We propose an adiabatic protocol for implementing a controlled-phase gate ${\mathrm{CZ}}_{\theta }$ with continuous $\theta$ of neutral atoms through a symmetrical two-photon excitation process via the second resonance line, $6P$ in ${}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$, with a single-temporal-modulation-coupling of the ground state and intermediate state. Relying on different adiabatic paths, the phase factor $\theta$ of the ${\mathrm{CZ}}_{\theta }$ gate can be accumulated on the logic qubit state $|11⟩$ alone by calibrating the shape of the temporal pulse where strict zero amplitudes at the start and end of the pulse are not needed. For a wide range of $\theta$, we can obtain the fidelity of the ${\mathrm{CZ}}_{\theta }$ gate over 99.7% in less than $1\mu \mathrm{s}$, in the presence of spontaneous emission from intermediate and Rydberg states. And in particular for $\theta =\pi$, we benchmark the performance of the CZ gate by taking into account various experimental imperfections, such as Doppler shifts, fluctuation of Rydberg-Rydberg interaction strength, inhomogeneous Rabi frequency, and noise of driving fields, etc., and show that the predicted fidelity is able to maintain at about 98.4% after correcting the measurement error. This gate protocol provides a robustness against the fluctuation of pulse amplitude and a flexible way for adjusting the entangling phase, which may contribute to the experimental implementation of near-term noisy intermediate-scale quantum computation and algorithm with neutral-atom systems.

Precise reconstruction of unknown quantum states from measurement data, a process commonly called quantum state tomography, is a crucial component in the development of quantum information processing technologies. Many different tomography methods have been proposed over the years. Maximum-likelihood estimation is a prominent example, being the most popular method for a long period of time. Recently, more advanced neural-network methods have started to emerge. Here, we go back to basics and present a method for continuous-variable state reconstruction that is both conceptually and practically simple, based on convex optimization. Convex optimization has been used for process tomography and qubit-state tomography, but seems to have been overlooked for continuous-variable quantum-state tomography. We demonstrate high-fidelity reconstruction of an underlying state from data corrupted by thermal noise and imperfect detection, for both homodyne and heterodyne measurements. A major advantage over other methods is that convex optimization algorithms are guaranteed to converge to the optimal solution.

A new additional wavelength-tuning capability has been implemented on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) laser allowing for unprecedented control of crossed-beam energy transfer (CBET) between all groups of beams for better performance of indirect-drive inertial confinement fusion (ICF) ignition experiments. In particular, this advance allows for negation and reversal of flow-induced CBET and the rebalancing of the intensity of different groups of beams within an indirect-drive (ICF) hohlraum. Experiments conducted at the NIF using a 1.1 MJ laser pulse with peak power of 390 TW demonstrate this high level of control through measurements of the precise changes to stimulated Brillouin scattering, typically driven by flow-induced CBET at the end of the pulse. Additionally, this new capability is shown to be able to predictably control gold-wall plasma expansion in the target driven by early-time flow-induced CBET. Estimates of early-time CBET from the wall expansion are shown to be consistent with simulation expectations. This new additional capability to control symmetry and backscatter expands the design space of current experiments and provides extra margin for increased laser energy in near-future experiments.

Optical spectroscopic sensors are powerful tools for analyzing gas mixtures in industrial and scientific applications. Whilst highly sensitive spectrometers tend to have a large footprint, miniaturized optical devices usually lack sensitivity or wideband spectroscopic coverage. By employing a widely tunable, passively stable fiber Fabry-Perot cavity (FFPC), we demonstrate an absorption spectroscopic device that continuously samples over several tens of terahertz. Both broadband scans using cavity mode width spectroscopy to identify the spectral fingerprints of analytes and a fast, low-noise scan method for single absorption features to determine concentrations are exemplary demonstrated for the oxygen $\mathrm{A}$-band. The introduced scan method uses an injected modulation signal in a Pound-Drever-Hall feedback loop together with a lock-in measurement to reject noise at other frequencies. The FFPC-based approach provides a directly fiber-coupled, extremely miniaturized, light-weight, and robust platform for analyzing small analyte volumes that can straightforwardly be extended to sensing at different wavelength ranges, liquid analytes and other spectroscopic techniques with only little adjustments of the device platform.

