We expand the two-photon Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) effect onto a higher-dimensional set of spatial modes and introduce an effect that allows controllable redistribution of quantum states over these modes using directionally unbiased linear-optical four-ports without post-selection. The original HOM effect only allows photon pairs to exit in two directions in space. But when accompanied by beam splitters and phase shifters, the result is a directionally controllable two-photon HOM effect in four spatial modes, with direction controlled by changing the phases in the system. This controllable quantum amplitude manipulation also allows demonstration of a “delayed” HOM effect by exploiting phase shifters in a system of two connected multiport devices. By this means, both spatial and temporal control of the propagation of the two-photon superposition state through a network can be achieved.

We propose a protocol for perfect state transfer between any pair of vertices in a hypercube. Given a pair of distinct vertices in the hypercube, we determine a subhypercube that contains the pair of vertices as antipodal vertices. Then a switching process is introduced for determining the subhypercube of a memory-enhanced hypercube that facilitates perfect state transfer between the desired pair of vertices. Furthermore, we propose a physical architecture for the pretty good state transfer implementation of our switching protocol with fidelity arbitrary close to unity, using superconducting transmon qubits with tunable couplings. The switching is realized by the control over the effective coupling between the qubits resulting from the effect of ancilla qubit couplers for the graph edges. We also report an error bound on the fidelity of state transfer due to faulty implementation of our protocol.

Hadron therapy combined with nanotechnology has been proposed as an elegant alternative for cancer treatment. Internal amplification of electron emission causing radiobiological effectiveness in nanoinserted biomolecules is of prime importance and has been measured here for the iodouracil molecule. Our experiment involves the measurement of angle and energy resolved double differential cross section (DDCS) of electron emission from iodouraciil and uracil (and also water) in collisions with fast ${\mathrm{C}}^{6+}$ ions. The electron emission from iodouracil is substantially enhanced over that from uracil or water. The enhancement is much larger than the state-of-the-art model for Coulomb ionization based on the continuum distorted wave-eikonal initial state (CDW-EIS) approximation. The electron sensitizing factor ($\approx 2.4$) is in excellent agreement with the strand-breaking sensitizing factor ($\approx 2.0$) for metal nanoparticle embedded in a DNA. The enhancement is explained in terms of collective excitation of strongly correlated 4d electrons, known as atomic giant dipole resonance (GDR) in I atoms. The GDR contribution to the enhancement is derived, which is in excellent agreement with recent theoretical prediction, thereby providing conclusive experimental evidence of the crucial role of collective excitation in radio sensitization.

We present theoretical calculations of orientation-dependent total ionization yields from the highest occupied molecular orbitals of the oriented OCS molecule by solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation in three dimensions. The calculations were performed within the single-active-electron approximation including multielectron polarization. The multielectron polarization term was represented by an induced dipole term which contains the polarizability of the ${\mathrm{OCS}}^{+}$ cation parallel to the laser polarization. Upon accounting for multielectron polarization, the calculated total ionization yields and their orientation dependence are in good agreement with experimental data.

Two-dimensional (2D) systems with time-dependent controls admit a quadratic Hamiltonian modeling near potential minima. Independent, dynamical normal modes facilitate inverse Hamiltonian engineering to control the system dynamics, but some systems are not separable into independent modes by a point transformation. For these “coupled systems” 2D invariants may still guide the Hamiltonian design. The theory to perform the inversion and two application examples are provided: (i) We control the deflection of wave packets in transversally harmonic wave guides and (ii) we design the state transfer from one coupled oscillator to another.

We investigate the topological properties of a resonantly shaken one-dimensional optical lattice system, where the lattice position is periodically driven with two harmonic frequencies to generate one- and two-photon couplings between the two lowest orbitals. In a two-band approximation, we numerically show that degenerate edge states appear under a certain driving condition and that the corresponding topological phase is protected by the chiral symmetry of the periodically driven system. The system's micromotion is characterized with oscillating Zak phases and we find that the Zak phases are quantized only at the time when the chiral symmetry condition is explicitly satisfied. Finally, we describe the topological charge pumping effect which arises when the driving parameters are slowly modulated around a critical point, and investigate its adiabaticity with increasing modulation frequency.

