The 100 most-cited articles in Physical Review A, 2017

For superconducting qubits, microwave pulses drive rotations around the Bloch sphere. The phase of these drives can be used to generate zero-duration arbitrary virtual $Z$ gates, which, combined with two ${X}_{\ensuremath{\pi}/2}$ gates, can generate any SU(2) gate. Here we show how to best utilize these virtual $Z$ gates to both improve algorithms and correct pulse errors. We perform randomized benchmarking using a Clifford set of Hadamard and $Z$ gates and show that the error per Clifford is reduced versus a set consisting of standard finite-duration $X$ and $Y$ gates. $Z$ gates can correct unitary rotation errors for weakly anharmonic qubits as an alternative to pulse-shaping techniques such as derivative removal by adiabatic gate (DRAG). We investigate leakage and show that a combination of DRAG pulse shaping to minimize leakage and $Z$ gates to correct rotation errors realizes a 13.3 ns ${X}_{\ensuremath{\pi}/2}$ gate characterized by low error $[1.95(3)\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}4}]$ and low leakage…

Using quantum devices supported by classical computational resources is a promising approach to quantum-enabled computation. One powerful example of such a hybrid quantum-classical approach optimized for classically intractable eigenvalue problems is the variational quantum eigensolver, built to utilize quantum resources for the solution of eigenvalue problems and optimizations with minimal coherence time requirements by leveraging classical computational resources. These algorithms have been placed as leaders among the candidates for the first to achieve supremacy over classical computation. Here, we provide evidence for the conjecture that variational approaches can automatically suppress even nonsystematic decoherence errors by introducing an exactly solvable channel model of variational state preparation. Moreover, we develop a more general hierarchy of measurement and classical computation that allows one to obtain increasingly accurate solutions by leveraging additional measurements and classical resources. We demonstrate numerically on a sample electronic system that this…

In classical computational chemistry, the coupled-cluster ansatz is one of the most commonly used ab initio methods, which is critically limited by its nonunitary nature. The unitary modification as an ideal solution to the problem is, however, extremely inefficient in classical conventional computation. Here, we provide experimental evidence that indeed the unitary version of the coupled-cluster ansatz can be reliably performed in a physical quantum system, a trapped-ion system. We perform a simulation on the electronic structure of a molecular ion (${\mathrm{HeH}}^{+}$), where the ground-state energy surface curve is probed, the energies of the excited states are studied, and bond dissociation is simulated nonperturbatively. Our simulation takes advantages from quantum computation to overcome the intrinsic limitations in classical computation, and our experimental results indicate that the method is promising for preparing molecular ground states for quantum simulations.

Blind quantum computing (BQC) allows a client to have a server carry out a quantum computation for them such that the client's input, output, and computation remain private. A desirable property for any BQC protocol is verification, whereby the client can verify with high probability whether the server has followed the instructions of the protocol or if there has been some deviation resulting in a corrupted output state. A verifiable BQC protocol can be viewed as an interactive proof system leading to consequences for complexity theory. We previously proposed [A. Broadbent, J. Fitzsimons, and E. Kashefi, in Proceedings of the 50th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, Atlanta, 2009 (IEEE, Piscataway, 2009), p. 517] a universal and unconditionally secure BQC scheme where the client only needs to be able to prepare single qubits in separable states randomly chosen from a finite set and send them to the server, who has the balance of the required quantum computational resources. In this paper we extend that protocol with additional functionality allowing blind…

Experimental schemes to observe the effect of unconventional photon blockade are discussed. The mechanism can be explored to optimize the performance of single-photon sources or, more generally speaking, as a tool to reveal nonclassical features.

Quantifying coherence is a key task in both quantum-mechanical theory and practical applications. Here, a reliable quantum coherence measure is presented by utilizing the quantum skew information of the state of interest subject to a certain broken observable. This coherence measure is proven to fulfill all the criteria (especially the strong monotonicity) recently introduced in the resource theories of quantum coherence. The coherence measure has an analytic expression and an obvious operational meaning related to quantum metrology. In terms of this coherence measure, the distribution of the quantum coherence, i.e., how the quantum coherence is distributed among the multiple parties, is studied and a corresponding polygamy relation is proposed. As a further application, it is found that the coherence measure forms the natural upper bounds for quantum correlations prepared by incoherent operations. The experimental measurements of our coherence measure as well as the relative-entropy coherence and ${l}_{p}$-norm coherence are studied finally.

We investigate the quantum dynamics of a single transmon qubit coupled to surface acoustic waves (SAWs) via two distant connection points.Since the acoustic speed is five orders of magnitude slower than the speed of light, the traveling time between the two connection points needs to be taken into account.Therefore, we treat the transmon qubit as a giant atom with a deterministic time delay.We find that the spontaneous emission of the system, formed by the giant atom and the SAWs between its connection points, initially decays polynomially in the form of pulses instead of a continuous exponential decay behavior, as would be the case for a small atom.We obtain exact analytical results for the scattering properties of the giant atom up to two-phonon processes by using a diagrammatic approach.We find that two peaks appear in the inelastic (incoherent) power spectrum of the giant atom, a phenomenon which does not exist for a small atom.The time delay also gives rise to features in the reflectance, transmittance, and second-order correlation functions of the system.Furthermore, we find…

We show that anti-$\mathcal{PT}$ symmetry can be realized in dissipatively coupled optical systems. Its emergence gives rise to spontaneous phase transitions for the guided and localized photonic eigenmodes in the waveguide and cavity systems studied, respectively. As a ubiquitous feature we demonstrate that constant refraction [analogous to unit refraction in [Nat. Phys. 12, 1139 (2016)]] occurs in the $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric phase, which leads to several interesting properties for the photonic system, such as flat broadband light transport and dispersion-induced dissipation.

The need for secrecy and security is essential in communication. Secret sharing is a conventional protocol to distribute a secret message to a group of parties, who cannot access it individually but need to cooperate in order to decode it. While several variants of this protocol have been investigated, including realizations using quantum systems, the security of quantum secret sharing schemes still remains unproven almost two decades after their original conception. Here we establish an unconditional security proof for entanglement-based continuous-variable quantum secret sharing schemes, in the limit of asymptotic keys and for an arbitrary number of players. We tackle the problem by resorting to the recently developed one-sided device-independent approach to quantum key distribution. We demonstrate theoretically the feasibility of our scheme, which can be implemented by Gaussian states and homodyne measurements, with no need for ideal single-photon sources or quantum memories. Our results contribute to validating quantum secret sharing as a viable primitive for quantum…

Unitary $t$-designs are a ubiquitous tool in many research areas, including randomized benchmarking, quantum process tomography, and scrambling. Despite the intensive efforts of many researchers, little is known about unitary $t$-designs with $t\ensuremath{\ge}3$ in the literature. We show that the multiqubit Clifford group in any even prime-power dimension is not only a unitary 2-design, but also a 3-design. Moreover, it is a minimal 3-design except for dimension 4. As an immediate consequence, any orbit of pure states of the multiqubit Clifford group forms a complex projective 3-design; in particular, the set of stabilizer states forms a 3-design. In addition, our study is helpful in studying higher moments of the Clifford group, which are useful in many research areas ranging from quantum information science to signal processing. Furthermore, we reveal a surprising connection between unitary 3-designs and the physics of discrete phase spaces and thereby offer a simple explanation of why no discrete Wigner function is covariant with respect to the multiqubit Clifford group, which…

We derive laws for the distribution of quantum steering among different parties in multipartite Gaussian states under Gaussian measurements. We prove that a monogamy relation akin to the generalized Coffman-Kundu-Wootters inequality holds quantitatively for a recently introduced measure of Gaussian steering. We then define the residual Gaussian steering, stemming from the monogamy inequality, as an indicator of collective steering-type correlations. For pure three-mode Gaussian states, the residual acts as a quantifier of genuine multipartite steering, and is interpreted operationally in terms of the guaranteed key rate in the task of secure quantum secret sharing. Optimal resource states for the latter protocol are identified, and their possible experimental implementation discussed. Our results pin down the role of multipartite steering for quantum communication.

