The generation of free energy landscapes corresponding to conformational equilibria in complex molecular systems remains a significant computational challenge. Adding to this challenge is the need to represent, store, and manipulate the often high-dimensional surfaces that result from rare-event sampling approaches employed to compute them. In this Letter, we propose the use of artificial neural networks as a solution to these issues. Using specific examples, we discuss network training using enhanced-sampling methods and the use of the networks in the calculation of ensemble averages.

We propose an information-theoretic framework to quantify multipartite correlations in classical and quantum systems, answering questions such as what is the amount of seven-partite correlations in a given state of ten particles? We identify measures of genuine multipartite correlations, i.e., statistical dependencies that cannot be ascribed to bipartite correlations, satisfying a set of desirable properties. Inspired by ideas developed in complexity science, we then introduce the concept of weaving to classify states that display different correlation patterns, but cannot be distinguished by correlation measures. The weaving of a state is defined as the weighted sum of correlations of every order. Weaving measures are good descriptors of the complexity of correlation structures in multipartite systems.

The detection of change points is a pivotal task in statistical analysis. In the quantum realm, it is a new primitive where one aims at identifying the point where a source that supposedly prepares a sequence of particles in identical quantum states starts preparing a mutated one. We obtain the optimal procedure to identify the change point with certainty—naturally at the price of having a certain probability of getting an inconclusive answer. We obtain the analytical form of the optimal probability of successful identification for any length of the particle sequence. We show that the conditional success probabilities of identifying each possible change point show an unexpected oscillatory behavior. We also discuss local (online) protocols and compare them with the optimal procedure.

Quantum coherence is an essential feature of quantum mechanics which is responsible for the departure between the classical and quantum world. The recently established resource theory of quantum coherence studies possible quantum technological applications of quantum coherence, and limitations that arise if one is lacking the ability to establish superpositions. An important open problem in this context is a simple characterization for incoherent operations, constituted by all possible transformations allowed within the resource theory of coherence. In this Letter, we contribute to such a characterization by proving several upper bounds on the maximum number of incoherent Kraus operators in a general incoherent operation. For a single qubit, we show that the number of incoherent Kraus operators is not more than 5, and it remains an open question if this number can be reduced to 4. The presented results are also relevant for quantum thermodynamics, as we demonstrate by introducing the class of Gibbs-preserving strictly incoherent operations, and solving the corresponding mixed-state conversion problem for a single qubit.

We explore the nonequilibrium evolution and stationary states of an open many-body system that displays epidemic spreading dynamics in a classical and a quantum regime. Our study is motivated by recent experiments conducted in strongly interacting gases of highly excited Rydberg atoms where the facilitated excitation of Rydberg states competes with radiative decay. These systems approximately implement open quantum versions of models for population dynamics or disease spreading where species can be in a healthy, infected or immune state. We show that in a two-dimensional lattice, depending on the dominance of either classical or quantum effects, the system may display a different kind of nonequilibrium phase transition. We moreover discuss the observability of our findings in laser driven Rydberg gases with particular focus on the role of long-range interactions.

We use a three-level artificial atom in the ladder configuration as a source of correlated, single microwave photons of different frequency. The artificial atom, a transmon-type superconducting circuit, is driven at the two-photon transition between ground and second-excited state, and embedded into an on-chip switch that selectively routes different-frequency photons into different spatial modes. Under continuous driving, we measure power cross-correlations between the two modes and observe a crossover between strong antibunching and superbunching, typical of cascade decay, and an oscillatory pattern as the drive strength becomes comparable to the radiative decay rate. By preparing the source in a superposition state using an excitation pulse, we achieve deterministic generation of entangled photon pairs, as demonstrated by nonvanishing phase correlations and more generally by joint quantum state tomography of the two itinerant photonic modes.