Realizing strongly correlated topological phases of ultracold gases is a central goal for ongoing experiments. While fractional quantum Hall states could soon be implemented in small atomic ensembles, detecting their signatures in few-particle settings remains a fundamental challenge. In this work, we numerically analyze the center-of-mass Hall drift of a small ensemble of hardcore bosons, initially prepared in the ground state of the Harper-Hofstadter-Hubbard model in a box potential. By monitoring the Hall drift upon release, for a wide range of magnetic flux values, we identify an emergent Hall plateau compatible with a fractional Chern insulator state: The extracted Hall conductivity approaches a fractional value determined by the many-body Chern number, while the width of the plateau agrees with the spectral and topological properties of the prepared ground state. Besides, a direct application of Streda's formula indicates that such Hall plateaus can also be directly obtained from static density-profile measurements. Our calculations suggest that fractional Chern insulators can be detected in cold-atom experiments, using available detection methods.

We investigate the radiation from a charged particle moving outside a dielectric cylinder parallel to its axis. It is assumed that the cylinder is immersed into a homogeneous medium. The expressions are given for the vector potential and for the electric and magnetic fields. The spectral distributions are studied for three types of radiation: (i) Cherenkov radiation (CR) in the exterior medium, (ii) radiation on the guided modes of the dielectric cylinder, and (iii) emission of surface polaritons. Unlike the first two types of radiation, there is no velocity threshold for the generation of surface polaritons. The corresponding radiation is present in the spectral range where the dielectric permittivities of the cylinder and surrounding medium have opposite signs. The spectral range of the emitted surface polaritons becomes narrower with decreasing energy of the particle. The general results are illustrated for a special case of the Drude model for dispersion of the dielectric permittivity of the cylinder. We show that the presence of the cylinder may lead to the appearance of strong narrow peaks in the spectral distribution of the CR in the exterior medium. The conditions are specified for the appearance of those peaks and the corresponding heights and widths are analytically estimated. The collective effects of particles in bunches are discussed.

Quantum entanglement is the key to many applications like quantum key distribution, quantum teleportation, and quantum sensing. However, reliably generating quantum entanglement in macroscopic systems has proven to be a challenge. Here, we present a detailed analysis of ponderomotive entanglement generation in a movable-end-mirror-type optomechanical cavity. These cavities utilize optomechanical interactions between the intracavity field and the end mirror to create quantum correlations. We numerically calculate an entanglement measure, the logarithmic negativity, for the quantitative assessment of the entanglement. Experimental limitations, including thermal noise and optical loss, from measurements of an existing experiment were included in the calculation, which is intractable to solve analytically. This analysis shows that lowering optical losses and measurement uncertainties is more important than temperature for observation of the entanglement in movable-end-mirror-type optomechanical cavity experiments. This work will play an important role in the development of ponderomotive entanglement devices.

Self-acceleration and nondiffraction can be considered as the new properties of partially coherent light beams nowadays, provided that the light source is properly chosen and modulated. Here, we introduce a class of partially coherent light beams the propagation trajectory of which performs a parabolic-type curve as the well-known Airy beams. Theoretically, they are originated from a well-designed cross-spectral density function in the spatial-frequency domain. Experimentally, they are produced by shining an amplitude-modulated Schell-model source on the phase mask which is the Fourier transform of predesigned Airy functions. It is shown that, for such beams, one can control their acceleration properties by adjusting the initial angle of the sidelobes. Moreover, when the source is under a nearly incoherent state, the oscillation of the sidelobes of the beams turns smooth and the intensity distribution concentrates on the mainlobe with the Airy tails. The experimental results are in agreement with the theoretical predictions. A trial solution for coherent-mode representation of such a beam is derived and our paper provides an alternative outlook for understanding of self-acceleration on partially coherent light beams.

