We discuss the thermodynamics of closed quantum systems driven out of equilibrium by a change in a control parameter and undergoing a unitary process. We compare the work actually done on the system with the one that would be performed along ideal adiabatic and isothermal transformations. The comparison with the latter leads to the introduction of irreversible work, while that with the former leads to the introduction of inner friction. We show that these two quantities can be treated on an equal footing, as both can be linked with the heat exchanged in thermalization processes and both can be expressed as relative entropies. Furthermore, we show that a specific fluctuation relation for the entropy production associated with the inner friction exists, which allows the inner friction to be written in terms of its cumulants.

We investigate the distribution of errors on a computationally useful entangled state generated via the repeated emission from an emitter undergoing strongly non-Markovian evolution. For emitter-environment coupling of pure-dephasing form, we show that the probability that a particular patten of errors occurs has a bound of Markovian form, and thus, accuracy threshold theorems based on Markovian models should be just as effective. Beyond the pure-dephasing assumption, though complicated error structures can arise, they can still be qualitatively bounded by a Markovian error model.

We introduce an approach which allows a full structural and quantitative analysis of multipartite entanglement. The sets of states with different structures are convex and nested. Hence, they can be distinguished from each other using appropriate measurable witnesses. We derive equations for the construction of optimal witnesses and discuss general properties arising from our approach. As an example, we formulate witnesses for a 4-cluster state and perform a full quantitative analysis of the entanglement structure in the presence of noise and losses. The strength of the method in multimode continuous variable systems is also demonstrated for a dephased Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger-type state.

The Stark shift due to blackbody radiation (BBR) is the key factor limiting the performance of many atomic frequency standards, with the BBR environment inside the clock apparatus being difficult to characterize at a high level of precision. Here we demonstrate an in-vacuum radiation shield that furnishes a uniform, well-characterized BBR environment for the atoms in an ytterbium optical lattice clock. Operated at room temperature, this shield enables specification of the BBR environment to a corresponding fractional clock uncertainty contribution of $5.5\times {10}^{-19}$. Combined with uncertainty in the atomic response, the total uncertainty of the BBR Stark shift is now $1\times {10}^{-18}$. Further operation of the shield at elevated temperatures enables a direct measure of the BBR shift temperature dependence and demonstrates consistency between our evaluated BBR environment and the expected atomic response.

We consider the problem of reconstructing global quantum states from local data. Because the reconstruction problem has many solutions in general, we consider the reconstructed state of maximum global entropy consistent with the local data. We show that unique ground states of local Hamiltonians are exactly reconstructed as the maximal entropy state. More generally, we show that if the state in question is a ground state of a local Hamiltonian with a degenerate space of locally indistinguishable ground states, then the maximal entropy state is close to the ground state projector. We also show that local reconstruction is possible for thermal states of local Hamiltonians. Finally, we discuss a procedure to certify that the reconstructed state is close to the true global state. We call the entropy of our reconstructed maximum entropy state the “reconstruction entropy,” and we discuss its relation to emergent geometry in the context of holographic duality.

Rectangular real $N\times (N+\nu )$ matrices $W$ with a Gaussian distribution appear very frequently in data analysis, condensed matter physics, and quantum field theory. A central question concerns the correlations encoded in the spectral statistics of $W{W}^T$. The extreme eigenvalues of $W{W}^T$ are of particular interest. We explicitly compute the distribution and the gap probability of the smallest nonzero eigenvalue in this ensemble, both for arbitrary fixed $N$ and $\nu$, and in the universal large $N$ limit with $\nu$ fixed. We uncover an integrable Pfaffian structure valid for all even values of $\nu \ge 0$. This extends previous results for odd $\nu$ at infinite $N$ and recursive results for finite $N$ and for all $\nu$. Our mathematical results include the computation of expectation values of half-integer powers of characteristic polynomials.

Contextuality is a fundamental property of quantum theory and a critical resource for quantum computation. Here, we experimentally observe the arguably cleanest form of contextuality in quantum theory [A. Cabello et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 180404 (2013)] by implementing a novel method for performing two sequential measurements on heralded photons. This method opens the door to a variety of fundamental experiments and applications.

We present a general transfer-function approach to noise filtering in open-loop Hamiltonian engineering protocols for open quantum systems. We show how to identify a computationally tractable set of fundamental filter functions, out of which arbitrary transfer filter functions may be assembled up to arbitrary high order in principle. Besides avoiding the infinite recursive hierarchy of filter functions that arises in general control scenarios, this fundamental filter-function set suffices to characterize the error suppression capabilities of the control protocol in both the time and the frequency domain. We prove that the resulting notion of filtering order reveals conceptually distinct, albeit complementary, features of the controlled dynamics as compared to the order of error cancellation, traditionally defined in the Magnus sense. Examples and implications are discussed.

We analyze the role of entanglement among probes and with external ancillas in quantum metrology. In the absence of noise, it is known that unentangled sequential strategies can achieve the same Heisenberg scaling of entangled strategies and that external ancillas are useless. This changes in the presence of noise; here we prove that entangled strategies can have higher precision than unentangled ones and that the addition of passive external ancillas can also increase the precision. We analyze some specific noise models and use the results to conjecture a general hierarchy for quantum metrology strategies in the presence of noise.