We investigate the role of quantum coherence depletion (QCD) in the Grover search algorithm (GA) by using several typical measures of quantum coherence and quantum correlations. By using the relative entropy of coherence measure (${\mathcal{C}}_{r}$), we show that the success probability depends on the QCD. The same phenomenon is also found by using the ${l}_{1}$ norm of coherence measure (${\mathcal{C}}_{{l}_{1}}$). In the limit case, the cost performance is defined to characterize the behavior about QCD in enhancing the success probability of GA, which is only related to the number of searcher items and the scale of the database, regardless of using ${\mathcal{C}}_{r}$ or ${\mathcal{C}}_{{l}_{1}}$. In the generalized Grover search algorithm (GGA), the QCD for a class of states increases with the required optimal measurement time. In comparison, the quantification of other quantum correlations in GA, such as pairwise entanglement, multipartite entanglement, pairwise discord, and genuine multipartite discord, cannot be directly related to the success probability or the optimal…

We theoretically investigate the critical properties of a single driven-dissipative nonlinear photon mode. In a well-defined thermodynamical limit of large excitation numbers, the exact quantum solution describes a first-order phase transition in the regime where semiclassical theory predicts optical bistability. We study the behavior of the complex spectral gap associated with the Liouvillian superoperator of the corresponding master equation. We show that in this limit the Liouvillian gap vanishes exponentially and that the bimodality of the photon Wigner function disappears. The connection between the considered thermodynamical limit of large photon numbers for the single-mode cavity and the thermodynamical limit of many cavities for a driven-dissipative Bose-Hubbard system is discussed.

A deep (convolutional) neural network is trained to predict the ground-state energy of an electron in two-dimensional potentials. The machinery of deep learning is developed to learn the mapping between potential and energy, which bypasses the need to numerically solve the Schr\"odinger equation and the need for computing wave functions.

We establish the multiparameter quantum Cram\'er-Rao bound for simultaneously estimating the centroid, the separation, and the relative intensities of two incoherent optical point sources using a linear imaging system. For equally bright sources, the Cram\'er-Rao bound is independent of their separation, which confirms that the Rayleigh resolution limit is just an artifact of the conventional direct imaging and can be overcome with an adequate strategy. For the general case of unequally bright sources, the amount of information one can gain about the separation falls to zero, but we show that there is always a quadratic improvement in an optimal detection in comparison with the intensity measurements. This advantage can be of utmost importance in realistic scenarios, such as observational astronomy.

The promise of quantum neural nets, which utilize quantum effects to model complex data sets, has made their development an aspirational goal for quantum machine learning and quantum computing in general. Here we provide methods of training quantum Boltzmann machines. Our work generalizes existing methods and provides additional approaches for training quantum neural networks that compare favorably to existing methods. We further demonstrate that quantum Boltzmann machines enable a form of partial quantum state tomography that further provides a generative model for the input quantum state. Classical Boltzmann machines are incapable of this. This verifies the long-conjectured connection between tomography and quantum machine learning. Finally, we prove that classical computers cannot simulate our training process in general unless $\text{BQP}=\text{BPP}$, provide lower bounds on the complexity of the training procedures and numerically investigate training for small nonstoquastic Hamiltonians.

Based on a formalism that describes atom-light interactions in terms of the classical electromagnetic Green's function, we study the optical response of atoms and other quantum emitters coupled to one-dimensional photonic structures, such as cavities, waveguides, and photonic crystals. We demonstrate a clear mapping between the transmission spectra and the local Green's function, identifying signatures of dispersive and dissipative interactions between atoms. We also demonstrate the applicability of our analysis to problems involving three-level atoms, such as electromagnetically induced transparency. Finally we examine recent experiments, and anticipate future observations of atom-atom interactions in photonic band gaps.

Leading approaches to fault-tolerant quantum computation dedicate a significant portion of the hardware to computational factories that churn out high-fidelity ancillas called magic states. Consequently, efficient and realistic factory design is of paramount importance. Here we present the most detailed resource assessment to date of magic-state factories within a surface code quantum computer, along the way introducing a number of techniques. We show that the block codes of Bravyi and Haah [Phys. Rev. A 86, 052329 (2012)] have been systematically undervalued; we track correlated errors both numerically and analytically, providing fidelity estimates without appeal to the union bound. We also introduce a subsystem code realization of these protocols with constant time and low ancilla cost. Additionally, we confirm that magic-state factories have space-time costs that scale as a constant factor of surface code costs. We find that the magic-state factory required for postclassical factoring can be as small as 6.3 million data qubits, ignoring ancilla qubits, assuming…

We show how analogs of a large number of well-known nonlinear-optics phenomena can be realized with one or more two-level atoms coupled to one or more resonator modes. Through higher-order processes, where virtual photons are created and annihilated, an effective deterministic coupling between two states of such a system can be created. In this way, analogs of three-wave mixing, four-wave mixing, higher-harmonic and -subharmonic generation (i.e., up- and down-conversion), multiphoton absorption, parametric amplification, Raman and hyper-Raman scattering, the Kerr effect, and other nonlinear processes can be realized. In contrast to most conventional implementations of nonlinear optics, these analogs can reach unit efficiency, only use a minimal number of photons (they do not require any strong external drive), and do not require more than two atomic levels. The strength of the effective coupling in our proposed setups becomes weaker the more intermediate transition steps are needed. However, given the recent experimental progress in ultrastrong light-matter coupling and improvement…

We investigate the peculiarities of light scattering from subwavelength particles made of high-refractive-index materials caused by the coexistence of particular anapole modes of both electric and magnetic character. The similarities and differences of such anapole modes are discussed in detail. We also show that these two types of anapole modes can be supported simultaneously by subwavelength high-index spherical dielectric particles.

