented as a matrix product operator (MPO) and trained with a database of local input states at different times and the corresponding time-nonlocal output state. We then apply the algorithm to predict the output state of a process at different times for a system that is coupled to a spin-chain environment. We then reconstruct the full process, and we quantify the non-Markovian memory by means of the bond dimension of the MPO for various properties of the system, of the environment, and of their interaction. Our study paves the way for a possible experimental investigation into the process tensor and its properties, and an effective characterization of noise in quantum devices.

A typical goal of a quantum simulation is to find the energy levels and eigenstates of a given Hamiltonian. This can be realized by adiabatically varying the system control parameters to steer an initial eigenstate into the eigenstate of the target Hamiltonian. Such an adiabatic quantum simulation is demonstrated by directly implementing a controllable and smoothly varying Hamiltonian in the rotating frame of two superconducting qubits, including longitudinal and transverse fields and iswap-type two-qubit interactions. The evolution of each eigenstate is tracked using time-resolved state tomography. The energy gaps between instantaneous eigenstates are chosen such that, depending on the energy transition rate, either diabatic or adiabatic passages are observed in the measured energies and correlators. Errors in the obtained energy values induced by finite $T_1$ and $T_2$ times of the qubits are mitigated by extrapolation to short protocol times.

Atom-dimer exchange and dissociation reaction rates are predicted for different combinations of two ${}^4\mathrm{He}$ atoms and one of the alkaline species among ${}^6\mathrm{Li}, {}^7\mathrm{Li}$, and ${}^{23}\mathrm{Na}$, by using three-body scattering formalism with short-range two-body interactions. Our study was concerned with low-energy reaction rates in which the $s$-, $p$-, and $d$-wave contributions are the relevant ones. The ${}^4\mathrm{He}$ is chosen as one of the atoms in the binary mixture, in view of available previous investigations and laboratory accessibilities. Focusing on possible experimental cold-atom realizations with two-atomic mixtures, in which information on atom-dimer reaction rates can be extracted, we predict the occurrence of a dip in the elastic reaction rate for colliding energies smaller than 20 mK, when the dimer is the ${}^4\mathrm{He}{}^{23}\mathrm{Na}$ molecule. We are also anticipating a zero in the elastic $p$-wave contribution for the ${}^4\mathrm{He}+{}^4\mathrm{He}{}^7\mathrm{Li}$ and ${}^4\mathrm{He}+{}^4\mathrm{He}{}^{23}\mathrm{Na}$ reaction processes. With weakly bound molecules reacting with atoms at very low colliding energies, we interpret our results in the light of Efimov physics which supports model independence and robustness of our predictions. Specific sensitivities on the effective range were evidenced, highlighted by the particular inversion role of the $p$- and $d$-waves in the atom exchange and dissociation processes.

Because of the low sensitivity of a thulium optical clock to black-body radiation and good accuracy and stability estimations, it is considered as a promising transportable optical clock. One of the leading systematic effects for Tm clock transition, i.e., the second-order Zeeman effect, can be canceled by probing two clock transitions between different hyperfine levels of ground and metastable states during clock operation. Herein, we demonstrate efficient optical pumping into the $m_F=0$ state of both ground hyperfine levels using single-frequency radiation at 418.8 nm. We prepared the atoms in both target states simultaneously and excited two clock transitions alternately. The resulting population of $m_F=0$ states of ground hyperfine levels was 36% and 3.8% of the initial number of atoms with less than 4% and 0.4% on nonzero magnetic sublevels, respectively. We performed numerical simulations of the optical pumping process, which is able to explain experimental results well.

Generic far-away-from-equilibrium many-body dynamics involve entropy production and hence is thermodynamically irreversible. Near quantum critical points, an emergent conformal symmetry can impose strong constraints on entropy production rates and in some cases can completely forbid entropy production, which usually occurs for systems that deviate from quantum critical points. In this article, we illustrate how the vanishing entropy production near a quantum critical point results in reversible far-away-from-equilibrium dynamics at finite temperatures that is otherwise irreversible. Away from the quantum critical point, the quantum dynamics is damped, and our analysis directly relates the thermalization timescale to the hydrodynamic viscosity near quantum critical points with the dynamical critical exponent $z=2$. We demonstrate how both controllable reversible and irreversible dynamics can be potentially studied in cold gas experiments using Feshbach resonances.

Universal behavior in few-boson systems close to the unitary limit, where two bosons become unbound, has been intensively investigated in recent years both experimentally and theoretically. In this particular region, called the unitary window, details of the interparticle interactions are not important and observables, such as binding energies, can be characterized by a few parameters. With an increasing number of particles, the short-range repulsion, present in all atomic, molecular, and nuclear interactions, gradually induces deviations from the universal behavior. In the present paper, we discuss a simple way of incorporating nonuniversal behavior through one specific parameter which controls the smooth transition of the system from a universal to nonuniversal regime. Using a system of $N$ helium atoms as an example, we calculate their ground-state energies as trajectories within the unitary window and also show that the control parameters can be used to determine the energy per particle in homogeneous systems when $N\to \infty$.

Impurities in a Fermi sea, or Fermi polarons, experience a Casimir interaction induced by quantum fluctuations of the medium. When there is short-range attraction between impurities and fermions, also the induced interaction between two impurities is strongly attractive at short distance and oscillates in space for larger distances. We theoretically investigate the scattering properties and compute the scattering phase shifts and scattering lengths between two heavy impurities in an ideal Fermi gas at zero temperature. While the induced interaction between impurities is weakly attractive for weak impurity-medium interactions, we find that impurities strongly and attractively interacting with the medium exhibit resonances in the induced scattering with a sign change of the induced scattering length and even strong repulsion. These resonances occur whenever a three-body Efimov bound state appears at the continuum threshold. At energies above the continuum threshold, we find that the Efimov state in medium can turn into a quasibound state with a finite decay width.