Although the title seems self-contradictory, it does not contain a misprint. The model we study is a seemingly minor modification of the “true self-avoiding walk” model of Amit, Parisi, and Peliti in two dimensions. The walks in it are self-repelling up to a characteristic time $T^{*}$ (which depends on various parameters), but spontaneously (i.e., without changing any control parameter) become self-trapping after that. For free walks, $T^{*}$ is astronomically large, but on finite lattices the transition is easily observable. In the self-trapped regime, walks are subdiffusive and intermittent, spending longer and longer times in small areas until they escape and move rapidly to a new area. In spite of this, these walks are extremely efficient in covering finite lattices, as measured by average cover times.

We investigate theoretically a one-dimensional ideal Bose gas that is driven into a steady state far from equilibrium via the coupling to two heat baths: a global bath of temperature $T$ and a “hot needle,” a bath of temperature $T_h\gg T$ with localized coupling to the system. Remarkably, this system features a crossover to finite-size Bose condensation at temperatures $T$ that are orders of magnitude larger than the equilibrium condensation temperature. This counterintuitive effect is explained by a suppression of long-wavelength excitations resulting from the competition between both baths. Moreover, for sufficiently large needle temperatures ground-state condensation is superseded by condensation into an excited state, which is favored by its weaker coupling to the hot needle. Our results suggest a general strategy for the preparation of quantum degenerate nonequilibrium steady states with unconventional properties and at large temperatures.

We solve an adaptive search model where a random walker or Lévy flight stochastically resets to previously visited sites on a $d$-dimensional lattice containing one trapping site. Because of reinforcement, a phase transition occurs when the resetting rate crosses a threshold above which nondiffusive stationary states emerge, localized around the inhomogeneity. The threshold depends on the trapping strength and on the walker’s return probability in the memoryless case. The transition belongs to the same class as the self-consistent theory of Anderson localization. These results show that similarly to many living organisms and unlike the well-studied Markovian walks, non-Markov movement processes can allow agents to learn about their environment and promise to bring adaptive solutions in search tasks.

We derive an Itô stochastic differential equation for entropy production in nonequilibrium Langevin processes. Introducing a random-time transformation, entropy production obeys a one-dimensional drift-diffusion equation, independent of the underlying physical model. This transformation allows us to identify generic properties of entropy production. It also leads to an exact uncertainty equality relating the Fano factor of entropy production and the Fano factor of the random time, which we also generalize to non-steady-state conditions.

The endohedral fullerene ${}^{15}\mathrm{N}@{\mathrm{C}}_{60}$ has narrow electron paramagnetic resonance lines which have been proposed as the basis for a condensed-matter portable atomic clock. We measure the low-frequency spectrum of this molecule, identifying and characterizing a clock transition at which the frequency becomes insensitive to magnetic field. We infer a linewidth at the clock field of 100 kHz. Using experimental data, we are able to place a bound on the clock’s projected frequency stability. We discuss ways to improve the frequency stability to be competitive with existing miniature clocks.

I derive a universal upper bound on the capacity of any communication channel between two distant systems. The Holevo quantity, and hence the mutual information, is at most of order $E\mathrm{\Delta }t/\hslash$, where $E$ is the average energy of the signal, and $\mathrm{\Delta }t$ is the amount of time for which detectors operate. The bound does not depend on the size or mass of the emitting and receiving systems, nor on the nature of the signal. No restrictions on preparing and processing the signal are imposed. As an example, I consider the encoding of information in the transverse or angular position of a signal emitted and received by systems of arbitrarily large cross section. In the limit of a large message space, quantum effects become important even if individual signals are classical, and the bound is upheld.

Tensor networks impose a notion of geometry on the entanglement of a quantum system. In some cases, this geometry is found to reproduce key properties of holographic dualities, and subsequently much work has focused on using tensor networks as tractable models for holographic dualities. Conventionally, the structure of the network—and hence the geometry—is largely fixed a priori by the choice of the tensor network ansatz. Here, we evade this restriction and describe an unbiased approach that allows us to extract the appropriate geometry from a given quantum state. We develop an algorithm that iteratively finds a unitary circuit that transforms a given quantum state into an unentangled product state. We then analyze the structure of the resulting unitary circuits. In the case of noninteracting, critical systems in one dimension, we recover signatures of scale invariance in the unitary network, and we show that appropriately defined geodesic paths between physical degrees of freedom exhibit known properties of a hyperbolic geometry.

