To control a quantum system via feedback, we generally have two options in choosing a control scheme. One is the coherent feedback, which feeds the output field of the system, through a fully quantum device, back to manipulate the system without involving any measurement process. The other one is measurement-based feedback, which measures the output field and performs a real-time manipulation on the system based on the measurement results. Both schemes have advantages and disadvantages, depending on the system and the control goal; hence, their comparison in several situations is important. This paper considers a general open linear quantum system with the following specific control goals: backaction evasion, generation of a quantum nondemolished variable, and generation of a decoherence-free subsystem, all of which have important roles in quantum information science. Some no-go theorems are proven, clarifying that those goals cannot be achieved by any measurement-based feedback control. On the other hand, it is shown that, for each control goal there exists a coherent feedback controller accomplishing the task. The key idea to obtain all the results is system theoretic characterizations of the above three notions in terms of controllability and observability properties or transfer functions of linear systems, which are consistent with their standard definitions.

In some many-body systems, certain ground-state entanglement (Rényi) entropies increase even as the correlation length decreases. This entanglement nonmonotonicity is a potential indicator of nonclassicality. In this work, we demonstrate that such a phenomenon, known as lack of local convertibility, is due to the edge-state (de)construction occurring in the system. To this end, we employ the example of the Ising chain, displaying an order-disorder quantum phase transition. Employing both analytical and numerical methods, we compute entanglement entropies for various system bipartitions $(A|B)$ and consider ground states with and without Majorana edge states. We find that the thermal ground states, enjoying the Hamiltonian symmetries, show lack of local convertibility if either $A$ or $B$ is smaller than, or of the order of, the correlation length. In contrast, the ordered (symmetry-breaking) ground state is always locally convertible. The edge-state behavior explains all these results and could disclose a paradigm to understand local convertibility in other quantum phases of matter. The connection we establish between convertibility and nonlocal, quantum correlations provides a clear criterion of which features a universal quantum simulator should possess to outperform a classical machine.

Quantum metrology uses quantum states with no classical counterpart to measure a physical quantity with extraordinary sensitivity or precision. Most such schemes characterize a dynamical process by probing it with a specially designed quantum state. The success of such a scheme usually relies on the process belonging to a particular one-parameter family. If this assumption is violated, or if the goal is to measure more than one parameter, a different quantum state may perform better. In the most extreme case, we know nothing about the process and wish to learn everything. This requires quantum process tomography, which demands an informationally complete set of probe states. It is very convenient if this set is group covariant—i.e., each element is generated by applying an element of the quantum system’s natural symmetry group to a single fixed fiducial state. In this paper, we consider metrology with 2-photon (“biphoton”) states and report experimental studies of different states’ sensitivity to small, unknown collective $SU(2)$ rotations [“$SU(2)$ jitter”]. Maximally entangled $N00N$ states are the most sensitive detectors of such a rotation, yet they are also among the worst at fully characterizing an a priori unknown process. We identify (and confirm experimentally) the best $SU(2)$-covariant set for process tomography; these states are all less entangled than the $N00N$ state, and are characterized by the fact that they form a 2-design.

We discuss how to formulate lattice gauge theories in the tensor-network language. In this way, we obtain both a consistent-truncation scheme of the Kogut-Susskind lattice gauge theories and a tensor-network variational ansatz for gauge-invariant states that can be used in actual numerical computations. Our construction is also applied to the simplest realization of the quantum link models or gauge magnets and provides a clear way to understand their microscopic relation with the Kogut-Susskind lattice gauge theories. We also introduce a new set of gauge-invariant operators that modify continuously Rokhsar-Kivelson wave functions and can be used to extend the phase diagrams of known models. As an example, we characterize the transition between the deconfined phase of the $Z_2$ lattice gauge theory and the Rokhsar-Kivelson point of the $U(1)$ gauge magnet in 2D in terms of entanglement entropy. The topological entropy serves as an order parameter for the transition but not the Schmidt gap.