We show that non-Hermitian dynamics generate substantial entanglement in many-body systems. We consider the non-Hermitian Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model and show that its phase transition occurs with maximum multiparticle entanglement: There is full $N$-particle entanglement at the transition, in contrast to the Hermitian case. The non-Hermitian model also exhibits more spin squeezing than the Hermitian model, showing that non-Hermitian dynamics are useful for quantum metrology. Experimental implementations with trapped ions and cavity QED are discussed.

Recently, it has been realized that dissipative processes can be harnessed and exploited to the end of coherent quantum control and information processing. In this spirit, we consider strongly dissipative quantum systems admitting a nontrivial manifold of steady states. We show how one can enact adiabatic coherent unitary manipulations, e.g., quantum logical gates, inside this steady-state manifold by adding a weak, time-rescaled, Hamiltonian term into the system’s Liouvillian. The effective long-time dynamics is governed by a projected Hamiltonian which results from the interplay between the weak unitary control and the fast relaxation process. The leakage outside the steady-state manifold entailed by the Hamiltonian term is suppressed by an environment-induced symmetrization of the dynamics. We present applications to quantum-computation in decoherence-free subspaces and noiseless subsystems and numerical analysis of nonadiabatic errors.

The superfluid-crystal quantum phase transition of a system of purely repulsive dipolar bosons in two dimensions is studied by quantum Monte Carlo simulations at zero temperature. We determine freezing and melting densities and estimate the energy per unit length of a macroscopic interface separating the two phases. The results rule out the microemulsion scenario for any physical realization of this system, given the exceedingly large predicted size of the bubbles.

In few-body physics, Efimov states are an infinite series of three-body bound states that obey universal discrete scaling symmetry when pairwise interactions are resonantly enhanced. Despite abundant reports of Efimov states in recent cold atom experiments, direct observation of the discrete scaling symmetry remains an elusive goal. Here we report the observation of three consecutive Efimov resonances in a heteronuclear Li-Cs mixture near a broad interspecies Feshbach resonance. The positions of the resonances closely follow a geometric series 1, $\lambda$, ${\lambda }^2$. The observed scaling constant ${\lambda }_{\text{exp}}=4.9(4)$ is in good agreement with the predicted value of 4.88.

The Majorana’s stellar representation, which represents the evolution of a quantum state with the trajectories of the Majorana stars on a Bloch sphere, provides an intuitive way to study a physical system with a high dimensional projective Hilbert space. In this Letter, we study the Berry phase by these stars and their loops on the Bloch sphere. It is shown that the Berry phase of a general spin state can be expressed by an elegant formula with the solid angles of Majorana star loops. Furthermore, these results can be used to a general state with arbitrary dimensions. To demonstrate our theory, we study a two mode interacting boson system. Finally, the relation between stars’ correlations and quantum entanglement is discussed.

We show that an electron moving in a uniform magnetic field possesses a time-varying “diamagnetic” angular momentum. Surprisingly this means that the kinetic angular momentum of the electron may vary with time, despite the rotational symmetry of the system. This apparent violation of angular momentum conservation is resolved by including the angular momentum of the surrounding fields.

We describe a Casimir apparatus based on a differential force measurement between a Au-coated sphere and a planar slab divided in two regions, one of which is made of high-resistivity (dielectric) Si, and the other of Au. The crucial feature of the setup is a semitransparent plane parallel conducting overlayer, covering both regions. The setup offers two important advantages over existing Casimir setups. On one hand, it leads to a large amplification of the difference between the Drude and the plasma prescriptions that are currently used to compute the thermal Casimir force. On the other hand, thanks to the screening power of the overlayer, it is in principle immune from electrostatic forces caused by potential patches on the plates surfaces, that plague present large distance Casimir experiments. If a semitransparent conductive overlayer with identical patch structure over the Au-Si regions of the plate can be manufactured, similar to the opaque overlayers used in recent searches of non-Newtonian gravitational forces based on the isoelectronic technique, the way will be paved for a clear observation of the thermal Casimir force up to separations of several microns, and an unambiguous discrimination between the Drude and the plasma prescriptions.

When an initially entangled pair of qubits undergoes local decoherence processes, there are a number of ways in which the original entanglement can spread throughout the multipartite system consisting of the two qubits and their environments. Here, we report theoretical and experimental results regarding the dynamics of the distribution of entanglement in this system. The experiment employs an all optical setup in which the qubits are encoded in the polarization degrees of freedom of two photons, and each local decoherence channel is implemented with an interferometer that couples the polarization to the path of each photon, which acts as an environment. We monitor the dynamics and distribution of entanglement and observe the transition from bipartite to multipartite entanglement and back, and show how these transitions are intimately related to the sudden death and sudden birth of entanglement. The multipartite entanglement is further analyzed in terms of three- and four-partite entanglement contributions, and genuine four-qubit entanglement is observed at some points of the evolution.

In this Letter we give a set of necessary and sufficient conditions such that quantum players of a two-party xor game cannot perform any better than classical players. With any such game, we associate a graph and examine its zero-error communication capacity. This allows us to specify a broad new class of graphs for which the Shannon capacity can be calculated. The conditions also enable the parametrization of new families of games that have no quantum advantage for arbitrary input probability distributions, up to certain symmetries. In the future, these might be used in information-theoretic studies on reproducing the set of quantum nonlocal correlations.