We propose and demonstrate a novel trapped-condensate interferometer using optical Bragg diffractions in a harmonic magnetic potential, which can realize a long coherence time with low dephasing. Dephasing of wave packets due to the magnetic potential is canceled by setting the interrogation time equal to the oscillation period of the harmonic potential. The harmonic potential also helps to suppress dephasing due to condensate atom-atom interactions. An interference signal with a fringe contrast of 30% is observed at an interrogation time of 58 ms. For a longer interrogation time about 100 ms, the spatial coherence of the condensate is still maintained with low dephasing, although the interference fringe is washed out by external vibrational noise.

By exploiting a generalization of recent results on environment-assisted channel correction, we show that, whenever a quantum system undergoes a channel realized as an interaction with a probe, the more efficiently the information about the input state can be erased from the probe, the higher the corresponding entanglement fidelity of the corrected channel, and vice-versa. The present analysis also applies to channels for which perfect quantum erasure is impossible, thus extending the original quantum eraser arrangement, and naturally embodies a general information-disturbance trade-off.

Quantum canonical transformations have attracted interest since the beginning of quantum theory. Based on their classical analogues, one would expect them to provide a powerful quantum tool. However, the difficulty of solving a nonlinear operator partial differential equation such as the quantum Hamilton-Jacobi equation (QHJE) has hindered progress along this otherwise promising avenue. We overcome this difficulty. We show that solutions to the QHJE can be constructed by a simple prescription starting from the propagator of the associated Schrödinger equation. Our result opens the possibility of practical use of quantum Hamilton-Jacobi theory. As an application, we develop a surprising relation between operator ordering and the density of paths around a semiclassical trajectory.

Some tunneling phenomena are described, in the semiclassical approximation, by unstable complex trajectories. We develop a systematic procedure to stabilize the trajectories and to calculate the tunneling probability, including both the suppression exponent and prefactor. We find that the instability of tunneling solutions modifies the power-law dependence of the prefactor on $\hslash$ as compared to the case of stable solutions.

We report the first experimental violation of Bell’s inequality in the spatial domain using the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen state. Two-photon states generated via optical spontaneous parametric down-conversion are shown to be entangled in the parity of their one-dimensional transverse spatial profile. Superpositions of Bell states are prepared by manipulation of the optical pump’s transverse spatial parity—a classical parameter. The Bell-operator measurements are made possible by devising simple optical arrangements that perform rotations in the one-dimensional spatial-parity space of each photon of an entangled pair and projective measurements onto a basis of even-odd functions. A Bell-operator value of $2.389\pm 0.016$ is recorded, a violation of the inequality by more than 24 standard deviations.

We experimentally investigate the temperature dependence of Rabi oscillations and Ramsey fringes in superconducting phase qubits. In a wide range of temperatures, we find that both the decay time and the amplitude of these coherent oscillations remain nearly unaffected by thermal fluctuations. In the two-level limit, coherent qubit response rapidly vanishes as soon as the energy of thermal fluctuations $k_{\mathrm{B}}T$ becomes larger than the energy level spacing $\hslash \omega$ of the qubit. In contrast, a sample of much shorter coherence times displayed semiclassical oscillations very similar to Rabi oscillation, but showing a qualitatively different temperature dependence. Our observations shed new light on the origin of decoherence in superconducting qubits. The experimental data suggest that, without degrading already achieved coherence times, phase qubits can be operated at temperatures much higher than those reported till now.

We develop an exact method for computing the Casimir energy between arbitrary compact objects, either dielectrics or perfect conductors. The energy is obtained as an interaction between multipoles, generated by quantum current fluctuations. The objects’ shape and composition enter only through their scattering matrices. The result is exact when all multipoles are included, and converges rapidly. A low frequency expansion yields the energy as a series in the ratio of the objects’ size to their separation. As an example, we obtain this series for two dielectric spheres and the full interaction at all separations for perfectly conducting spheres.

We show that strong pairing correlations in Fermi gases lead to the appearance of a gaplike structure in the rf spectrum, both in the balanced superfluid and in the normal phase above the Clogston-Chandrasekhar limit. The average rf shift of a unitary gas is proportional to the ratio of the Fermi velocity and the scattering length with the final state. In the strongly imbalanced case, the rf spectrum measures the binding energy of a minority atom to the Fermi sea of majority atoms. Our results provide a qualitative understanding of recent experiments by Schunck et al.

A simple scheme for storage of spin squeezing in a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate is investigated by considering rapidly turning-off the external field at a time that maximal spin squeezing occurs. We show that strong reduction of spin fluctuation can be maintained in a nearly fixed direction. We explain the underlying physics using the phase model and present analytical expressions of the maximal-squeezing time and the corresponding squeezing parameter.

We investigate the entanglement properties of resonating-valence-bond states on two and higher dimensional lattices, which play a significant role in our understanding of various many-body systems. We show that these states are genuinely multipartite entangled, while there is only a negligible amount of two-site entanglement. We comment on possible physical implications of our findings.