The decoy-state scheme is the most widely implemented quantum-key-distribution protocol in practice. In order to account for the finite-size key effects on the achievable secret key generation rate, a rigorous statistical fluctuation analysis is required. Originally, a heuristic Gaussian-approximation technique was used for this purpose, which, despite its analytical convenience, was not sufficiently rigorous. The fluctuation analysis has recently been made rigorous by using the Chernoff bound. There is a considerable gap, however, between the key-rate bounds obtained from these techniques and that obtained from the Gaussian assumption. Here we develop a tighter bound for the decoy-state method, which yields a smaller failure probability. This improvement results in a higher key rate and increases the maximum distance over which secure key exchange is possible. By optimizing the system parameters, our simulation results show that our method almost closes the gap between the two previously proposed techniques and achieves a performance similar to that of conventional Gaussian…

We establish a general operational one-to-one mapping between coherence measures and entanglement measures: Any entanglement measure of bipartite pure states is the minimum of a suitable coherence measure over product bases. Any coherence measure of pure states, with extension to mixed states by convex roof, is the maximum entanglement generated by incoherent operations acting on the system and an incoherent ancilla. Remarkably, the generalized cnot gate is the universal optimal incoherent operation. In this way, all convex-roof coherence measures, including the coherence of formation, are endowed with (additional) operational interpretations. By virtue of this connection, many results on entanglement can be translated to the coherence setting, and vice versa. As applications, we provide tight observable lower bounds for generalized entanglement concurrence and coherence concurrence, which enable experimentalists to quantify entanglement and coherence of the maximal dimension in real experiments.

A bipartite state is said to be steerable if and only if it does not have a single-system description, i.e., the bipartite state cannot be explained by a local hidden state model. Several steering inequalities have been derived using different local uncertainty relations to verify the ability to control the state of one subsystem by the other party. Here, we derive complementarity relations between coherences measured on mutually unbiased bases using various coherence measures such as the ${l}_{1}$-norm, relative entropy, and skew information. Using these relations, we derive conditions under which a nonlocal advantage of quantum coherence can be achieved and the state is steerable. We show that not all steerable states can achieve such an advantage.

The out-of-time-ordered correlator (OTOC) diagnoses quantum chaos and the scrambling of quantum information via the spread of entanglement. The OTOC encodes forward and reverse evolutions and has deep connections with the flow of time. So do fluctuation relations such as Jarzynski's equality, derived in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. I unite these two powerful, seemingly disparate tools by deriving a Jarzynski-like equality for the OTOC. The equality's left-hand side equals the OTOC. The right-hand side suggests a protocol for measuring the OTOC indirectly. The protocol is platform-nonspecific and can be performed with weak measurement or with interference. Time evolution need not be reversed in any interference trial. The equality enables fluctuation relations to provide insights into holography, condensed matter, and quantum information and vice versa.

A scheme for certifying an unbounded amount of random bits from a single pair of entangled qubits is proposed in the scenario where one of the qubits is subjected to a sequence of nonprojective measurements, which supersedes the limit of the finite amount of randomness that can be certified in a traditional two-party, single-measurement Bell scenario.

We present a quantum algorithm for fitting a linear regression model to a given data set using the least-squares approach. Differently from previous algorithms which yield a quantum state encoding the optimal parameters, our algorithm outputs these numbers in the classical form. So by running it once, one completely determines the fitted model and then can use it to make predictions on new data at little cost. Moreover, our algorithm works in the standard oracle model, and can handle data sets with nonsparse design matrices. It runs in time $\text{poly}({log}_{2}(N),d,\ensuremath{\kappa},1/\ensuremath{\epsilon})$, where $N$ is the size of the data set, $d$ is the number of adjustable parameters, $\ensuremath{\kappa}$ is the condition number of the design matrix, and $\ensuremath{\epsilon}$ is the desired precision in the output. We also show that the polynomial dependence on $d$ and $\ensuremath{\kappa}$ is necessary. Thus, our algorithm cannot be significantly improved. Furthermore, we also give a quantum algorithm that estimates the quality of the least-squares fit (without…

We demonstrate optical levitation of ${\mathrm{SiO}}_{2}$ spheres with masses ranging from 0.1 to 30 ng. In high vacuum, we observe that the measured acceleration sensitivity improves for larger masses and obtain a sensitivity of $0.4\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}6}\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}g/\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$ for a 12-ng sphere, more than an order of magnitude better than previously reported for optically levitated masses. In addition, these techniques permit long integration times and a mean acceleration of $(\ensuremath{-}0.7\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}2.4\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}[\text{stat}]\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.2\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}[\text{syst}])\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}9}\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}g$ is measured in $1.4\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{4}$ s. Spheres larger than 10 ng are found to lose mass in high vacuum where heating due to absorption of the trapping laser dominates radiative cooling. This absorption constrains the maximum size of spheres that can be levitated and allows a…

Topologically engineered optical materials support robust light transport. Herein, the investigated non-Hermitian lattice is trimerized and inhomogeneously coupled using uniform intracell coupling. The topological properties of the coupled waveguide lattice are evaluated and we find that the $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric phase of a $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric lattice can have different topologies; the edge states depend on the lattice size, boundary configuration, and competition between the coupling and degree of non-Hermiticity. The topologically nontrivial region is extended in the presence of periodic gain and loss. The nonzero geometric phases accumulated by the Bloch bands indicate the existence of topologically protected edge states between the band gaps. The unidirectional amplification and attenuation zero modes appear above a threshold degree of non-Hermiticity, which facilitates the development of a robust optical diode.

Inspired by a class of algorithms proposed by Farhi et al. (arXiv:1411.4028), namely, the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA), we present a circuit-based quantum algorithm to search for a needle in a haystack, obtaining the same quadratic speedup achieved by Grover's original algorithm. In our algorithm, the problem Hamiltonian (oracle) and a transverse field are applied alternately to the system in a periodic manner. We introduce a technique, based on spin-coherent states, to analyze the composite unitary in a single period. This composite unitary drives a closed transition between two states that have high degrees of overlap with the initial state and the target state, respectively. The transition rate in our algorithm is of order $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Theta}}(1/\sqrt{N})$, and the overlaps are of order $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Theta}}(1)$, yielding a nearly optimal query complexity of $T\ensuremath{\simeq}\sqrt{N}\phantom{\rule{0.4pt}{0ex}}(\ensuremath{\pi}/2\sqrt{2})$. Our algorithm is a QAOA circuit that demonstrates a quantum advantage with a large number of…

Quantum key distribution (QKD) generates symmetric keys between two remote parties and guarantees the keys are not accessible to any third party. Wavelength-division multiplexing between QKD and classical optical communications by sharing the existing fiber-optics infrastructure is highly desired in order to reduce the cost of QKD applications. However, comparing to the light for classical transmission, quantum signals are very weak and easily affected by impairments from classical light, such as the spontaneous Raman-scattering effect. Here, by selecting an optimal wavelength of quantum signals, we significantly reduce the influence of the Raman-scattering effect. In addition, through coherent optical communication technology, we achieve high-speed classical data transmission with relatively low launch powers, thereby further reducing the impairments from classical light. As a result, we realize the multiplexing and long-distance copropagation of QKD and terabit classical data transmission up to 80 km. The data capacity is two orders of magnitude larger than the existing results.…

The notion of measurement is of both foundational and instrumental significance in quantum mechanics, and coherence destroyed by measurements (decoherence) lies at the very heart of quantum to classical transition. Qualitative aspects of this spirit have been widely recognized and analyzed ever since the inception of quantum theory. However, axiomatic and quantitative investigations of coherence are attracting great interest only recently with several figures of merit for coherence introduced [Baumgratz, Cramer, and Plenio, Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 140401 (2014)]. While these resource theoretic approaches have many appealing and intuitive features, they rely crucially on various notions of incoherent operations which are sophisticated, subtle, and not uniquely defined, as have been critically assessed [Chitambar and Gour, Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 030401 (2016)]. In this paper, we elaborate on the idea that coherence and quantum uncertainty are dual viewpoints of the same quantum substrate, and address coherence quantification by identifying coherence of a state (with respect to a…

