We discuss the fundamental noise limitations of a ferromagnetic torque sensor based on a levitated magnet in the tipping regime. We evaluate the optimal magnetic field resolution taking into account the thermomechanical noise and the mechanical detection noise at the standard quantum limit. We find that the energy resolution limit, pointed out in recent literature as a relevant benchmark for most classes of magnetometers, can be surpassed by many orders of magnitude. Moreover, similarly to the case of a ferromagnetic gyroscope, it is also possible to surpass the standard quantum limit for magnetometry with independent spins, arising from spin-projection noise. Our finding indicates that magnetomechanical systems optimized for magnetometry can achieve a magnetic field resolution per unit volume several orders of magnitude better than any conventional magnetometer. We discuss possible implications, focusing on fundamental physics problems such as the search for exotic interactions beyond the standard model.

We report observations of quasiparticle pair production by a modulational instability in an atomic superfluid and present a measurement technique that enables direct characterization of quasiparticle quantum entanglement. By quenching the atomic interaction to attractive and then back to weakly repulsive, we produce correlated quasiparticles and monitor their evolution in a superfluid through evaluating the in situ density noise power spectrum, which essentially measures a “homodyne” interference between ground-state atoms and quasiparticles of opposite momenta. We observe large amplitude growth in the power spectrum and subsequent coherent oscillations in a wide spatial frequency band within our resolution limit, demonstrating coherent quasiparticle generation and evolution. The spectrum is observed to oscillate below a quantum limit set by the Peres-Horodecki separability criterion of continuous-variable states, thereby confirming quantum entanglement between interaction quench-induced quasiparticles.

Eigenstate thermalization in quantum many-body systems implies that eigenstates at high energy are similar to random vectors. Identifying systems where at least some eigenstates are nonthermal is an outstanding question. In this Letter we show that interacting quantum models that have a nullspace—a degenerate subspace of eigenstates at zero energy (zero modes), which corresponds to infinite temperature, provide a route to nonthermal eigenstates. We analytically show the existence of a zero mode which can be represented as a matrix product state for a certain class of local Hamiltonians. In the more general case we use a subspace disentangling algorithm to generate an orthogonal basis of zero modes characterized by increasing entanglement entropy. We show evidence for an area-law entanglement scaling of the least-entangled zero mode in the broad parameter regime, leading to a conjecture that all local Hamiltonians with the nullspace feature zero modes with area-law entanglement scaling and, as such, break the strong thermalization hypothesis. Finally, we find zero modes in constrained models and propose a setup for observing their experimental signatures.

We develop a unified framework to characterize one-shot transformations of dynamical quantum resources in terms of resource quantifiers, establishing universal conditions for exact and approximate transformations in general resource theories. Our framework encompasses all dynamical resources represented as quantum channels, including those with a specific structure—such as boxes, assemblages, and measurements—thus immediately applying in a vast range of physical settings. For the particularly important manipulation tasks of distillation and dilution, we show that our conditions become necessary and sufficient for broad classes of important theories, enabling an exact characterization of these tasks and establishing a precise connection between operational problems and resource monotones based on entropic divergences. We exemplify our results by considering explicit applications to quantum communication, where we obtain exact expressions for one-shot quantum capacity and simulation cost assisted by no-signaling, separability-preserving, and positive partial transpose–preserving codes; as well as to nonlocality, contextuality, and measurement incompatibility, where we present operational applications of a number of relevant resource measures.

When multiple quantum emitters radiate, their emission rate may be enhanced or suppressed due to collective interference in a process known as super- or subradiance. Such processes are well known to occur also in light emission from free electrons, known as coherent cathodoluminescence. Unlike atomic systems, free electrons have an unbounded energy spectrum, and, thus, all their emission mechanisms rely on electron recoil, in addition to the classical properties of the dielectric medium. To date, all experimental and theoretical studies of super- and subradiance from free electrons assumed only classical correlations between particles. However, dependence on quantum correlations, such as entanglement between free electrons, has not been studied. Recent advances in coherent shaping of free-electron wave functions motivate the investigation of such quantum regimes of super- and subradiance. In this Letter, we show how a pair of coincident path-entangled electrons can demonstrate either super- or subradiant light emission, depending on the two-particle wave function. By choosing different free-electron Bell states, the spectrum and emission pattern of the light can be reshaped, in a manner that cannot be accounted for by a classical mixed state. We show these results for light emission in any optical medium and discuss their generalization to many-body quantum states. Our findings suggest that light emission can be sensitive to the explicit quantum state of the emitting matter wave and possibly serve as a nondestructive measurement scheme for measuring the quantum state of many-body systems.