Hole spin qubits are frontrunner platforms for scalable quantum computers because of their large spin-orbit interaction that enables ultrafast all-electric qubit control at low power. The fastest spin qubits to date are defined in long quantum dots with two tight confinement directions, when the driving field is aligned to the smooth direction. However, in these systems the lifetime of the qubit is strongly limited by charge noise, a major issue in hole qubits. We propose here a different, scalable qubit design, compatible with planar CMOS technology, where the hole is confined in a curved germanium quantum well surrounded by silicon. This design takes full advantage of the strong spin-orbit interaction of holes, and at the same time suppresses charge noise in a wide range of configurations, enabling highly coherent, ultrafast qubit gates. While here we focus on a $\mathrm{Si}$/$\mathrm{Ge}$/$\mathrm{Si}$ curved quantum well, our design is also applicable to different semiconductors. These devices allow for ultrafast operations even in short quantum dots by a transversal electric field. This additional driving mechanism relaxes the demanding design constraints, and offers a way to reliably interface spin qubits in a single quantum dot to microwave photons. By considering state-of-the-art high-impedance resonators and realistic qubit designs, we estimate interaction strengths of a few hundreds of megahertz, largely exceeding the decay rate of spins and photons. Reaching such a strong coupling regime in hole spin qubits will be a significant step towards high-fidelity entangling operations between distant qubits, as well as fast single-shot readout, and could pave the way towards the implementation of a large-scale semiconducting quantum processor.

In high-precision atomic gravimeters, a rest mass is needed to provide a gravity reference, which is typically the retro-reflecting mirror of the Raman laser beams that address the two hyperfine ground states of the specific free-falling atomic test mass. We construct a compact active feedback control system for the retro-reflecting mirror that provides vibration isolation in the vertical axis as well as two-rotation stabilization in the horizontal plane. The active feedback control provides vertical vibration reduction of up to a factor of 300 in the frequency range of 0.03 to 10 Hz and tilt stabilization of approximately $\pm 1\mu \mathrm{rad}$ in a noisy laboratory environment. This system enables high-precision gravity measurements on a portable gravimeter with sensitivity reaching $6.4\times {10}^{-8}g/\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$ and resolution of $2.8\times {10}^{-9}g$ after an integration time of 4000 s.

The presence of a bias field, encoding some information about a target state, can enhance the performance of quantum optimization methods. Here we investigate the effect of such a bias field on the outcome of quantum annealing sampling, with the example of the exact cover problem. The sampling is carried out on a D-Wave machine, and different bias configurations are benchmarked against the unbiased sampling procedure. It is found that the biased annealing algorithm works particularly well for larger problem sizes, where the Hamming distance between bias and target configuration becomes less important. This work motivates future research efforts for finding good bias configurations, either on the quantum machine itself or in a hybrid fashion via classical algorithms.

By introducing hierarchical patterns of load-parallel cuts into axially loaded brittle sheets, the resistance to propagation of mode-I cracks is very significantly enhanced. We demonstrate this effect by simulation of two-dimensional beam network models and experimentally by testing paper and polystyrene (PS) sheets that are sliced with a laser cutter to induce load-perpendicular hierarchical cut patterns. Samples endowed with nonhierarchical reference patterns of the same cut density and nonsliced sheets are considered for comparison. We demonstrate that hierarchical slicing can increase failure load, apparent fracture toughness, and work of fracture of notched paper and PS sheets by factors between 2 and 10.

Nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation (NHQC) is implemented by fast evolution processes in a geometric way to withstand local noises. However, recent works of implementing NHQC are sensitive to the systematic noise and error. Here, we present a path-optimized NHQC (PONHQC) scheme based on the non-Abelian geometric phase, and find that a geometric gate can be constructed by different evolution paths, which have different responses to systematic noises. Due to the flexibility of the PONHQC scheme, we can choose an optimized path that can lead to excellent gate performance. Numerical simulation shows that our optimized scheme can greatly outperform the conventional NHQC scheme, in terms of both fidelity and robustness of the gates. In addition, we propose to implement our strategy on superconducting quantum circuits with decoherence-free subspace encoding with the experiment-friendly two-body exchange interaction. Therefore, we present a flexible NHQC scheme that is promising for the future robust quantum computation.

Selective single beam tweezers open tremendous perspectives in microfluidics and microbiology for the micromanipulation, assembly, and mechanical properties testing of microparticles, cells, and microorganisms. In optics, single beam optical tweezers rely on tightly focused laser beams, generating a three-dimensional (3D) trap at the focal point. In acoustics, 3D traps have so-far only been reported experimentally with specific wavefields called acoustical vortices. Indeed, many types of particles are expelled (not attracted to) the center of a focused beam. Yet the trapping capabilities of focused beams have so far only been partially explored. In this paper, we numerically explore with an angular spectrum code the trapping capabilities of focused beams on a wide range of parameters (size over wavelength ratio and type of particles). We demonstrate that (i) 3D trapping of particles, droplets, and microorganisms more compressible than the surrounding fluid is possible in and beyond the Rayleigh regime [e.g., polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), olive oil, benzene, and lipid sphere] and that (ii) 2D trapping (without an axial trap) of particles with positive contrast factor can be achieved by using the particles resonances. The 3D trapping of biocompatible functionalized PDMS particles with integrable, high-frequency focused-beam tweezers opens the way towards acoustic force spectroscopy in some force ranges that were not accessible with optical methods.

Extending quantum sensing to time-varying parameter estimation is a potential and challenging task in practical application. To achieve this goal, we propose an adaptive method to estimate an unknown time-varying parameter through light-intensity split detection and the insertion of reference phases in the weak measurement. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulation are applied to illustrate the feasibility and practical applications of our method. The results demonstrate that the method has adjustable sensitivity and linear dynamic range, and is robust to nonideal measurement conditions. Moreover, we analyze the precision of our method and show that its precision limit can surpass the standard quantum limit and approach the Heisenberg scaling when using a squeezed light of optimal Gaussian state.

In this work we report on the extensive characterization of amorphous silicon carbide ($a$-SiC) coatings prepared by physical deposition methods. Our investigation is performed within the perspective application of $a$-SiC as an optical material for high-precision optical experiments and, in particular, in gravitational wave interferometry. We compare the results obtained with two different sputtering systems [a standard radio frequency (rf) magnetron sputtering and an ion-beam sputtering] to grasp the impact of two different setups on the repeatability of the results. After a thorough characterization of structural, morphological, and compositional characteristics of the prepared samples, we focus on a detailed study of the optical and mechanical losses in those materials. Mechanical losses are further investigated from a microscopic point of view by comparing our experimental results with molecular dynamic simulations of the amorphous SiC structure: first we define a protocol to generate a numerical model of the amorphous film, capturing the main features of the real system; then we simulate its dynamical behavior upon deformation in order to obtain its mechanical response.

We theoretically demonstrate generation of the Stokes temporal localized structure (TLS) by exploiting its Raman interaction in space and time within an optical potential well shared with another dark pulse. Excitation of the Stokes TLSs is feasible in both the normal and anomalous group-velocity dispersion regime, with a single modulated pump source. Stimulated Raman scattering constitutes influences on the stability and physical feature of the generated Stokes TLS (STLS). Particularly, breathing STLSs are also observed due to the periodic energy transfer between the primary and the Stokes fields. These findings could deepen the understanding of complex nonlinear dynamics in resonators and facilitate the excitation of different types of TLSs in potential platforms.