Many-body systems constructed of quantum-optical building blocks can now be realized in experimental platforms ranging from exciton-polariton fluids to ultracold Rydberg gases, establishing a fascinating interface between traditional many-body physics and the driven-dissipative, nonequilibrium setting of cavity QED. At this interface, the standard techniques and intuitions of both fields are called into question, obscuring issues as fundamental as the role of fluctuations, dimensionality, and symmetry on the nature of collective behavior and phase transitions. Here, we study the driven-dissipative Bose-Hubbard model, a minimal description of numerous atomic, optical, and solid-state systems in which particle loss is countered by coherent driving. Despite being a lattice version of optical bistability, a foundational and patently nonequilibrium model of cavity QED, the steady state possesses an emergent equilibrium description in terms of a classical Ising model. We establish this picture by making new connections between traditional techniques from many-body physics (functional…

Multiplexing is a strategy to augment the transmission capacity of a communication system. It consists of combining multiple signals over the same data channel and it has been very successful in classical communications. However, the use of enhanced channels has only reached limited practicality in quantum communications (QC) as it requires the manipulation of quantum systems of higher dimensions. Considerable effort is being made towards QC using high-dimensional quantum systems encoded into the transverse momentum of single photons, but so far no approach has been proven to be fully compatible with the existing telecommunication fibers. Here we overcome such a challenge and demonstrate a secure high-dimensional decoy-state quantum key distribution session over a 300-m-long multicore optical fiber. The high-dimensional quantum states are defined in terms of the transverse core modes available for the photon transmission over the fiber, and theoretical analyses show that positive secret key rates can be achieved through metropolitan distances.

Photoionization using attosecond pulses can lead to the formation of coherent superpositions of the electronic states of the parent ion. However, ultrafast electron ejection triggers not only electronic but also nuclear dynamics---leading to electronic decoherence, which is typically neglected on time scales up to tens of femtoseconds. We propose a full quantum-dynamical treatment of nuclear motion in an adiabatic framework, where nuclear wave packets move on adiabatic potential energy surfaces expanded up to second order at the Franck-Condon point. We show that electronic decoherence is caused by the interplay of a large number of nuclear degrees of freedom and by the relative topology of the potential energy surfaces. Application to ${\mathrm{H}}_{2}\mathrm{O}$, paraxylene, and phenylalanine shows that an initially coherent state evolves to an electronically mixed state within just a few femtoseconds. In these examples the fast vibrations involving hydrogen atoms do not affect electronic coherence at short times. Conversely, vibrational modes involving the whole molecular…

We propose a general scheme for a digital construction of lattice gauge theories with dynamical fermions. In this method, the four-body interactions arising in models with $2+1$ dimensions and higher are obtained stroboscopically, through a sequence of two-body interactions with ancillary degrees of freedom. This yields stronger interactions than the ones obtained through perturbative methods, as typically done in previous proposals, and removes an important bottleneck in the road towards experimental realizations. The scheme applies to generic gauge theories with Lie or finite symmetry groups, both Abelian and non-Abelian. As a concrete example, we present the construction of a digital quantum simulator for a ${\mathbb{Z}}_{3}$ lattice gauge theory with dynamical fermionic matter in $2+1$ dimensions, using ultracold atoms in optical lattices, involving three atomic species, representing the matter, gauge, and auxiliary degrees of freedom, that are separated in three different layers. By moving the ancilla atoms with a proper sequence of steps, we show how we can obtain the desired…

We show that one can determine both parameters of a displacement acting on an oscillator with an accuracy which scales inversely with the square root of the number of photons in the oscillator. Our results are obtained by using a grid state as a sensor state for detecting small translations in phase space (displacements). Grid states were first proposed [D. Gottesman et al., Phys. Rev. A 64, 012310 (2001)] for encoding a qubit into an oscillator: an efficient preparation protocol of such states, using a coupling to a qubit, was later developed [B. M. Terhal and D. Weigand, Phys. Rev. A 93, 012315 (2016)]. We compare the performance of the grid state with the quantum compass or cat code state and place our results in the context of the two-parameter quantum Cram\'er-Rao lower bound on the variances of the displacement parameters. We show that the accessible information about the displacement for a grid state increases with the number of photons in the state when we measure and prepare the state using a phase estimation protocol. This is in contrast with the accessible information in…

We develop a comprehensive framework to model and optimize the performance of continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CV-QKD) with a local local oscillator (LLO), when phase reference sharing and QKD are jointly implemented. We first analyze the limitations of the only existing approach, called LLO-sequential, and show that it requires high modulation dynamics and can only tolerate small phase noise. Our main contribution is to introduce two designs to perform LLO CV-QKD, respectively called LLO-delayline and LLO-displacement, and to study their performance. Both designs rely on a self-coherent approach, in which phase reference information and quantum information are coherently obtained from a single optical wavefront. We show that these designs can lift some limitations of the existing LLO-sequential approach. The LLO-delayline design can in particular tolerate much stronger phase noise and thus appears to be an appealing alternative to LLO-sequential in terms of network integrability. We also investigate, with the LLO-displacement design, how phase reference information and…

A detailed analysis of the performance and required resources for an all-photonic quantum repeater architecture is presented. It is shown how to significantly outperform the bit rate achievable by any repeaterless direct-transmission protocol despite various device losses, and also dramatically decrease the number of required photon sources.

We theoretically study high-order-harmonic generation (HHG) from solids driven by intense laser pulses using a one-dimensional model periodic crystal. By numerically solving the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation directly on a real-space grid, we successfully reproduce experimentally observed unique features of solid-state HHG such as the linear cutoff-energy scaling and the sudden transition from a single- to multiple-plateau structure. Based on the simulation results, we propose a simple model that incorporates vector-potential-induced intraband displacement, interband tunneling, and recombination with the valence-band hole. One key parameter is the peak-to-valley amplitude of the pulse vector potential, which determines the crystal momentum displacement during the half cycle. When the maximum peak-to-valley amplitude ${A}_{\mathrm{peak}}$ reaches the half width $\frac{\ensuremath{\pi}}{a}$ of the Brillouin zone with $a$ being the lattice constant, the HHG spectrum exhibits a transition from a single- to multiple-plateau structure, and even further plateaus appear at…

A pivotal task in quantum metrology, and quantum parameter estimation in general, is to design schemes that achieve the highest precision with the given resources. Standard models of quantum metrology usually assume that the dynamics is fixed and that the highest precision is achieved by preparing the optimal probe states and performing optimal measurements. However, in many practical experimental settings, additional controls are usually available to alter the dynamics. Here we propose to use optimal control methods for further improvement of the precision limit of quantum parameter estimation. We show that, by exploring the additional degree of freedom offered by the controls, a higher-precision limit can be achieved. In particular, we show that the precision limit under the controlled schemes can go beyond the constraints put by the coherent time, which is in contrast with the standard scheme where the precision limit is always bounded by the coherent time.