Open quantum systems and study of decoherence are important for our fundamental understanding of quantum physical phenomena. For practical purposes, a large number of quantum protocols exist that exploit quantum resources, e.g., entanglement, which allows us to go beyond what is possible to achieve by classical means. We combine concepts from open quantum systems and quantum information science and give a proof-of-principle experimental demonstration—with teleportation—that it is possible to implement efficiently a quantum protocol via a non-Markovian open system. The results show that, at the time of implementation of the protocol, it is not necessary to have the quantum resource in the degree of freedom used for the basic protocol—as long as there exists some other degree of freedom or the environment of an open system, which contains useful resources. The experiment is based on a pair of photons, where their polarizations act as open system qubits and frequencies as their environments, while the path degree of freedom of one of the photons represents the state of Alice's qubit to be teleported to Bob's polarization qubit.

The range of a quantum measurement is the set of outcome probability distributions that can be produced by varying the input state. We introduce data-driven inference as a protocol that, given a set of experimental data as a collection of outcome distributions, infers the quantum measurement which is (i) consistent with the data, in the sense that its range contains all the distributions observed, and (ii) maximally noncommittal, in the sense that its range is of minimum volume in the space of outcome distributions. We show that data-driven inference is able to return a unique measurement for any data set if and only if the inference adopts a (hyper)spherical state space (for example, the classical or the quantum bit). In analogy to informational completeness for quantum tomography, we define observational completeness as the property of any set of states that, when fed into any given measurement, produces a set of outcome distributions allowing for the correct reconstruction of the measurement via data-driven inference. We show that observational completeness is strictly stronger than informational completeness, in the sense that not all informationally complete sets are also observationally complete. Moreover, we show that for systems with a (hyper)spherical state space, the only observationally complete simplex is the regular one, namely, the symmetric informationally complete set.

We demonstrate fast two-qubit gates using a parity-violated superconducting qubit consisting of a capacitively shunted asymmetric Josephson-junction loop under a finite magnetic flux bias. The second-order nonlinearity manifesting in the qubit enables the interaction with a neighboring single-junction transmon qubit via first-order interqubit sideband transitions with Rabi frequencies up to 30 MHz. Simultaneously, the unwanted static longitudinal ($ZZ$) interaction is eliminated with ac Stark shifts induced by a continuous microwave drive near resonant to the sideband transitions. The average fidelities of the two-qubit gates are evaluated with randomized benchmarking as 0.971, 0.958, and 0.962 for CZ, iswap, and swap gates, respectively.

The communication cost of a classical protocol is typically measured in terms of the number of bits communicated for this determines the time required for communication during the protocol. Similarly, for quantum communication protocols, which use finite-dimensional quantum states, the communication cost is measured in terms of the number of qubits communicated. However, in quantum physics, one can also use infinite-dimensional states, like optical quantum states, for communication protocols. Communication cost measures based on counting the (equivalent) number of qubits transmitted during communication cannot be directly used to measure the cost of such protocols, which use infinite-dimensional states. Moreover, one cannot infer any physical property of infinite-dimensional protocols using such qubit-based communication costs. In this paper, we provide a framework to understand the growth of physical resources in infinite-dimensional protocols. We focus on optical protocols for the sake of concreteness. The time required for communication and the energy expended during communication are identified as the important physical resources of such protocols. In an optical protocol, the time required for communication is determined by the number of time-bin modes that are transmitted from one party to another. The mean photon number of the messages sent determines the energy required during communication in the protocol. We prove a lower bound on the tradeoff between the growth of these two quantities with the growth of the problem size. We call such tradeoff relations optical quantum communication complexity relations.

We study the photoionization process of a hydrogen atom initially prepared in a circular Rydberg state. The atom is exposed to a two-cycle laser pulse with a central wavelength of 800 nm. Before the atom approaches saturation, at field intensities of the order of ${10}^{17}\mathrm{W}/{\mathrm{cm}}^2$, relativistic corrections to the ionization probability are clearly seen. The ionization is predominantly driven by the radiation pressure in the propagation direction of the laser field, not by the electric field. Direct comparisons with the full numerical solution of the time-dependent Dirac equation demonstrate quantitative agreement with a semirelativistic approximation, which is considerably easier to implement.