We investigate whether quantum theory can be understood as the continuum limit of a mechanical theory, in which there is a huge, but finite, number of classical “worlds,” and quantum effects arise solely from a universal interaction between these worlds, without reference to any wave function. Here, a “world” means an entire universe with well-defined properties, determined by the classical configuration of its particles and fields. In our approach, each world evolves deterministically, probabilities arise due to ignorance as to which world a given observer occupies, and we argue that in the limit of infinitely many worlds the wave function can be recovered (as a secondary object) from the motion of these worlds. We introduce a simple model of such a “many interacting worlds” approach and show that it can reproduce some generic quantum phenomena—such as Ehrenfest’s theorem, wave packet spreading, barrier tunneling, and zero-point energy—as a direct consequence of mutual repulsion between worlds. Finally, we perform numerical simulations using our approach. We demonstrate, first, that it can be used to calculate quantum ground states, and second, that it is capable of reproducing, at least qualitatively, the double-slit interference phenomenon.

Determining community structure is a central topic in the study of complex networks, be it technological, social, biological or chemical, static or in interacting systems. In this paper, we extend the concept of community detection from classical to quantum systems—a crucial missing component of a theory of complex networks based on quantum mechanics. We demonstrate that certain quantum mechanical effects cannot be captured using current classical complex network tools and provide new methods that overcome these problems. Our approaches are based on defining closeness measures between nodes, and then maximizing modularity with hierarchical clustering. Our closeness functions are based on quantum transport probability and state fidelity, two important quantities in quantum information theory. To illustrate the effectiveness of our approach in detecting community structure in quantum systems, we provide several examples, including a naturally occurring light-harvesting complex, LHCII. The prediction of our simplest algorithm, semiclassical in nature, mostly agrees with a proposed partitioning for the LHCII found in quantum chemistry literature, whereas our fully quantum treatment of the problem uncovers a new, consistent, and appropriately quantum community structure.

Large-scale quantum information processors or quantum communication networks will require reliable exchange of information between spatially separated nodes. The links connecting these nodes can be established using traveling photons that need to be absorbed at the receiving node with high efficiency. This is achievable by shaping the temporal profile of the photons and absorbing them at the receiver by time reversing the emission process. Here, we demonstrate a scheme for creating shaped microwave photons using a superconducting transmon-type three-level system coupled to a transmission line resonator. In a second-order process induced by a modulated microwave drive, we controllably transfer a single excitation from the third level of the transmon to the resonator and shape the emitted photon. We reconstruct the density matrices of the created single-photon states and show that the photons are antibunched. We also create multipeaked photons with a controlled amplitude and phase. In contrast to similar existing schemes, the one we present here is based solely on microwave drives, enabling operation with fixed frequency transmons.

Quantum electromechanical systems offer a unique opportunity to probe quantum noise properties in macroscopic devices, properties that ultimately stem from Heisenberg’s uncertainty relations. A simple example of this behavior is expected to occur in a microwave parametric transducer, where mechanical motion generates motional sidebands corresponding to the up-and-down frequency conversion of microwave photons. Because of quantum vacuum noise, the rates of these processes are expected to be unequal. We measure this fundamental imbalance in a microwave transducer coupled to a radio-frequency mechanical mode, cooled near the ground state of motion. We also discuss the subtle origin of this imbalance: depending on the measurement scheme, the imbalance is most naturally attributed to the quantum fluctuations of either the mechanical mode or of the electromagnetic field.

Quantum phase transitions are usually studied in terms of Hermitian Hamiltonians. However, cold-atom experiments are intrinsically non-Hermitian because of spontaneous decay. Here, we show that non-Hermitian systems exhibit quantum phase transitions that are beyond the paradigm of Hermitian physics. We consider the non-Hermitian $XY$ model, which can be implemented using three-level atoms with spontaneous decay. We exactly solve the model in one dimension and show that there is a quantum phase transition from short-range order to quasi-long-range order despite the absence of a continuous symmetry in the Hamiltonian. The ordered phase has a frustrated spin pattern. The critical exponent $\nu$ can be 1 or $1/2$. Our results can be seen experimentally with trapped ions, cavity QED, and atoms in optical lattices.

The effective Lagrangian for Nambu-Goldstone bosons (NGBs) in systems without Lorentz invariance has a novel feature that some of the NGBs are canonically conjugate to each other, hence describing 1 dynamical degree of freedom by two NGB fields. We develop explicit forms of their effective Lagrangian up to the quadratic order in derivatives. We clarify the counting rules of NGB degrees of freedom and completely classify possibilities of such canonically conjugate pairs based on the topology of the coset spaces. Its consequence on the dispersion relations of the NGBs is clarified. We also present simple scaling arguments to see whether interactions among NGBs are marginal or irrelevant, which justifies a lore in the literature about the possibility of symmetry breaking in $1+1$ dimensions.