It was shown [New J. Phys. 17, 103037 (2015)] that large and robust entanglement between two different mechanical resonators could be achieved, either dynamically or in the steady state, in an optomechanical system in which the two mechanical resonators are coupled to a single cavity mode driven by a suitably chosen two-tone field. An important limitation of the scheme is that the cavity decay rate must be much smaller than the two mechanical frequencies and their difference. Here we show that the entanglement can be remarkably enhanced, and the validity of the scheme can be largely extended, by adding a coherent feedback loop that effectively reduces the cavity decay rate.

Organic microcavities are an attractive platform for achieving ultrastrong-coupling regimes in cavity QED. Their main drawback, the complex nature of the spectral response, is a decade-old problem that is here solved by introducing a theoretical framework in which the dynamics of dark vibronic polaritons is accounted for.

The interaction of quantum emitters with structured baths modifies both their individual and collective dynamics. In A. Gonz\'alez-Tudela and J. I. Cirac, Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 143602 (2017), we show how exotic quantum dynamics emerges when quantum emitters are spectrally tuned around the middle of the band of a two-dimensional structured reservoir, where we predict the failure of perturbative treatments, anisotropic non-Markovian interactions, and remarkable superradiant and subradiant behavior. In this work, we provide further analysis of that situation, together with a complete analysis for the quantum emitter dynamics in spectral regions different from the center of the band.

Non-Hermitian systems with $\mathcal{PT}$ symmetry can possess purely real eigenvalue spectra. In this work two one-dimensional systems with two different topological phases, the topological nontrivial phase (TNP) and the topological trivial phase (TTP), combined with $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric non-Hermitian potentials are investigated. The models of choice are the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model and the Kitaev chain. The interplay of a spontaneous $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry breaking due to gain and loss with the topological phase is different for the two models. The SSH model undergoes a $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry breaking transition in the TNP immediately with the presence of a nonvanishing gain and loss strength $\ensuremath{\gamma}$, whereas the TTP exhibits a parameter regime in which a purely real eigenvalue spectrum exists. For the Kitaev chain the $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry breaking is independent of the topological phase. We show that the topologically interesting states---the edge states---are the reason for the different behaviors of the two models and that the intrinsic…

We implement a quantum optimal control algorithm based on automatic differentiation and harness the acceleration afforded by graphics processing units (GPUs). Automatic differentiation allows us to specify advanced optimization criteria and incorporate them in the optimization process with ease. We show that the use of GPUs can speedup calculations by more than an order of magnitude. Our strategy facilitates efficient numerical simulations on affordable desktop computers and exploration of a host of optimization constraints and system parameters relevant to real-life experiments. We demonstrate optimization of quantum evolution based on fine-grained evaluation of performance at each intermediate time step, thus enabling more intricate control on the evolution path, suppression of departures from the truncated model subspace, as well as minimization of the physical time needed to perform high-fidelity state preparation and unitary gates.

High-order harmonic spectra from solid materials driven by single-color multicycle laser fields sometimes contain even harmonics. In this work we attribute the appearance of even harmonics to the nonzero transition dipole phase (TDP) when the solid system has broken symmetry. By calculating the harmonic efficiency from graphene and gapped graphene by using the semiconductor Bloch equations under the tight-binding approximation, we demonstrate the role of the TDP, which has been ignored for a long time. When the crystal has inversion symmetry, or reflection symmetry with the symmetry plane perpendicular to the laser polarization direction, the TDP can be neglected. Without such symmetry, however, the TDP will lead to the appearance of even harmonics. We further show that the TDP is sensitive to the crystal geometry. To extract the structure information from the harmonic spectra of a solid the TDP cannot be ignored.

We show that two quantities in quantum metrology that were thought to be the same, the quantum Fisher information matrix and the Bures metric, are not the same. They differ at points at which the rank of the density matrix changes. The quantum Fisher information matrix is discontinuous at these points. However, these discontinuities are removable in some sense. We show that the expression given by the Bures metric represents the continuous version of the quantum Fisher information matrix. We also derive an explicit formula for the Bures metric for both singular and nonsingular density matrices.

A method to charge and discharge levitated nanoparticles is demonstrated, allowing one to enhance the control of its motion by the interaction with electric fields. The nanoparticles might be used as a tool for force sensing in microscopic scales.

We study theoretically and experimentally the behavior of a strongly confined dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate in the regime of quantum-mechanical stabilization by beyond-mean-field effects. Theoretically, we demonstrate that self-organized ``striped'' ground states are predicted in the framework of the extended Gross-Pitaevskii theory. Experimentally, by tilting the magnetic dipoles we show that self-organized striped states can be generated, likely in their metastable state. Matter-wave interference experiments with multiple stripes show that there is no long-range off-diagonal order (global phase coherence). We outline a parameter range where global phase coherence could be established, thus paving the way towards the observation of supersolid states in this system.

We introduce a simple scheme to implement synthetic dimensions in ultracold atomic gases, which only requires two basic and ubiquitous ingredients: the harmonic trap, which confines the atoms, combined with a periodic shaking. In our approach, standard harmonic oscillator eigenstates are reinterpreted as lattice sites along a synthetic dimension, while the coupling between these lattice sites is controlled by the applied time modulation. The phase of this modulation enters as a complex hopping phase, leading straightforwardly to an artificial magnetic field upon adding a second dimension. We show that this artificial gauge field has important consequences, such as the counterintuitive reduction of average energy under resonant driving, or the realization of quantum Hall physics. Our approach offers significant advantages over previous implementations of synthetic dimensions, providing an intriguing route towards higher-dimensional topological physics and strongly-correlated states.

We theoretically investigate the performance of multiphoton catalysis applied on the two-mode squeezed state by examining the entropy of entanglement, logarithmic negativity, Eistein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR), and Hillery-Zubairy (HZ) correlations, and the fidelity of teleportation. It is found that the entanglement increases with the number of catalysis operations if the squeezing parameter is low initially. Our comparisons show that the HZ correlation presents a better performance than the EPR correlation for detecting the entanglement, and the improvement of HZ correlation definitely results in the improvement of entropy of entanglement rather than negativity; the region of enhanced EPR correlation is a subregion of all other entanglement properties. In addition, we consider the performances of the fidelity by comparing such operations applied before or after the amplitude damping channel. It is shown that the catalysis operation of $m=n=1$ before the channel presents the best performance in the initial-low squeezing regime. This may provide a useful insight for a long-distance…

We examine the photonic spin Hall effect (SHE) in a graphene-substrate system with the presence of an external magnetic field. In the quantum Hall regime, we demonstrate that the in-plane and transverse spin-dependent splittings in the photonic SHE exhibit different quantized behaviors. The quantized SHE can be described as a consequence of a quantized geometric phase (Berry phase), which corresponds to the quantized spin-orbit interaction. Furthermore, an experimental scheme based on quantum weak value amplification is proposed to detect the quantized SHE in the terahertz frequency regime. By incorporating the quantum weak measurement techniques, the quantized photonic SHE holds great promise for detecting quantized Hall conductivity and the Berry phase. These results may bridge the gap between the electronic SHE and photonic SHE in graphene.