We perform a theoretical and computational study of relativistic hydrogenlike ions subject to linearly polarized strong electromagnetic fields. The time-dependent Dirac equation is solved with the help of the generalized pseudospectral method in spherical coordinates. When solving the Dirac equation numerically with basis-set methods, spurious eigenstates usually show up. We suggest a simple transformation of the original discretized Dirac Hamiltonian that removes such states and keeps highly accurate true eigenstates. We calculate the ionization probabilities of the hydrogen atom and hydrogenlike ions ${\mathrm{Ne}}^{9+}$ and ${\mathrm{Ar}}^{17+}$ for various peak field strengths and pulse durations scaled with respect to the nuclear charge of the target. Calculations are performed both within and beyond the dipole approximation. We analyze the nondipole effects and find the region of the Lorentz deflection parameter where the dipole approximation is still applicable.

We derive an approximation to QED effects in intense laser fields which can be employed in laser-particle collisions. Treating the laser as a plane wave of arbitrary intensity, we split the wave into fast (carrier) and slow (envelope) modes. We solve the interaction dynamics exactly for the former while performing a local expansion in the latter. This yields a “locally monochromatic” approximation (LMA), which we apply to nonlinear Compton scattering in circularly and linearly polarized backgrounds and to nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair production. We provide the explicit link between the LMA and QED, and benchmark against exact QED results. The LMA is particularly useful for high-energy, intermediate-intensity collisions, where, unlike the “locally constant field” approximation, the LMA correctly describes the position and amplitude of harmonic features and exactly reproduces the low energy limit. We show that in the limit of high-intensity and large harmonic order, the locally constant field approximation is recovered from the LMA.

We study the quench of a degenerate ultracold Bose gas to the unitary regime, where interactions are as strong as allowed by quantum mechanics. We lay the foundation of a cumulant theory able to simultaneously capture the three-body Efimov effect and ergodic evolution. After an initial period of rapid quantum depletion, a universal prethermal stage is established, characterized by a kinetic temperature and an emergent Bogoliubov dispersion law, while the microscopic degrees of freedom remain far from equilibrium. Integrability is then broken by higher-order interaction terms in the many-body Hamiltonian, leading to a momentum-dependent departure from power law to decaying exponential behavior of the occupation numbers at large momentum. We also find signatures of the Efimov effect in the many-body dynamics and make a precise identification between the observed beating phenomenon and the binding energy of an Efimov trimer. Throughout the paper, our predictions for a uniform gas are quantitatively compared with experimental results for quenched unitary Bose gases in uniform potentials.

High-order nonlinear optical effects have become an important feature of photonic systems, both ordered and disordered. In this work, a very large and robust set of experimental data obtained from the emission spectra of a trivalent neodymium ion-based random laser, whose action mechanism relies upon gain and disorder, was characterized in detail. Using an effective model, it was possible to describe how the optical nonlinearities of the disordered gain medium affect the statistical behavior of the intensity fluctuations of the random laser for excitations close to and well above the laser threshold. A theoretical framework is presented and, in particular, in the regime well above threshold a nice fit to the experimental data is obtained with a distribution that incorporates nonlinearities up to fifth order, the Izrailev distribution.

A nonlinear optical-magnetic manipulation scheme is proposed to realize the low-loss surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) trapping in metal-dielectric-metal (MDM) waveguide, based on double electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) and cross-phase modulation (CPM), theoretically. Using incoherent pumping, the Ohmic loss of SPPs is compensated. The huge nonlinearity in the system balances the diffraction of the SPPs, and a SPPs soliton is obtained. With the SPPs solitons, we realize the trapping of another weaker SPPs via CPM. We find that the trapped SPPs have a similar profile as the stronger SPPs, thus, the profile of trapped SPPs can be controlled even can be focused when being defused. We also show that the SPPs will deflect in an external gradient magnetic field, and the trajectory of the SPPs can be manipulated dynamically via adjusting the magnetic field gradient. The results obtained here may have great potential in future on-chip circuitry.