Cross-resonance (CR) gates have emerged as a promising scheme for fault-tolerant quantum computation with fixed-frequency qubits. We experimentally implement an entangling CR gate by using a microwave-only control in a tunable coupling superconducting circuit, where the tunable coupler provides extra degrees of freedom to verify optimal conditions for constructing a CR gate. By developing a three-qubit Hamiltonian tomography protocol, we systematically investigate the dependency of gate fidelities on spurious qubit interactions and present the first experimental approach to the evaluation of the perturbation impact arising from spectator qubits. Our results reveal that the spectator qubits lead to reductions in CR gate fidelity dependent on $ZZ$ interactions and particular frequency detunings between spectator and gate qubits. The target spectator demonstrates a more serious impact than the control spectator under a standard echo pulse scheme, whereas the degradation of gate fidelity is observed up to 22.5% as both the spectators are present with a modest ZZ coupling to the computational qubits. Our experiments uncover an optimal CR operation regime, and the method we develop here can readily be applied to improving other kinds of two-qubit gates in large-scale quantum circuits.

A central roadblock to analyzing quantum algorithms on quantum states is the lack of a comparable input model for classical algorithms. Inspired by recent work of the author [E. Tang, STOC 2019.], we introduce such a model, where we assume we can efficiently perform ${\ell }^2$-norm samples of input data, a natural analog to quantum algorithms that assume efficient state preparation of classical data. Though this model produces less practical algorithms than the (stronger) standard model of classical computation, it captures versions of many of the features and nuances of quantum linear algebra algorithms. With this model, we describe classical analogs to Lloyd, Mohseni, and Rebentrost’s quantum algorithms for principal component analysis [S. Lloyd, M. Mohseni, and P. Rebentrost, Nat. Phys. 10, 631 (2014).] and nearest-centroid clustering [S. Lloyd, M. Mohseni, and P. Rebentrost, Quantum algorithms for supervised and unsupervised machine learning]. Since they are only polynomially slower, these algorithms suggest that the exponential speedups of their quantum counterparts are simply an artifact of state preparation assumptions.

For the certification and benchmarking of medium-size quantum devices, efficient methods to characterize entanglement are needed. In this context, it has been shown that locally randomized measurements on a multiparticle quantum system can be used to obtain valuable information on the so-called moments of the partially transposed quantum state. This allows one to infer some separability properties of a state, but how to use the given information in an optimal and systematic manner has yet to be determined. We propose two general entanglement detection methods based on the moments of the partially transposed density matrix. The first method is based on the Hankel matrices and provides a family of entanglement criteria, of which the lowest order reduces to the known $p_3$-positive-partial-transpose criterion proposed in A. Elben et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 200501 (2020)]. The second method is optimal and gives necessary and sufficient conditions for entanglement based on some moments of the partially transposed density matrix.

We develop two cutting-edge approaches to construct deep neural networks representing the purified finite-temperature states of quantum many-body systems. Both methods commonly aim to represent the Gibbs state by a highly expressive neural-network wave function, exemplifying the idea of purification. The first method is an entirely deterministic approach to generate deep Boltzmann machines representing the purified Gibbs state exactly. This strongly assures the remarkable flexibility of the ansatz which can fully exploit the quantum-to-classical mapping. The second method employs stochastic sampling to optimize the network parameters such that the imaginary time evolution is well approximated within the expressibility of neural networks. Numerical demonstrations for transverse-field Ising models and Heisenberg models show that our methods are powerful enough to investigate the finite-temperature properties of strongly correlated quantum many-body systems, even when the problematic effect of frustration is present.