Although geometric phases in quantum evolution are historically overlooked, their active control now stimulates strategies for constructing robust quantum technologies. Here, we demonstrate arbitrary single-qubit holonomic gates from a single cycle of nonadiabatic evolution, eliminating the need to concatenate two separate cycles. Our method varies the amplitude, phase, and detuning of a two-tone optical field to control the non-Abelian geometric phase acquired by a nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond over a coherent excitation cycle. We demonstrate the enhanced robustness of detuned gates to excited-state decoherence and provide insights for optimizing fast holonomic control in dissipative quantum systems.

The light-matter quantum interface that can create quantum correlations or entanglement between a photon and one atomic collective excitation is a fundamental building block for a quantum repeater. The intrinsic limit is that the probability of preparing such nonclassical atom-photon correlations has to be kept low in order to suppress multiexcitation. To enhance this probability without introducing multiexcitation errors, a promising scheme is to apply multimode memories to the interface. Significant progress has been made in temporal, spectral, and spatial multiplexing memories, but the enhanced probability for generating the entangled atom-photon pair has not been experimentally realized. Here, by using six spin-wave-photon entanglement sources, a switching network, and feedforward control, we build a multiplexed light-matter interface and then demonstrate a $\sim \text{sixfold}$ ($\sim \text{fourfold}$) probability increase in generating entangled atom-photon (photon-photon) pairs. The measured compositive Bell parameter for the multiplexed interface is $2.49\pm 0.03$ combined with a memory lifetime of up to $\sim 51\mu \mathrm{s}$.

Randomized benchmarking (RB) is widely used to measure an error rate of a set of quantum gates, by performing random circuits that would do nothing if the gates were perfect. In the limit of no finite-sampling error, the exponential decay rate of the observable survival probabilities, versus circuit length, yields a single error metric $r$. For Clifford gates with arbitrary small errors described by process matrices, $r$ was believed to reliably correspond to the mean, over all Clifford gates, of the average gate infidelity between the imperfect gates and their ideal counterparts. We show that this quantity is not a well-defined property of a physical gate set. It depends on the representations used for the imperfect and ideal gates, and the variant typically computed in the literature can differ from $r$ by orders of magnitude. We present new theories of the RB decay that are accurate for all small errors describable by process matrices, and show that the RB decay curve is a simple exponential for all such errors. These theories allow explicit computation of the error rate that RB measures ($r$), but as far as we can tell it does not correspond to the infidelity of a physically allowed (completely positive) representation of the imperfect gates.

A controlled quantum system can alter its environment by feedback, leading to reduced-entropy states of the environment and to improved system coherence. Here, using a quantum-dot electron spin as a control and probe, we prepare the quantum-dot nuclei under the feedback of coherent population trapping and observe their evolution from a thermal to a reduced-entropy state, with the immediate consequence of extended qubit coherence. Via Ramsey interferometry on the electron spin, we directly access the nuclear distribution following its preparation and measure the emergence and decay of correlations within the nuclear ensemble. Under optimal feedback, the inhomogeneous dephasing time of the electron, $T_2^{*}$, is extended by an order of magnitude to 39 ns. Our results can be readily exploited in quantum information protocols utilizing spin-photon entanglement and represent a step towards creating quantum many-body states in a mesoscopic nuclear-spin ensemble.

A system prepared in an unstable quantum state generally decays following an exponential law, as environmental decoherence is expected to prevent the decay products from recombining to reconstruct the initial state. Here we show the existence of deviations from exponential decay in open quantum systems under very general conditions. Our results are illustrated with the exact dynamics under quantum Brownian motion and suggest an explanation of recent experimental observations.