We propose a spatial analog of the Berry’s phase mechanism for the coherent manipulation of states of nonrelativistic massive particles moving in a two-dimensional landscape. In our construction the temporal modulation of the system Hamiltonian is replaced by a modulation of the confining potential along the transverse direction of the particle propagation. By properly tuning the model parameters the resulting scattering input-output relations exhibit a Wilczek-Zee non-Abelian phase shift contribution that is intrinsically geometrical, hence insensitive to the specific details of the potential landscape. A theoretical derivation of the effect is provided together with practical examples.

We show how second-order Floquet engineering can be employed to realize systems in which many-body localization coexists with topological properties in a driven system. This allows one to implement and dynamically control a symmetry protected topologically ordered qubit even at high energies, overcoming the roadblock that the respective states cannot be prepared as ground states of nearest-neighbor Hamiltonians. Floquet engineering—the idea that a periodically driven nonequilibrium system can effectively emulate the physics of a different Hamiltonian—is exploited to approximate an effective three-body interaction among spins in one dimension, using time-dependent two-body interactions only. In the effective system, emulated topology and disorder coexist, which provides an intriguing insight into the interplay of many-body localization that defies our standard understanding of thermodynamics and into the topological phases of matter, which are of fundamental and technological importance. We demonstrate explicitly how combining Floquet engineering, topology, and many-body localization allows one to harvest the advantages (time-dependent control, topological protection, and reduction of heating, respectively) of each of these subfields while protecting them from their disadvantages (heating, static control parameters, and strong disorder).

We present a fast and robust framework to prepare nonclassical states of a bosonic mode exploiting a coherent exchange of excitations with a two-level system ruled by a Jaynes-Cummings interaction mechanism. Our protocol, which is built on shortcuts to adiabaticity, allows for the generation of arbitrary Fock states of the bosonic mode, as well as coherent quantum superpositions of a Schrödinger cat-like form. In addition, we show how to obtain a class of photon-shifted states where the vacuum population is removed, a result akin to photon addition, but displaying more nonclassicality than standard photon-added states. Owing to the ubiquity of the spin-boson interaction that we consider, our proposal is amenable for implementations in state-of-the-art experiments.

We present a superconducting device that realizes the sequential measurement of a transmon qubit. The device disables common limitations of dispersive readout such as Purcell effect or transients in the cavity mode by turning on and off the coupling to the measurement channel on demand. The qubit measurement begins by loading a readout resonator that is coupled to the qubit. After an optimal interaction time with negligible loss, a microwave pump releases the content of the readout mode by upconversion into a measurement line in a characteristic time as low as 10 ns, which is 400 times shorter than the lifetime of the readout resonator. A direct measurement of the released field quadratures demonstrates a readout fidelity of 97.5% in a total measurement time of 220 ns. The Wigner tomography of the readout mode allows us to characterize the non-Gaussian nature of the readout mode and its dynamics.

Quantum networks illustrate the use of connected nodes of quantum systems as the backbone of distributed quantum information processing. When the network nodes are entangled in graph states, such a quantum platform is indispensable to almost all the existing distributed quantum tasks. Unfortunately, real networks unavoidably suffer from noise and technical restrictions, making nodes transit from quantum to classical at worst. Here, we introduce a figure of merit in terms of the number of classical nodes for quantum networks in arbitrary graph states. Such a network property is revealed by exploiting a novel Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steerability. Experimentally, we demonstrate photonic quantum networks of $n_q$ quantum nodes and $n_c$ classical nodes with $n_q$ up to 6 and $n_c$ up to 18 using spontaneous parametric down-conversion entanglement sources. We show that the proposed method is faithful in quantifying the classical defects in prepared multiphoton quantum networks. Our results provide novel identification of generic quantum networks and nonclassical correlations in graph states.

Based on a generalization of Hohenberg-Kohn’s theorem, we propose a ground state theory for bosonic quantum systems. Since it involves the one-particle reduced density matrix $\gamma$ as a variable but still recovers quantum correlations in an exact way it is particularly well suited for the accurate description of Bose-Einstein condensates. As a proof of principle we study the building block of optical lattices. The solution of the underlying $v$-representability problem is found and its peculiar form identifies the constrained search formalism as the ideal starting point for constructing accurate functional approximations: The exact functionals $\mathcal{F}[\gamma ]$ for this $N$-boson Hubbard dimer and general Bogoliubov-approximated systems are determined. For Bose-Einstein condensates with $N_{\mathrm{BEC}}\approx N$ condensed bosons, the respective gradient forces are found to diverge, ${\nabla }_{\gamma }\mathcal{F}\propto 1/\sqrt{1-N_{\mathrm{BEC}}/N}$, providing a comprehensive explanation for the absence of complete condensation in nature.

We excite the vacuum of a relativistic theory of bosons coupled to a $U(1)$ gauge field in $1+1$ dimensions (bosonic Schwinger model) out of equilibrium by creating a spatially separated particle-antiparticle pair connected by a string of electric field. During the evolution, we observe a strong confinement of bosons witnessed by the bending of their light cone, reminiscent of what has been observed for the Ising model [Nat. Phys. 13, 246 (2017)]. As a consequence, for the timescales we are able to simulate, the system evades thermalization and generates exotic asymptotic states. These states are made of two disjoint regions, an external deconfined region that seems to thermalize, and an inner core that reveals an area-law saturation of the entanglement entropy.

We argue that chaotic power-law interacting systems have emergent limits on information propagation, analogous to relativistic light cones, which depend on the spatial dimension $d$ and the exponent $\alpha$ governing the decay of interactions. Using the dephasing nature of quantum chaos, we map the problem to a stochastic model with a known phase diagram. A linear light cone results for $\alpha \ge d+1/2$. We also provide a Lévy flight (long-range random walk) interpretation of the results and show consistent numerical data for 1D long-range spin models with 200 sites.

