We report on the generation of a quantum degenerate Fermi-Fermi mixture of two different atomic species. The quantum degenerate mixture is realized employing sympathetic cooling of fermionic ${}^6\mathrm{Li}$ and ${}^{40}\mathrm{K}$ gases by an evaporatively cooled bosonic ${}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ gas. We describe the combination of trapping and cooling methods that proved crucial to successfully cool the mixture. In particular, we study the last part of the cooling process and show that the efficiency of sympathetic cooling of the ${}^6\mathrm{Li}$ gas by ${}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ is increased by the presence of ${}^{40}\mathrm{K}$ through catalytic cooling. Because of the differing physical properties of the two components, the quantum degenerate ${}^6\mathrm{Li}\mathrm{\text{−}}{}^{40}\mathrm{K}$ Fermi-Fermi mixture is an excellent candidate for a stable, heteronuclear system allowing the study of several so far unexplored types of quantum matter.

We have observed the persistent flow of Bose-condensed atoms in a toroidal trap. The flow persists without decay for up to 10 s, limited only by experimental factors such as drift and trap lifetime. The quantized rotation was initiated by transferring one unit of the orbital angular momentum from Laguerre-Gaussian photons to each atom. Stable flow was only possible when the trap was multiply connected, and was observed with a Bose-Einstein condensate fraction as small as 20%. We also created flow with two units of angular momentum and observed its splitting into two singly charged vortices when the trap geometry was changed from multiply to simply connected.

We propose a new physical approach for encoding and processing of quantum information in ensembles of multilevel quantum systems, where the different bits are not carried by individual particles but associated with the collective population of different internal levels. One- and two-bit gates are implemented by collective internal state transitions taking place in the presence of an excitation blockade mechanism, which restricts the population of each internal state to the values zero and unity. Quantum computers with 10–20 bits can be built via this scheme in single trapped clouds of ground state atoms subject to the Rydberg excitation blockade mechanism, and the linear dependence between register size and the number of internal quantum states in atoms offers realistic means to reach larger registers.

The formation of vortices by topological phase engineering has been realized experimentally to create the first two- and four-quantum vortices in dilute atomic Bose-Einstein condensates. We consider a similar system, but in addition to the Ioffe-Pritchard magnetic trap we employ an additional hexapole field. By controlling cyclically the strengths of these magnetic fields, we show that a fixed amount of vorticity can be added to the condensate in each cycle. In an adiabatic operation of this vortex pump, the appearance of vortices into the condensate is interpreted as the accumulation of a local Berry phase. Our design can be used as an experimentally realizable vortex source for possible vortex-based applications of dilute Bose-Einstein condensates.

Transport of quantum information in linear spin chains has been the subject of much theoretical work. Experimental studies by NMR in solid state spin systems (a natural implementation of such models) is complicated since the dipolar Hamiltonian is not solely comprised of nearest-neighbor $XY$-Heisenberg couplings. We present here a similarity transformation between the $XY$ Hamiltonian and the double-quantum Hamiltonian, an interaction which is achievable with the collective control provided by radio-frequency pulses. Not only can this second Hamiltonian simulate the information transport in a spin chain, but it also creates coherent states, whose intensities give an experimental signature of the transport. This scheme makes it possible to study experimentally the transport of polarization beyond exactly solvable models and explore the appearance of quantum coherence and interference effects.

When probing nuclear spins in materials on the nanometer scale, random fluctuations of the spin polarization will exceed the mean Boltzmann polarization for sample volumes below about $(100\mathrm{nm}{)}^3$. In this Letter, we use magnetic resonance force microscopy to observe nuclear spin fluctuations in real time. We show how reproducible measurements of the polarization variance can be obtained by controlling the spin correlation time and rapidly sampling a large number of independent spin configurations. This allows significant improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio for nanometer-scale magnetic resonance imaging.

We determine the complete set of generalized spin squeezing inequalities. These are entanglement criteria that can be used for the experimental detection of entanglement in a system of spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ particles in which the spins cannot be individually addressed. They can also be used to show the presence of bound entanglement in the thermal states of several spin models.

We report the experimental demonstration of a one-way quantum protocol reliably operating in the presence of decoherence. Information is protected by designing an appropriate decoherence-free subspace for a cluster state resource. We demonstrate our scheme in an all-optical setup, encoding the information into the polarization states of four photons. A measurement-based one-way information-transfer protocol is performed with the photons exposed to severe symmetric phase-damping noise. Remarkable protection of information is accomplished, delivering nearly ideal outcomes.

We report an experimental demonstration of a complied version of Shor’s algorithm using four photonic qubits. We choose the simplest instance of this algorithm, that is, factorization of $N=15$ in the case that the period $r=2$ and exploit a simplified linear optical network to coherently implement the quantum circuits of the modular exponential execution and semiclassical quantum Fourier transformation. During this computation, genuine multiparticle entanglement is observed which well supports its quantum nature. This experiment represents an essential step toward full realization of Shor’s algorithm and scalable linear optics quantum computation.