Ergodicity breaking and slow relaxation are intriguing aspects of nonequilibrium dynamics both in classical and quantum settings. These phenomena are typically associated with phase transitions, e.g., the emergence of metastable regimes near a first-order transition or scaling dynamics in the vicinity of critical points. Despite being of fundamental interest the associated divergent timescales are a hindrance when trying to explore steady-state properties. Here we show that the relaxation dynamics of Markovian open quantum systems can be accelerated exponentially by devising an optimal unitary transformation that is applied to the quantum system immediately before the actual dynamics. This initial “rotation” is engineered in such a way that the state of the quantum system no longer excites the slowest decaying dynamical mode. We illustrate our idea—which is inspired by the so-called Mpemba effect, i.e., water freezing faster when initially heated up—by showing how to achieve an exponential speeding-up in the convergence to stationarity in Dicke models, and how to avoid metastable regimes in an all-to-all interacting spin system.

Quantum metrology is a rapidly developing branch of quantum technologies. While various theories have been established on quantum metrology for Markovian processes, i.e., quantum channel estimation, quantum metrology for non-Markovian processes is much less explored. In this Letter, we establish a general framework of non-Markovian quantum metrology. For any parametrized non-Markovian process on a finite-dimensional system, we derive a formula for the maximal amount of quantum Fisher information that can be extracted from it by an optimally controlled probe state. In addition, we design an algorithm that evaluates this quantum Fisher information via semidefinite programming. We apply our framework to noisy frequency estimation, where we find that the optimal performance of quantum metrology is better in the non-Markovian scenario than in the Markovian scenario and explore the possibility of efficient sensing via simple variational circuits.

A general property of relaxation rates in open quantum systems is discussed. We find an interesting constraint for relaxation rates that universally holds in fairly large classes of quantum dynamics, e.g., weak coupling regimes, as well as for entropy nondecreasing evolutions. We conjecture that this constraint is universal, i.e., it is valid for all quantum dynamical semigroups. The conjecture is supported by numerical analysis. Moreover, we show that the conjectured constraint is tight by providing a concrete model that saturates the bound. This universality marks an essential step toward the physical characterization of complete positivity as the constraint is directly verifiable in experiments. It provides, therefore, a physical manifestation of complete positivity. Our conjecture also has two important implications: it provides (i) a universal constraint for the spectra of quantum channels and (ii) a necessary condition to decide whether a given channel is consistent with Markovian evolution.

The nonequilibrium quantum dynamics of closed many-body systems is a rich yet challenging field. While recent progress for periodically driven (Floquet) systems has yielded a number of rigorous results, our understanding on quantum many-body systems driven by rapidly varying but aperiodic and quasiperiodic driving is still limited. Here, we derive rigorous, nonperturbative, bounds on the heating rate in quantum many-body systems under Thue-Morse quasiperiodic driving and under random multipolar driving, the latter being a tunably randomized variant of the former. In the process, we derive a static effective Hamiltonian that describes the transient prethermal state, including the dynamics of local observables. Our bound for Thue-Morse quasiperiodic driving suggests that the heating time scales like $(\omega /g{)}^{-C\ln (\omega /g)}$ with a positive constant $C$ and a typical energy scale $g$ of the Hamiltonian, in agreement with our numerical simulations.

Strong nonlinear coupling of superconducting qubits and/or photons is a critical building block for quantum information processing. Because of the perturbative nature of the Josephson nonlinearity, linear coupling is often used in the dispersive regime to approximate nonlinear coupling. However, this dispersive coupling is weak and the underlying linear coupling mixes the local modes, which, for example, distributes unwanted self-Kerr nonlinearity to photon modes. Here, we use the quarton to yield purely nonlinear coupling between two linearly decoupled transmon qubits. The quarton’s zero ${\varphi }^2$ potential enables an ultrastrong gigahertz-level cross-Kerr coupling, which is an order of magnitude stronger compared to existing schemes, and the quarton’s positive ${\varphi }^4$ potential can cancel the negative self-Kerr nonlinearity of qubits to linearize them into resonators. This ultrastrong cross-Kerr coupling between bare modes of qubit-qubit, qubit-photon, and even photon-photon is ideal for applications such as single microwave photon detection, ultrafast two-qubit gates, and readout.