We investigate the statistics of the work performed during a quench across a quantum phase transition using the adiabatic perturbation theory when the system is characterized by independent quasiparticles and the “single-excitation” approximation is assumed. It is shown that all the cumulants of work exhibit universal scaling behavior analogous to the Kibble-Zurek scaling for the average density of defects. Two kinds of transformations are considered: quenches between two gapped phases in which a critical point is traversed, and quenches that end near the critical point. In contrast to the scaling behavior of the density of defects, the scaling behavior of the cumulants of work are shown to be qualitatively different for these two kinds of quenches. However, in both cases the corresponding exponents are fully determined by the dimension of the system and the critical exponents of the transition, as in the traditional Kibble-Zurek mechanism (KZM). Thus, our study deepens our understanding about the nonequilibrium dynamics of a quantum phase transition by revealing the imprint of the KZM on the work statistics.

The standard approach to quantum engines is based on equilibrium systems and on thermodynamic transformations between Gibbs states. However, nonequilibrium quantum systems offer enhanced experimental flexibility in the control of their parameters and, if used as engines, a more direct interpretation of the type of work they deliver. Here we introduce an out-of-equilibrium quantum engine inspired by recent experiments with cold atoms. Our system is connected to a single environment and produces mechanical work from many-body interparticle interactions arising between atoms in highly excited Rydberg states. As such, it is not a heat engine but an isothermal one. We perform many-body simulations to show that this system can produce work. The setup we introduce and investigate represents a promising platform for devising new types of microscopic machines and for exploring quantum effects in thermodynamic processes.

We apply quantum trajectory techniques to analyze a realistic setup of a superconducting qubit coupled to a heat bath formed by a resistor, a system that yields explicit expressions of the relevant transition rates to be used in the analysis. We discuss the main characteristics of the jump trajectories and relate them to the expected outcomes (“clicks”) of a fluorescence measurement using the resistor as a nanocalorimeter. As the main practical outcome, we present a model that predicts the time-domain response of a realistic calorimeter subject to single microwave photons, incorporating the intrinsic noise due to the fundamental thermal fluctuations of the absorber and finite bandwidth of a thermometer.

Population leakage outside the qubit subspace presents a particularly harmful source of error that cannot be handled by standard error correction methods. Using a trapped ${}^{171}{\mathrm{Yb}}^{+}$ ion, we demonstrate an optical pumping scheme to suppress leakage errors in atomic hyperfine qubits. The selection rules and narrow linewidth of a quadrupole transition are used to selectively pump population out of leakage states and back into the qubit subspace. Each pumping cycle reduces the leakage population by a factor of $\sim 3$, allowing for an exponential suppression in the number of cycles. We use interleaved randomized benchmarking on the qubit subspace to show that this pumping procedure has negligible side effects on the qubit subspace, bounding the induced qubit memory error by $\le 2.0(8)\times {10}^{-5}\mathrm{per}$ cycle, and qubit population decay to $\le 1.4(3)\times {10}^{-7}\mathrm{per}$ cycle. These results clear a major obstacle for implementations of quantum error correction and error mitigation protocols.

The hybrid approach to quantum computation simultaneously utilizes both discrete and continuous variables, which offers the advantage of higher density encoding and processing powers for the same physical resources. Trapped ions, with discrete internal states and motional modes that can be described by continuous variables in an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space, offer a natural platform for this approach. A nonlinear gate for universal quantum computing can be implemented with the conditional beam splitter Hamiltonian $|e⟩⟨e|({\widehat{a}}^{†}\widehat{b}+\widehat{a}{\widehat{b}}^{†})$ that swaps the quantum states of two motional modes, depending on the ion’s internal state. We realize such a gate and demonstrate its applications for quantum state overlap measurements, single-shot parity measurement, and generation of NOON states.

Entanglement witness is of great importance in characterizing quantum systems. The imperfections in conventional entanglement witness schemes could lead to the misidentification of a separated state as an entangled state. Measurement-device-independent entanglement witness (MDIEW) has been proposed and demonstrated to resolve the imperfect measurement devices. So far, however, the MDIEW has been restricted to a two-party qubit entangled state. Here, for the first time, we demonstrate MDIEW for multipartite entangled states. We experimentally detect the genuine entanglement and the entanglement structure of a tripartite entangled state based on an eight-photon interferometry. Furthermore, with the verified multipartite entangled state, we demonstrate quantum randomness generation and open-destination quantum key distribution in an measurement-device-independent manner. Our research presents an important step toward building a robust and secure quantum network.

We demonstrate analytically and verify numerically that the out-of-time order correlator is given by the thermal average of Loschmidt echo signals. This provides a direct link between the out-of-time-order correlator—a recently suggested measure of information scrambling in quantum chaotic systems—and the Loschmidt echo, a well-appreciated familiar diagnostic that captures the dynamical aspect of chaotic behavior in the time domain, and is accessible to experimental studies.

The concept of quantum many-body scars has recently been put forward as a route to describe weak ergodicity breaking and violation of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. We propose a simple setup to generate quantum many-body scars in a doubly modulated Bose-Hubbard system which can be readily implemented in cold atomic gases. The dynamics are shown to be governed by kinetic constraints which appear via density-assisted tunneling in a high-frequency expansion. We find the optimal driving parameters for the kinetically constrained hopping which leads to small isolated subspaces of scared eigenstates. The experimental signatures and the transition to fully thermalizing behavior as a function of driving frequency are analyzed.