Shor’s powerful quantum algorithm for factoring represents a major challenge in quantum computation. Here, we implement a compiled version in a photonic system. For the first time, we demonstrate the core processes, coherent control, and resultant entangled states required in a full-scale implementation. These are necessary steps on the path towards scalable quantum computing. Our results highlight that the algorithm performance is not the same as that of the underlying quantum circuit and stress the importance of developing techniques for characterizing quantum algorithms.

We introduce a Monte Carlo scheme for sampling a bold-line diagrammatic series specifying an unknown function in terms of itself. The range of convergence of this bold(-line) diagrammatic Monte Carlo (BMC) technique is significantly broader than that of a simple iterative scheme for solving integral equations. With the BMC technique, a moderate “sign problem” turns out to be an advantage in terms of the convergence of the process. For an illustrative purpose, we solve the one-particle $s$-scattering problem. As an important application, we obtain the $T$ matrix for a Fermi polaron (one spin-down particle interacting with the spin-up fermionic sea).

We calculate the zero-temperature ($T=0$) phase diagram of a polarized two-component Fermi gas in an array of weakly coupled parallel one-dimensional (1D) “tubes” produced by a two-dimensional optical lattice. Increasing the lattice strength drives a crossover from three-dimensional (3D) to 1D behavior, stabilizing the Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) modulated superfluid phase. We argue that the most promising regime for observing the FFLO phase is in the quasi-1D regime, where the atomic motion is largely 1D but there is weak tunneling in the other directions that stabilizes long-range order. In the FFLO phase, we describe a phase transition where the quasiparticle spectrum changes from gapless near the 3D regime to gapped in quasi-1D.

We show that a robust macroscopic atom-molecule dark state can exist in fermionic systems, which represents a coherent superposition between the ground molecular Bose-Einstein condensates and the atomic BCS paired state. We take advantage of the tunability offered by external laser fields, and explore this superposition for demonstrating coherent oscillations between ground molecules and atom pairs. We interpret the oscillation frequencies in terms of the collective excitations of the dark state.

We present the novel embodiment of a photonic qubit that makes use of one continuous spatial degree of freedom of a single photon and relies on the parity of the photon’s transverse spatial distribution. Using optical spontaneous parametric down-conversion to produce photon pairs, we demonstrate the controlled generation of entangled-photon states in this new space. Specifically, two Bell states, and a continuum of their superpositions, are generated by simple manipulation of a classical parameter, the optical-pump spatial parity, and not by manipulation of the entangled photons themselves. An interferometric device, isomorphic in action to a polarizing beam splitter, projects the spatial-parity states onto an even-odd basis. This new physical realization of photonic qubits could be used as a foundation for future experiments in quantum information processing.

We propose an immediately realizable scheme showing signatures of multipartite entanglement generated by radiation pressure in a cavity system with a movable mirror. We show how the entanglement involving the inaccessible massive object is unraveled by means of field-field quantum correlations and persists within a wide range of working conditions. Our proposal provides an operative way to infer the quantum behavior of a system that is only partially accessible.

We investigate the ground state properties of a disordered superfluid Fermi gas across the BCS-BEC (Bose-Einstein condensate) crossover. We show that, for weak disorder, both the depletion of the condensate fraction of pairs and the normal fluid density exhibit a nonmonotonic behavior as a function of the interaction parameter $1/k_{F}a$, reaching their minimum value near unitarity. We find that, moving away from the weak-coupling BCS regime, Anderson’s theorem ceases to apply and the superfluid order parameter is more and more affected by the random potential.

We show that the Knill Lafllame Milburn method of quantum computation with linear optics gates can be interpreted as a one-way, measurement-based quantum computation of the type introduced by Briegel and Raussendorf. We also show that the permanent state of $n$ $n$-dimensional systems is a universal state for quantum computation.

We analyze decoherence of a quantum register in the absence of nonlocal operations, i.e., $n$ noninteracting qubits coupled to an environment. The problem is solved in terms of a sum rule which implies linear scaling in the number of qubits. Each term involves a single qubit and its entanglement with the remaining ones. Two conditions are essential: first, decoherence must be small, and second, the coupling of different qubits must be uncorrelated in the interaction picture. We apply the result to a random matrix model, and illustrate its reach considering a Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state coupled to a spin bath.

Elongated Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) exhibit strong spatial phase fluctuations even well below the BEC transition temperature. We demonstrate that atom interferometers using such condensates are robust against phase fluctuations; i.e., the relative phase of the split condensate is reproducible despite axial phase fluctuations. However, larger phase fluctuations limit the coherence time, especially in the presence of some asymmetries in the two wells of the interferometer.

We propose an experiment to obtain the phase diagram of the fermionic Hubbard model, for any dimensionality, using cold atoms in optical lattices. It is based on measuring the total energy for a sequence of trap profiles. It combines finite-size scaling with an additional “finite-curvature scaling” necessary to reach the homogeneous limit. We illustrate its viability in the 1D case, simulating experimental data in the Bethe-ansatz local-density approximation. Including experimental errors, the filling corresponding to the Mott transition can be determined with better than 3% accuracy.