Here, we report the experimental observation of a dynamical quantum phase transition in a strongly interacting open photonic system. The system studied, comprising a Jaynes-Cummings dimer realized on a superconducting circuit platform, exhibits a dissipation-driven localization transition. Signatures of the transition in the homodyne signal and photon number reveal this transition to be from a regime of classical oscillations into a macroscopically self-trapped state manifesting revivals, a fundamentally quantum phenomenon. This experiment also demonstrates a small-scale realization of a new class of quantum simulator, whose well-controlled coherent and dissipative dynamics is suited to the study of quantum many-body phenomena out of equilibrium.

We show how off-resonant light scattering can provide quantitative information on antiferromagnetic ordering of a two-species fermionic atomic gas in a tightly-confined two-dimensional optical lattice. We analyze the emerging magnetic ordering of atoms in the mean-field and in random phase approximations and show how the many-body static and dynamic correlations, evaluated in the standard Feynman-Dyson perturbation series, can be detected in the scattered light signal. The staggered magnetization reveals itself in the magnetic Bragg peaks of the individual spin components. These magnetic peaks, however, can be considerably suppressed in the absence of a true long-range antiferromagnetic order. The light scattered outside the diffraction orders can be collected by a lens with highly improved signal-to-shot-noise ratio when the diffraction maxima are blocked. The collective and single-particle excitations are identified in the spectrum of the scattered light. We find that the spin-conserving and spin-exchanging atomic transitions convey information on density, longitudinal spin, and transverse spin correlations. The different correlations and scattering processes exhibit characteristic angular distribution profiles for the scattered light, and e.g., the diagnostic signal of transverse spin correlations could be separated from the optical response by the scattering direction, frequency, or polarization. We also analyze the detection accuracy by estimating the number of required measurements, constrained by the heating rate that is determined by inelastic light-scattering events. The imaging technique could be extended to the two-species fermionic states in other regions of the phase diagram where the ground-state properties are still not fully understood.

We propose a waveguiding mechanism based on the effective gauge potential for photons. The waveguide geometry consists of core and cladding regions with the same underlying dispersion relation, but subject to different gauge potentials. This geometry can be realized in a dynamically modulated resonator lattice and provides a conceptually straightforward and dynamically reconfigurable mechanism for generating a one-way waveguide.

We analyze the nature of the statistics of the work done on or by a quantum many-body system brought out of equilibrium. We show that, for the sudden quench and for an initial state that commutes with the initial Hamiltonian, it is possible to retrieve the whole nonequilibrium thermodynamics via single projective measurements of observables. We highlight, in a physically clear way, the qualitative implications for the statistics of work coming from considering processes described by operators that either commute or do not commute with the unperturbed Hamiltonian of a given system. We consider a quantum many-body system and derive an expression that allows us to give a physical interpretation, for a thermal initial state, to all of the cumulants of the work in the case of quenched operators commuting with the unperturbed Hamiltonian. In the commuting case, the observables that we need to measure have an intuitive physical meaning. Conversely, in the noncommuting case, we show that, although it is possible to operate fully within the single-measurement framework irrespectively of the size of the quench, some difficulties are faced in providing a clear-cut physical interpretation to the cumulants. This circumstance makes the study of the physics of the system nontrivial and highlights the nonintuitive phenomenology of the emergence of thermodynamics from the fully quantum microscopic description. We illustrate our ideas with the example of the Ising model in a transverse field showing the interesting behavior of the high-order statistical moments of the work distribution for a generic thermal state and linking them to the critical nature of the model itself.

This work is concerned with thermal quantum states of Hamiltonians on spin- and fermionic-lattice systems with short-range interactions. We provide results leading to a local definition of temperature, thereby extending the notion of “intensivity of temperature” to interacting quantum models. More precisely, we derive a perturbation formula for thermal states. The influence of the perturbation is exactly given in terms of a generalized covariance. For this covariance, we prove exponential clustering of correlations above a universal critical temperature that upper bounds physical critical temperatures such as the Curie temperature. As a corollary, we obtain that above the critical temperature, thermal states are stable against distant Hamiltonian perturbations. Moreover, our results imply that above the critical temperature, local expectation values can be approximated efficiently in the error and the system size.

