Bell state measurements, in which two quantum bits are projected onto a maximally entangled state, are an essential component of quantum information science. We propose and experimentally demonstrate the projection of two quantum systems with three states (qutrits) onto a generalized maximally entangled state. Each qutrit is represented by the polarization of a pair of indistinguishable photons—a biphoton. The projection is a joint measurement on both biphotons using standard linear optics elements. This demonstration enables the realization of quantum information protocols with qutrits, such as teleportation and entanglement swapping.

The approach to equilibrium is studied for long-range quantum Ising models where the interaction strength decays like $r^{-\alpha }$ at large distances $r$ with an exponent $\alpha$ not exceeding the lattice dimension. For a large class of observables and initial states, the time evolution of expectation values can be calculated. We prove analytically that, at a given instant of time $t$ and for sufficiently large system size $N$, the expectation value of some observable $⟨A⟩(t)$ will practically be unchanged from its initial value $⟨A⟩(0)$. This finding implies that, for large enough $N$, equilibration effectively occurs on a time scale beyond the experimentally accessible one and will not be observed in practice.

We have created a long-lived ($\approx 40\mathrm{s}$) persistent current in a toroidal Bose-Einstein condensate held in an all-optical trap. A repulsive optical barrier across one side of the torus creates a tunable weak link in the condensate circuit, which can affect the current around the loop. Superflow stops abruptly at a barrier strength such that the local flow velocity at the barrier exceeds a critical velocity. The measured critical velocity is consistent with dissipation due to the creation of vortex-antivortex pairs. This system is the first realization of an elementary closed-loop atom circuit.

We propose and analyze an interface between a topological qubit and a superconducting flux qubit. In our scheme, the interaction between Majorana fermions in a topological insulator is coherently controlled by a superconducting phase that depends on the quantum state of the flux qubit. A controlled-phase gate, achieved by pulsing this interaction on and off, can transfer quantum information between the topological qubit and the superconducting qubit.

We propose computing bus devices that enable quantum information to be coherently transferred between topological and conventional qubits. We describe a concrete realization of such a topological quantum bus acting between a topological qubit in a Majorana wire network and a conventional semiconductor double quantum dot qubit. Specifically, this device measures the joint (fermion) parity of these two different qubits by using the Aharonov-Casher effect in conjunction with an ancilliary superconducting flux qubit that facilitates the measurement. Such a parity measurement, together with the ability to apply Hadamard gates to the two qubits, allows one to produce states in which the topological and conventional qubits are maximally entangled and to teleport quantum states between the topological and conventional quantum systems.

We introduce a procedure to generate scattering states which display trajectorylike wave function patterns in wave transport through complex scatterers. These deterministic scattering states feature the dual property of being eigenstates to the Wigner-Smith time-delay matrix $Q$ and to the transmission matrix $t^{†}t$ with classical (noiseless) transmission eigenvalues close to 0 or 1. Our procedure to create such beamlike states is based solely on the scattering matrix and successfully tested numerically for regular, chaotic, and disordered cavities. These results pave the way for the experimental realization of highly collimated wave fronts in transport through complex media with possible applications such as secure and low-power communication.

We demonstrate that collective continuous variables of two species of trapped ultracold bosonic gases can be Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-correlated (entangled) via inherent interactions between the species. We propose two different schemes for creating these correlations—a dynamical scheme and a static scheme analogous to two-mode squeezing in quantum optics. We quantify the correlations by using known measures of entanglement and study the effect of finite temperature on these quantum correlations.

Criteria suitable for measuring entanglement between two different potential wells in a Bose-Einstein condensation are evaluated. We show how to generate the required entanglement, utilizing either an adiabatic two-mode or a dynamic four-mode interaction strategy, with techniques that take advantage of $s$-wave scattering interactions to provide the nonlinear coupling. The dynamic entanglement method results in an entanglement signature with spatially separated detectors, as in the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox.

There has been great interest in recent years in quantum control landscapes. Given an objective $J$ that depends on a control field $\epsilon$ the dynamical landscape is defined by the properties of the Hessian ${\delta }^{2}J/\delta {\epsilon }^2$ at the critical points $\delta J/\delta \epsilon =0$. We show that contrary to recent claims in the literature the dynamical control landscape can exhibit trapping behavior due to the existence of special critical points and illustrate this finding with an example of a 3-level $\Lambda$ system. This observation can have profound implications for both theoretical and experimental quantum control studies.

We show that an entanglement swapping operation performed with spontaneous parametric down-conversion can be made faithful without postselection using sum-frequency generation. This invites us to revisit the sum-frequency process and from a proof-of-principle experiment, we demonstrate that it provides a realistic solution for nonlinear optics at the single-photon level. This opens the way to attractive alternatives to six-photon protocols based on linear optics used, e.g., for the heralded creation of maximally entangled pairs or for device-independent quantum key distribution.