Unlike the Rydberg blockade regime, the Rydberg antiblockade regime (RABR) allows more than one Rydberg atom to be excited, which can bring other interesting phenomena and applications. We propose an alternative scheme to quickly achieve the RABR. The proposed RABR can be implemented by adjusting the detuning of the classical driving field, which is, in turn, based on the former numbers of the excited Rydberg atoms. In contrast to the former schemes, the current one enables more than two atoms to be excited to Rydberg states in a short period of time and thus is useful for large-scale quantum information processing. The proposed RABR can be used to construct two- and multiqubit quantum logic gates. In addition, a Rydberg excitation superatom, which can decrease the blockade error and enlarge the blockade radius for Rydberg blockade-based schemes, is constructed based on the suggested RABR and used to realize a more robust quantum logic gate. The mechanical effect and the ionization are discussed, and the performance is investigated using the master-equation method. Finally, other…

Nonadiabatic geometric quantum computation provides a means to perform fast and robust quantum gates. It has been implemented in various physical systems, such as trapped ions, nuclear magnetic resonance, and superconducting circuits. Another system being adequate for implementation of nonadiabatic geometric quantum computation may be Rydberg atoms, since their internal states have very long coherence time and the Rydberg-mediated interaction facilitates the implementation of a two-qubit gate. Here, we propose a scheme of nonadiabatic geometric quantum computation based on Rydberg atoms, which combines the robustness of nonadiabatic geometric gates with the merits of Rydberg atoms.

Electrons in plasmas produced by next-generation ultraintense lasers ($I>5\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{22}\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\mathrm{W}/{\mathrm{cm}}^{2}$) can be spin polarized to a high degree (10%--70%) by the laser pulses on a femtosecond time scale. This is due to electrons undergoing spin-flip transitions as they radiate $\ensuremath{\gamma}$-ray photons, preferentially spin polarizing in one direction. Spin polarization can modify the radiation reaction force on the electrons, which differs by up to 30% for opposite spin polarizations. Consequently, the polarization of the radiated $\ensuremath{\gamma}$-ray photons is also modified: the relative power radiated in the $\ensuremath{\sigma}$ and $\ensuremath{\pi}$ components increases and decreases by up to 30%, respectively, potentially reducing the rate of pair production in the plasma by up to 30%.

A modified Rydberg blockade gate that employs adiabatic following of a two-atom dark state is proposed. The scheme is resilient to the uncertainty in the interaction strength and can be employed to achieve fault-tolerant quantum computation with neutral atoms.

We observe the breakup dynamics of an elongated cloud of condensed $^{85}\mathrm{Rb}$ atoms placed in an optical waveguide. The number of localized spatial components observed in the breakup is compared with the number of solitons predicted by a plane-wave stability analysis of the nonpolynomial nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation, an effective one-dimensional approximation of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation for cigar-shaped condensates. It is shown that the numbers predicted from the fastest growing sidebands are consistent with the experimental data, suggesting that modulational instability is the key underlying physical mechanism driving the breakup.

We investigate the Anderson localization in non-Hermitian Aubry-Andr\'e-Harper (AAH) models with imaginary potentials added to lattice sites to represent the physical gain and loss during the interacting processes between the system and environment. By checking the mean inverse participation ratio (MIPR) of the system, we find that different configurations of physical gain and loss have very different impacts on the localization phase transition in the system. In the case with balanced physical gain and loss added in an alternate way to the lattice sites, the critical region (in the case with $p$-wave superconducting pairing) and the critical value (both in the situations with and without $p$-wave pairing) for the Anderson localization phase transition will be significantly reduced, which implies an enhancement of the localization process. However, if the system is divided into two parts with one of them coupled to physical gain and the other coupled to the corresponding physical loss, the transition process will be impacted only in a very mild way. Besides, we also discuss the…

We introduce multipulse quantum noise spectroscopy protocols for spectral estimation of the noise affecting multiple qubits coupled to Gaussian dephasing environments including both classical and quantum sources. Our protocols are capable of reconstructing all the noise auto- and cross-correlation spectra entering the multiqubit dynamics, providing access, in particular, to the asymmetric spectra associated with nonclassical environments. Our result relies on (i) an exact analytic solution for the reduced multiqubit dynamics that holds in the presence of an arbitrary Gaussian environment and dephasing-preserving control; (ii) the use of specific timing symmetries, which allow for a frequency comb to be engineered for all filter functions of interest, and for the spectra to be related to experimentally accessible observables. We show that quantum spectra have distinctive dynamical signatures, which we explore in two paradigmatic open-system models describing spin and charge qubits coupled to bosonic environments. Complete noise spectroscopy is demonstrated numerically in a realistic…

Quantum coherence, incompatibility, and quantum correlations are fundamental features of quantum physics. A unified view of those features is crucial for revealing quantitatively their intrinsic connections. We define the relative quantum coherence of two states as the coherence of one state in the reference basis spanned by the eigenvectors of another one and establish its quantitative connections with the extent of mutual incompatibility of two states. We also show that the proposed relative quantum coherence, which can take any form of measures such as ${l}_{1}$ norm and relative entropy, can be interpreted as or connected to various quantum correlations such as quantum discord, symmetric discord, entanglement of formation, and quantum deficits. Our results reveal conceptual implications and basic connections of quantum coherence, mutual incompatibility, and quantum correlations.

We investigate the existence of topological phases in a dense two-dimensional atomic lattice gas. The coupling of the atoms to the radiation field gives rise to dissipation and a nontrivial coherent long-range exchange interaction whose form goes beyond a simple power law. The far-field terms of the potential---which are particularly relevant for atomic separations comparable to the atomic transition wavelength---can give rise to energy spectra with one-sided divergences in the Brillouin zone. The long-ranged character of the interactions has another important consequence: it can break the standard bulk-boundary relation in topological insulators. We show that topological properties such as the transport of an excitation along the edge of the lattice are robust with respect to the presence of lattice defects and dissipation. The latter is of particular relevance as dissipation and coherent interactions are inevitably connected in our setting.

We determine the cost of performing Shor's algorithm for integer factorization on a ternary quantum computer, using two natural models of universal fault-tolerant computing: (i) a model based on magic state distillation that assumes the availability of the ternary Clifford gates, projective measurements, classical control as its natural instrumentation set; (ii) a model based on a metaplectic topological quantum computer (MTQC). A natural choice to implement Shor's algorithm on a ternary quantum computer is to translate the entire arithmetic into a ternary form. However, it is also possible to emulate the standard binary version of the algorithm by encoding each qubit in a three-level system. We compare the two approaches and analyze the complexity of implementing Shor's period-finding function in the two models. We also highlight the fact that the cost of achieving universality through magic states in MTQC architecture is asymptotically lower than in generic ternary case.

We describe schemes of quantum computation with magic states on qubits for which contextuality and negativity of the Wigner function are necessary resources possessed by the magic states. These schemes satisfy a constraint. Namely, the non-negativity of Wigner functions must be preserved under all available measurement operations. Furthermore, we identify stringent consistency conditions on such computational schemes, revealing the general structure by which negativity of Wigner functions, hardness of classical simulation of the computation, and contextuality are connected.

We report the experimental observation of high-order sideband transitions at the single-photon level in a quantum circuit system of a flux qubit ultrastrongly coupled to a coplanar waveguide resonator. With the coupling strength reaching 10% of the resonator's fundamental frequency, we obtain clear signatures of higher order red-sideband and first-order blue-sideband transitions, which are mainly due to the ultrastrong Rabi coupling. Our observation advances the understanding of ultrastrongly coupled systems and paves the way to study high-order processes in the quantum Rabi model at the single-photon level.