Fiber-based quantum communication networks are currently limited without quantum repeaters. Satellite-based quantum links have been proposed to extend the network domain. We develop a quantum communication system, suitable for realistic satellite-to-ground communication. With this system, we execute an entanglement-based quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol developed by Bennett, Brassard, and Mermin (BBM92), achieving quantum bit-error rates (QBERs) below 2% in all bases. More importantly, we demonstrate low-QBER execution of a higher-dimensional hyperentanglement-based QKD protocol, using photons simultaneously entangled in polarization and time bin, leading to significantly higher secure key rates, at the cost of increased technical complexity and system size. We show that our protocol is suitable for a space-to-ground link, after incorporating Doppler-shift compensation, and verify its security using a rigorous finite-key analysis. Additionally, we discuss system-engineering considerations relevant to those and other quantum communication protocols and their dependence on what photonic degrees of freedom are utilized.

Superconducting circuits are a leading platform for quantum computing. However, their coherence times are still limited and exhibit temporal fluctuations. Those phenomena are often attributed to the coupling between qubits and material defects that can be well described as an ensemble of two-level systems (TLSs). Among them, charge fluctuators inside amorphous oxide layers contribute to both low-frequency $1/f$ charge noise and high-frequency dielectric loss, causing fast qubit dephasing and relaxation. Moreover, spectral diffusion from mutual TLS interactions varies the noise amplitude over time, fluctuating the qubit lifetime. Here, we propose to mitigate those harmful effects by engineering the relevant TLS noise spectral densities. Specifically, our protocols smooth the high-frequency noise spectrum and suppress the low-frequency noise amplitude via depolarizing and dephasing the TLSs, respectively. As a result, we predict a drastic stabilization in qubit lifetime and an increase in qubit pure dephasing time. Our detailed analysis of feasible experimental implementations shows that the improvement is not compromised by spurious coupling from the applied noise to the qubit.

Hamiltonians of the superconducting qubits of transmon type involve nonzero $ZZ$ interaction terms due to their finite and small anharmonicities. These terms might lead to the unwanted accumulation of spurious phases during the execution of the two-qubit gates. Exact calculation of the $ZZ$ interaction rates requires the full diagonalization of the circuit Hamiltonians, which very quickly becomes computationally demanding as the number of the modes in the coupler circuit increases. Here we propose a direct analytical method for the accurate estimation of the $ZZ$ interaction rates between low-anharmonicity qubits in the dispersive limit of the multimode circuit quantum electrodynamics (circuit QED). We observe very good agreement between the predictions of our method and the measurement data collected from the multiqubit devices.

Understanding the dynamic behaviors of magnetic skyrmions has great potential in the application of spintronics. This is especially the case for the interaction between two skyrmions. In the literature, the attractive and repulsive skyrmion-skyrmion interactions are demonstrated as strongly related to the distance of two skyrmions and external magnetic fields. However, as a natural property, the temperature effect on skyrmion-skyrmion interactions is unclear, which lacks understanding from thermodynamics, and accordingly its driving force equation is absent. Here, we employ a temperature-related phase-field simulation and demonstrate that the skyrmion-skyrmion interaction is dramatically changed by temperature (e.g., a temperature change of only a few kelvins results in an eightfold higher interaction), which can lead to critical temperature behavior of skyrmion phase. Detailed analysis shows the interaction potential decreases exponentially with an increase of temperature, and this pronounced temperature dependence originates from the temperature-related skyrmion structure. Then, an equation is proposed to describe the skyrmion interaction at finite temperatures. Therefore, this study provides a deeper understanding of the skyrmion kinetic behavior and explores the temperature control of skyrmion interactions coupled with other sources of interaction, which is a guidance for future study of skyrmions and their applications.