We consider the role of degeneracy in parity-time ($\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$) symmetry breaking for non-Hermitian wave equations beyond one dimension. We show that if the spectrum is degenerate in the absence of $\mathcal{T}$ breaking, and $\mathcal{T}$ is broken in a generic manner (without preserving other discrete symmetries), then the standard $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$ symmetry-breaking transition does not occur, meaning that the spectrum is complex even for infinitesimal strength of gain and loss. However, the realness of the entire spectrum can be preserved over a finite interval if additional discrete symmetries $\chi$ are imposed when $\mathcal{T}$ is broken, if $\chi$ decouples all degenerate modes. When the decoupling holds only for a subset of the degenerate spectrum, there can be a partial $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$ transition in which this subset remains real over a finite interval of $\mathcal{T}$ breaking. If the spectrum has odd degeneracy, a fraction of the degenerate spectrum can remain in the symmetric phase even without imposing additional discrete symmetries, and they are analogous to dark states in atomic physics. These results are illustrated by the example of different $\mathcal{T}$-breaking perturbations of a uniform dielectric disk and sphere, and a group-theoretical analysis is given in the disk case. Finally, we show that multimode coupling is capable of restoring the $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$-symmetric phase at finite $\mathcal{T}$ breaking. We also analyze these questions when the parity operator is replaced by another spatial symmetry operator and find that the behavior can be qualitatively different.

We demonstrate a nonlinear optical chip that generates photons with reconfigurable nonclassical spatial correlations. We employ a quadratic nonlinear waveguide array, where photon pairs are generated through spontaneous parametric down-conversion and simultaneously spread through quantum walks between the waveguides. Because of the quantum interference of these cascaded quantum walks, the emerging photons can become entangled over multiple waveguide positions. We experimentally observe highly nonclassical photon-pair correlations, confirming the high fidelity of on-chip quantum interference. Furthermore, we demonstrate biphoton-state tunability by spatial shaping and frequency tuning of the classical pump beam.

Can quantum mechanics help us build intelligent learning agents? A defining signature of intelligent behavior is the capacity to learn from experience. However, a major bottleneck for agents to learn in real-life situations is the size and complexity of the corresponding task environment. Even in a moderately realistic environment, it may simply take too long to rationally respond to a given situation. If the environment is impatient, allowing only a certain time for a response, an agent may then be unable to cope with the situation and to learn at all. Here, we show that quantum physics can help and provide a quadratic speedup for active learning as a genuine problem of artificial intelligence. This result will be particularly relevant for applications involving complex task environments.

Quantum methods allow us to reduce communication complexity of some computational tasks, with several separated partners, beyond classical constraints. Nevertheless, experimental demonstrations of this have thus far been limited to some abstract problems, far away from real-life tasks. We show here, and demonstrate experimentally, that the power of reduction of communication complexity can be harnessed to gain an advantage in a famous, immensely popular, card game—bridge. The essence of a winning strategy in bridge is efficient communication between the partners. The rules of the game allow only a specific form of communication, of very low complexity (effectively, one has strong limitations on the number of exchanged bits). Surprisingly, our quantum technique does not violate the existing rules of the game (as there is no increase in information flow). We show that our quantum bridge auction corresponds to a biased nonlocal Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt game, which is equivalent to a $2\to 1$ quantum random access code. Thus, our experiment is also a realization of such protocols. However, this correspondence is not complete, which enables the bridge players to have efficient strategies regardless of the quality of their detectors.

We define the anisotropic Rabi model as the generalization of the spin-boson Rabi model: The Hamiltonian system breaks the parity symmetry; the rotating and counterrotating interactions are governed by two different coupling constants; a further parameter introduces a phase factor in the counterrotating terms. The exact energy spectrum and eigenstates of the generalized model are worked out. The solution is obtained as an elaboration of a recently proposed method for the isotropic limit of the model. In this way, we provide a long-sought solution of a cascade of models with immediate relevance in different physical fields, including (i) quantum optics, a two-level atom in single-mode cross-electric and magnetic fields; (ii) solid-state physics, electrons in semiconductors with Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling; and (iii) mesoscopic physics, Josephson-junction flux-qubit quantum circuits.