The quantum Rabi model is in the scientific spotlight due to the recent theoretical and experimental progress. Nevertheless, a full-fledged classification of its coupling regimes remains as a relevant open question. We propose a spectral classification dividing the coupling regimes into three regions based on the validity of perturbative criteria on the quantum Rabi model, which allows us the use of exactly solvable effective Hamiltonians. These coupling regimes are (i) the perturbative ultrastrong coupling regime which comprises the Jaynes-Cummings model, (ii) a region where nonperturbative ultrastrong and nonperturbative deep strong coupling regimes coexist, and (iii) the perturbative deep strong coupling regime. We show that this spectral classification depends not only on the ratio between the coupling strength and the natural frequencies of the unperturbed parts, but also on the energy to which the system can access. These regimes additionally discriminate the completely different behaviors of several static physical properties, namely the total number of excitations, the…

The possibility of observing many-body localization of ultracold atoms in a one-dimensional optical lattice is discussed for random interactions. In the noninteracting limit, such a system reduces to single-particle physics in the absence of disorder, i.e., to extended states. In effect, the observed localization is inherently due to interactions and is thus a genuine many-body effect. In the system studied, many-body localization manifests itself in a lack of thermalization visible in temporal propagation of a specially prepared initial state, in transport properties, in the logarithmic growth of entanglement entropy, and in statistical properties of energy levels.

A collision model (CM) is a framework to describe open quantum dynamics. In its memoryless version, it models the reservoir $\mathcal{R}$ as consisting of a large collection of elementary ancillas: the dynamics of the open system $\mathcal{S}$ results from successive collisions of $\mathcal{S}$ with the ancillas of $\mathcal{R}$. Here, we present a general formulation of memoryless composite CMs, where $\mathcal{S}$ is partitioned into the very open system under study $S$ coupled to one or more auxiliary systems ${{S}_{i}}$. Their composite dynamics occurs through internal $S\ensuremath{-}{{S}_{i}}$ collisions interspersed with external ones involving ${{S}_{i}}$ and the reservoir $\mathcal{R}$. We show that important known instances of quantum non-Markovian dynamics of $S$---such as the emission of an atom into a reservoir featuring a Lorentzian, or multi-Lorentzian, spectral density or a qubit subject to random telegraph noise---can be mapped on to such memoryless composite CMs.

In this study, we propose the concept of judgment space to investigate the quantum-secret-sharing scheme based on local distinguishability (called LOCC-QSS). Because of the proposing of this conception, the property of orthogonal mutiqudit entangled states under restricted local operation and classical communication (LOCC) can be described more clearly. According to these properties, we reveal that, in the previous ($k,n$)-threshold LOCC-QSS scheme, there are two required conditions for the selected quantum states to resist the unambiguous attack: (i) their $k$-level judgment spaces are orthogonal, and (ii) their ($k\ensuremath{-}1$)-level judgment spaces are equal. Practically, if $k

We consider the problem of estimating the temperature $T$ of a very cold equilibrium sample. The temperature estimates are drawn from measurements performed on a quantum Brownian probe strongly coupled to it. We model this scenario by resorting to the canonical Caldeira-Leggett Hamiltonian and find analytically the exact stationary state of the probe for arbitrary coupling strength. In general, the probe does not reach thermal equilibrium with the sample, due to their nonperturbative interaction. We argue that this is advantageous for low-temperature thermometry, as we show in our model that (i) the thermometric precision at low $T$ can be significantly enhanced by strengthening the probe-sampling coupling, (ii) the variance of a suitable quadrature of our Brownian thermometer can yield temperature estimates with nearly minimal statistical uncertainty, and (iii) the spectral density of the probe-sample coupling may be engineered to further improve thermometric performance. These observations may find applications in practical nanoscale thermometry at low temperatures---a regime…

Conventional methods for computing maximum-likelihood estimators (MLE) often converge slowly in practical situations, leading to a search for simplifying methods that rely on additional assumptions for their validity. In this work, we provide a fast and reliable algorithm for maximum-likelihood reconstruction that avoids this slow convergence. Our method utilizes the state-of-the-art convex optimization scheme, an accelerated projected-gradient method, that allows one to accommodate the quantum nature of the problem in a different way than in the standard methods. We demonstrate the power of our approach by comparing its performance with other algorithms for $n$-qubit state tomography. In particular, an eight-qubit situation that purportedly took weeks of computation time in 2005 can now be completed in under a minute for a single set of data, with far higher accuracy than previously possible. This refutes the common claim that MLE reconstruction is slow and reduces the need for alternative methods that often come with difficult-to-verify assumptions. In fact, recent methods…

Photon pairs produced by parametric down-conversion or four-wave mixing can interfere with each other in multiport interferometers or carry entanglement between distant nodes for use in entanglement swapping. This requires the photons to be spectrally pure to ensure good interference and have high heralding efficiency to know accurately the number of photons involved and to maintain high rates as the number of photons grows. Spectral filtering is often used to remove noise and define spectral properties. For heralded single photons high purity and heralding efficiency are possible by filtering the heralding arm, but when both photons in typical pair sources are filtered, we show that the heralding efficiency of one or both of the photons is strongly reduced even by ideal spectral filters with 100% transmission in the passband: any improvement in reduced-state spectral purity from filtering comes at the cost of lowered heralding efficiency. We consider the fidelity to a pure, lossless single photon, symmetrize it to include both photons of the pair, and show this quantity is…

Most studies in multiparameter estimation assume the dynamics is fixed and focus on identifying the optimal probe state and the optimal measurements. In practice, however, controls are usually available to alter the dynamics, which provides another degree of freedom. In this paper we employ optimal control methods, particularly the gradient ascent pulse engineering (GRAPE), to design optimal controls for the improvement of the precision limit in multiparameter estimation. We show that the controlled schemes are not only capable to provide a higher precision limit, but also have a higher stability to the inaccuracy of the time point performing the measurements. This high time stability will benefit the practical metrology, where it is hard to perform the measurement at a very accurate time point due to the response time of the measurement apparatus.

Phonon blockade is achieved in a quadratically coupled optomechanical system, in which the nonlinear interaction between phonons is induced by a driving field via radiation pressure. It is different from the previous standard methods, where the nonlinear interaction for observing phonon blockade is obtained by coupling the mechanical resonator to a two-level system. The effective coupling strength can be tuned by controlling the amplitudes of the driving field, which allows large nonlinearities for the optomechanical system. The second-order correlation function is discussed both analytically and numerically to characterize the phonon statistical properties and the results show that the phonon blockade is available when the effective coupling strength is larger than the mechanical decay rate. This work provides a possible way to experimentally realize phonon blockade.