We present results on a circuit QED experiment in which a separate transmission line is used to address a quasilumped element superconducting microwave resonator which is in turn coupled to an $\mathrm{Al}/{\mathrm{AlO}}_x/\mathrm{Al}$ Cooper-pair box charge qubit. With our device, we find a strong correlation between the lifetime of the qubit and the inverse of the coupling between the qubit and the transmission line. At the smallest coupling we measured, the lifetime of the Cooper-pair box was $T_1=200\mu \mathrm{s}$, which represents more than a twentyfold improvement in the lifetime of the Cooper-pair box compared with previous results. These results imply that the loss tangent in the ${\mathrm{AlO}}_x$ junction barrier must be less than about $4\times {10}^{-8}$ at 4.5 GHz, about 4 orders of magnitude less than reported in larger area $\mathrm{Al}/{\mathrm{AlO}}_x/\mathrm{Al}$ tunnel junctions.

We interpret the maximum global effect caused by locally invariant measurements as measurement-induced nonlocality, which is in some sense dual to the geometric measure of quantum discord [Dakic, Vedral, and Brukner, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 190502 (2010)]. We quantify measurement-induced nonlocality from a geometric perspective in terms of measurements, and obtain analytical formulas for any dimensional pure states and $2\times n$ dimensional mixed states. We further derive a tight upper bound to measurement-induced nonlocality in general case. The physical significance of measurement-induced nonlocality is discussed in the context of correlations, entanglement, quantumness, and cryptographic communication.

We analyze the large-scale structure and fluctuations of jammed packings of size-disperse spheres, produced in a granular experiment as well as numerically. While the structure factor of the packings reveals no unusual behavior for small wave vectors, the compressibility displays an anomalous linear dependence at low wave vectors and vanishes when $q\to 0$. We show that such behavior occurs because jammed packings of size-disperse spheres have no bulk fluctuations of the volume fraction and are thus hyperuniform, a property not observed experimentally before. Our results apply to arbitrary particle size distributions. For continuous distributions, we derive a perturbative expression for the compressibility that is accurate for polydispersity up to about 30%.

We present a hitherto unknown fundamental limitation to a basic measurement: that of the position of a quantum object when the total momentum of the object and apparatus is conserved. This result extends the famous Wigner-Araki-Yanase theorem, and shows that accurate position measurements are only practically feasible if there is a large momentum uncertainty in the apparatus.

We note that massless fields within the future and past light cone may be quantized as independent systems. The vacuum is shown to be a nonseparable state of these systems, exactly mirroring the known entanglement between the spacelike separated Rindler wedges. This leads to a notion of timelike entanglement. We describe an inertial detector which exhibits a thermal response to the vacuum when switched on at $t=0$, due to this property. The feasibility of detecting this effect is discussed, with natural experimental parameters appearing at the scale of 100 GHz.

Interacting lattice bosons at integer filling can support two distinct insulating phases, which are separated by a critical point: the Mott insulator and the Haldane insulator [E. G. Dalla Torre, E. Berg, and E. Altman, Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 260401 (2006).]. The critical point can be gapped out by breaking lattice inversion symmetry. Here, we show that encircling this critical point adiabatically pumps one boson across the system. When multiple chains are coupled, the two insulating phases are no longer sharply distinct, but the pumping property survives. This leads to strict constraints on the topology of the phase diagram of systems of quasi-one-dimensional interacting bosons.

We show how the time-continuous coherent state path integral breaks down for both the single-site Bose-Hubbard model and the spin-path integral. Specifically, when the Hamiltonian is quadratic in a generator of the algebra used to construct coherent states, the path integral fails to produce correct results following from an operator approach. As suggested by previous authors, we note that the problems do not arise in the time-discretized version of the path integral.

We study the stability of superpositions of macroscopically distinct quantum states under decoherence. We introduce a class of quantum states with entanglement features similar to Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states, but with an inherent stability against noise and decoherence. We show that in contrast to GHZ states, these so-called concatenated GHZ states remain multipartite entangled even for macroscopic numbers of particles and can be used for quantum metrology in noisy environments. We also propose a scalable experimental realization of these states using existing ion-trap setups.

We investigate the crossover from Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluidity to Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in a two-dimensional Fermi gas at $T=0$ using the fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo method. We calculate the equation of state and the gap parameter as a function of the interaction strength, observing large deviations compared to mean-field predictions. In the BEC regime our results show the important role of dimer-dimer and atom-dimer interaction effects that are completely neglected in the mean-field picture. Results on Tan’s contact parameter associated with short-range physics are also reported along the BCS-BEC crossover.

Uncertainty relations give upper bounds on the accuracy by which the outcomes of two incompatible measurements can be predicted. While established uncertainty relations apply to cases where the predictions are based on purely classical data (e.g., a description of the system’s state before measurement), an extended relation which remains valid in the presence of quantum information has been proposed recently [Berta et al., Nature Phys. 6, 659 (2010)]. Here, we generalize this uncertainty relation to one formulated in terms of smooth entropies. Since these entropies measure operational quantities such as extractable secret key length, our uncertainty relation is of immediate practical use. To illustrate this, we show that it directly implies security of quantum key distribution protocols. Our security claim remains valid even if the implemented measurement devices deviate arbitrarily from the theoretical model.