We demonstrate a new approach for fast preparation, manipulation, and collective readout of an atomic Rydberg-state qubit. By making use of Rydberg blockade inside a small atomic ensemble, we prepare a single qubit within $3\mu \mathrm{s}$ with a success probability of $F_p=0.93\pm 0.02$, rotate it, and read out its state in $6\mu \mathrm{s}$ with a single-shot fidelity of $F_d=0.92\pm 0.04$. The ensemble-assisted detection is ${10}^3$ times faster than imaging of a single atom with the same optical resolution, and enables fast repeated nondestructive measurement. We observe qubit coherence times of $15\mu \mathrm{s}$, much longer than the $\pi$ rotation time of 90 ns. Potential applications ranging from faster quantum information processing in atom arrays to efficient implementation of quantum error correction are discussed.

In this work, we combine quantum renormalization group approaches with deep artificial neural networks for the description of the real-time evolution in strongly disordered quantum matter. We find that this allows us to accurately compute the long-time coherent dynamics of large many-body localized systems in nonperturbative regimes including the effects of many-body resonances. Concretely, we use this approach to describe the spatiotemporal buildup of many-body localized spin-glass order in random Ising chains. We observe a fundamental difference to a noninteracting Anderson insulating Ising chain, where the order only develops over a finite spatial range. We further apply the approach to strongly disordered two-dimensional Ising models, highlighting that our method can be used also for the description of the real-time dynamics of nonergodic quantum matter in a general context.

Although genuine multipartite entanglement has already been generated and verified by experiments, most of the existing measures cannot detect genuine entanglement faithfully. In this work, by exploiting for the first time a previously overlooked constraint for the distribution of entanglement in three-qubit systems, we reveal a new genuine tripartite entanglement measure, which is related to the area of a so-called concurrence triangle. It is compared with other existing measures and is found superior to previous attempts for different reasons. A specific example is illustrated to show that two tripartite entanglement measures can be inequivalent due to the high dimensionality of the Hilbert space. The properties of the triangle measure make it a candidate in potential quantum tasks and available to be used in any multiparty entanglement problems.

We present a stochastic quantum computing algorithm that can prepare any eigenvector of a quantum Hamiltonian within a selected energy interval $[E-\epsilon ,E+\epsilon ]$. In order to reduce the spectral weight of all other eigenvectors by a suppression factor $\delta$, the required computational effort scales as $O[|\log \delta |/(p\epsilon )]$, where $p$ is the squared overlap of the initial state with the target eigenvector. The method, which we call the rodeo algorithm, uses auxiliary qubits to control the time evolution of the Hamiltonian minus some tunable parameter $E$. With each auxiliary qubit measurement, the amplitudes of the eigenvectors are multiplied by a stochastic factor that depends on the proximity of their energy to $E$. In this manner, we converge to the target eigenvector with exponential accuracy in the number of measurements. In addition to preparing eigenvectors, the method can also compute the full spectrum of the Hamiltonian. We illustrate the performance with several examples. For energy eigenvalue determination with error $\epsilon$, the computational scaling is $O[(\log \epsilon {)}^2/(p\epsilon )]$. For eigenstate preparation, the computational scaling is $O(\log \mathrm{\Delta }/p)$, where $\mathrm{\Delta }$ is the magnitude of the orthogonal component of the residual vector. The speed for eigenstate preparation is exponentially faster than that for phase estimation or adiabatic evolution.

The phenomenon of entanglement marks one of the furthest departures from classical physics and is indispensable for quantum information processing. Despite its fundamental importance, the distribution of entanglement over long distances through photons is unfortunately hindered by unavoidable decoherence effects. Entanglement distillation is a means of restoring the quality of such diluted entanglement by concentrating it into a pair of qubits. Conventionally, this would be done by distributing multiple photon pairs and distilling the entanglement into a single pair. Here, we turn around this paradigm by utilizing pairs of single photons entangled in multiple degrees of freedom. Specifically, we make use of the polarization and the energy-time domain of photons, both of which are extensively field tested. We experimentally chart the domain of distillable states and achieve relative fidelity gains up to 13.8%. Compared to the two-copy scheme, the distillation rate of our single-copy scheme is several orders of magnitude higher, paving the way towards high-capacity and noise-resilient quantum networks.