We propose an implementation of the quantum search algorithm of a marked item in an unsorted list of $N$ items by adiabatic passage in a cavity-laser-atom system. We use an ensemble of $N$ identical three-level atoms trapped in a single-mode cavity and driven by two lasers. In each atom, the same level represents a database entry. One of the atoms is marked by having an energy gap between its two ground states. Appropriate time delays between the two laser pulses allow one to populate the marked state starting from an initial entangled state within a decoherence-free adiabatic subspace. The time to achieve such a process is shown to exhibit the $\sqrt{N}$ Grover speedup.

We show that, in principle, $N$-partite unitary transformations can be perfectly discriminated under local operations and classical communication despite their nonlocal properties. Based on this result, some related topics, including the construction of the appropriate quantum circuit together with the extension to general completely positive trace preserving operations, are discussed.

We present an exact theory of the BEC-BCS crossover in the Bose-Einstein-condensate (BEC) regime, which treats explicitly dimers as made of two fermions. We apply our framework, at zero temperature, to the calculation of the equation of state. We find that, when expanding the chemical potential in powers of the density $n$ up to the Lee-Huang-Yang order, proportional to $n^{3/2}$, the result is identical to the one of elementary bosons in terms of the dimer-dimer scattering length $a_M$, the composite nature of the dimers appearing only in the next order term proportional to $n^2$.

Quantum optimal control theory allows us to design accurate quantum gates. We employ it to design high-fidelity two-bit gates for Josephson charge qubits in the presence of both leakage and noise. Our protocol considerably increases the fidelity of the gate and, more important, it is quite robust in the disruptive presence of $1/f$ noise. The improvement in the gate performances discussed in this work (errors $\sim {10}^{-3}–{10}^{-4}$ in realistic cases) allows us to cross the fault tolerance threshold.

There is an intense debate in the recent literature about the correct generalization of Maxwell’s velocity distribution in special relativity. The most frequently discussed candidate distributions include the Jüttner function as well as modifications thereof. Here we report results from fully relativistic one-dimensional molecular dynamics simulations that resolve the ambiguity. The numerical evidence unequivocally favors the Jüttner distribution. Moreover, our simulations illustrate that the concept of “thermal equilibrium” extends naturally to special relativity only if a many-particle system is spatially confined. They make evident that “temperature” can be statistically defined and measured in an observer frame independent way.

For a macroscopic, isolated quantum system in an unknown pure state, the expectation value of any given observable is shown to hardly deviate from the ensemble average with extremely high probability under generic equilibrium and nonequilibrium conditions. Special care is devoted to the uncontrollable microscopic details of the system state. For a subsystem weakly coupled to a large heat bath, the canonical ensemble is recovered under much more general and realistic assumptions than those implicit in the usual microcanonical description of the composite system at equilibrium.

We experimentally study the fluid flow induced by a broad, penetrable barrier moving through an elongated dilute gaseous Bose-Einstein condensate. The barrier is created by a laser beam swept through the condensate, and the resulting dipole potential can be either attractive or repulsive. We examine both cases and find regimes of stable and unstable fluid flow: At slow speeds of the barrier, the fluid flow is steady due to the superfluidity of the condensate. At intermediate speeds, we observe an unsteady regime in which the condensate gets filled with dark solitons. At faster speeds, soliton formation completely ceases, and a remarkable absence of excitation in the condensate is seen again.

Exact results for the first passage time and leapover statistics of symmetric and one-sided Lévy flights (LFs) are derived. LFs with a stable index $\alpha$ are shown to have leapover lengths that are asymptotically power law distributed with an index $\alpha$ for one-sided LFs and, surprisingly, with an index $\alpha /2$ for symmetric LFs. The first passage time distribution scales like a power law with an index $1/2$ as required by the Sparre-Andersen theorem for symmetric LFs, whereas one-sided LFs have a narrow distribution of first passage times. The exact analytic results are confirmed by extensive simulations.

We report on the use of a radiation pressure induced restoring force, the optical spring effect, to optically dilute the mechanical damping of a 1 g suspended mirror, which is then cooled by active feedback (cold damping). Optical dilution relaxes the limit on cooling imposed by mechanical losses, allowing the oscillator mode to reach a minimum temperature of 6.9 mK, a factor of $\sim 40000$ below the environmental temperature. A further advantage of the optical spring effect is that it can increase the number of oscillations before decoherence by several orders of magnitude. In the present experiment we infer an increase in the dynamical lifetime of the state by a factor of $\sim 200$.

We study strongly correlated ground and excited states of rotating quasi-2D Fermi gases constituted of a small number of dipole-dipole interacting particles with dipole moments polarized perpendicular to the plane of motion. As the number of atoms grows, the system enters an intermediate regime, where ground states are subject to a competition between distinct bulk-edge configurations. This effect obscures their description in terms of composite fermions and leads to the appearance of novel quasihole ground states. In the presence of dipolar interactions, the principal Laughlin state at filling $\nu =1/3$ exhibits a substantial energy gap for neutral (total angular momentum conserving) excitations and is well-described as an incompressible Fermi liquid. Instead, at lower fillings, the ground state structure favors crystalline order.