We critically examine the current status of theoretical calculations of the energies, the fine structure, and the isotope shift of the lowest-lying states of helium, searching for unresolved discrepancies with experiments. Calculations are performed within the quantum electrodynamics expansion in powers of the fine structure constant $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ and the electron-to-nucleus mass ratio $m/M$. For energies, theoretical results are complete through orders ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}^{6}m$ and ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}^{6}{m}^{2}/M$, with the resulting accuracy ranging from 0.5 to 2 MHz for the $n=2$ states. The fine-structure splitting of the $2\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}^{3}P$ state is predicted with a much better accuracy, 1.7 kHz, as a consequence of a calculation of the next-order ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}^{7}m$ effect. An excellent agreement of the theoretical predictions with the recent measurements of the fine structure provides one of the best tests of the bound-state QED in few-electron systems. The isotope shift between $^{3}\mathrm{He}$ and $^{4}\mathrm{He}$ is treated with a…

We consider optical bound states in the continuum (BICs) in periodic arrays of dielectric rods. The full classification of BICs in the above system is provided, including the modes propagating along the axes of the rods and bidirectional BICs propagating both along the axes of the rods and the axis of periodicity. It is shown that the leaky zones supporting the BICs generally have elliptically polarized far-field radiation patterns, with the polarization ellipses collapsing on approach to the BICs in momentum space. That allowed us to apply the concept of polarization singularities and demonstrate that the BICs possess a topological charge defined as the winding number of the polarization direction [Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 257401 (2014)]. It is found that the evolution of the BICs, including their creation and annihilation, under variation of geometric parameters is controlled by the topological charge. Three scenarios of such evolution for different leaky zones are described. Finally, it is shown that the topological properties of the BICs can be extracted from transmission spectra…

We use a nonperturbative renormalization group approach to develop a unified picture of the Bose polaron problem, where a mobile impurity is strongly interacting with a surrounding Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). A detailed theoretical analysis of the phase diagram is presented and the polaron-to-molecule transition is discussed. For attractive polarons we argue that a description in terms of an effective Fr\"ohlich Hamiltonian with renormalized parameters is possible. Its strong-coupling regime is realized close to a Feshbach resonance, where we predict a sharp increase of the effective mass. Already for weaker interactions, before the polaron mass diverges, we predict a transition to a regime where states exist below the polaron energy and the attractive polaron is no longer the ground state. On the repulsive side of the Feshbach resonance we recover the repulsive polaron, which has a finite lifetime because it can decay into low-lying molecular states. We show for the entire range of couplings that the polaron energy has logarithmic corrections in comparison with predictions by…

We study the performance of a single qubit laser as a quantum sensor to measure the amplitude and phase of a driving field. By using parameter estimation theory we show that certain suitable field quadratures are optimal observables in the lasing phase. The quantum Fisher information scales linearly with the number of bosons and thus the precision can be enhanced by increasing the incoherent pumping acting on the qubit. If we restrict ourselves to measurements of the boson number observable, then the optimal operating point is the critical point of the lasing phase transition. Our results point to an intimate connection between symmetry breaking, dissipative phase transitions, and efficient parameter estimation.

We obtain the multiple-parameter quantum Cram\'er-Rao bound for estimating the transverse Cartesian components of the centroid and separation of two incoherent optical point sources using an imaging system with finite spatial bandwidth. Under quite general and realistic assumptions on the point-spread function of the imaging system, and for weak source strengths, we show that the Cram\'er-Rao bounds for the $x$ and $y$ components of the separation are independent of the values of those components, which may be well below the conventional Rayleigh resolution limit. We also propose two linear-optics-based measurement methods that approach the quantum bound for the estimation of the Cartesian components of the separation once the centroid has been located. One of the methods is an interferometric scheme that approaches the quantum bound for sub-Rayleigh separations. The other method using fiber coupling can, in principle, attain the bound regardless of the distance between the two sources.

Simulating fermionic lattice models with qubits requires mapping fermionic degrees of freedom to qubits. The simplest method for this task, the Jordan-Wigner transformation, yields strings of Pauli operators acting on an extensive number of qubits. This overhead can be a hindrance to implementation of qubit-based quantum simulators, especially in the analog context. Here we thus review and analyze alternative fermion-to-qubit mappings, including the two approaches by Bravyi and Kitaev and the auxiliary fermion transformation. The Bravyi-Kitaev transform is reformulated in terms of a classical data structure and generalized to achieve a further locality improvement for local fermionic models on a rectangular lattice. We conclude that the most compact encoding of the fermionic operators can be done using ancilla qubits with the auxiliary fermion scheme. Without introducing ancillas, a variant of the Bravyi-Kitaev transform provides the most compact fermion-to-qubit mapping for Hubbard-like models.

We investigate single-photon scattering properties in a one-dimensional waveguide coupled to a quantum emitter's chain with dipole-dipole interaction (DDI). The photon transport is extremely sensitive to the location of the evanescently coupled atoms. The analytical expressions of reflection and transmission amplitudes for the chain containing two emitters with DDI are deduced by using a real-space Hamiltonian. Two cases, where the two emitters symmetrically or asymmetrically couple to the waveguide, are discussed in detail. It shows that the reflection and transmission typical spectra split into two peaks due to the DDI. The Fano minimum in the spectra can be used to estimate the strength of the DDI. Furthermore, the DDI makes spectra strongly asymmetric and creates a transmission window in the region where there was zero transmission. The scattering spectra for the chain consisting of multiple emitters are also given. Our key finding is that DDI can broaden the frequency bandwidth for high reflection when the chain consists of many emitters.

We generalize the recently proposed resource theory of coherence (or superposition) [T. Baumgratz et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 140401 (2014); A. Winter and D. Yang, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 120404 (2016)] to the setting where not just the free (``incoherent'') resources, but also the manipulated objects, are quantum operations rather than states. In particular, we discuss an information theoretic notion of the coherence capacity of a quantum channel and prove a single-letter formula for it in the case of unitaries. Then we move to the coherence cost of simulating a channel and prove achievability results for unitaries and general channels acting on a $d$-dimensional system; we show that a maximally coherent state of rank $d$ is always sufficient as a resource if incoherent operations are allowed, and one of rank ${d}^{2}$ for ``strictly incoherent'' operations. We also show lower bounds on the simulation cost of channels that allow us to conclude that there exists bound coherence in operations, i.e., maps with nonzero cost of implementing them but zero coherence capacity; this is in…

We reconstruct the explicit formalism of qubit quantum theory from elementary rules on an observer's information acquisition. Our approach is purely operational: we consider an observer $O$ interrogating a system $S$ with binary questions and define $S$'s state as $O$'s ``catalog of knowledge'' about $S$. From the rules we derive the state spaces for $N$ elementary systems and show that (a) they coincide with the set of density matrices over an $N$-qubit Hilbert space ${\mathbb{C}}^{{2}^{N}}$; (b) states evolve unitarily under the group $\mathrm{PSU}({2}^{N})$ according to the von Neumann evolution equation; and (c) $O$'s binary questions correspond to projective Pauli operator measurements with outcome probabilities given by the Born rule. As a by-product, this results in a propositional formulation of quantum theory. Aside from offering an informational explanation for the theory's architecture, the reconstruction also unravels previously unnoticed structural insights. We show that, in a derived quadratic information measure, (d) qubits satisfy inequalities which bound the…

We theoretically study the dynamical speedup of a quantum system in a nonequilibrium environment. Based on the trace distance, we derive the generalized Margolus-Levitin and Mandelstam-Tamm types of bounds on the quantum speed limit time of a quantum system evolving from an arbitrary initial state. We demonstrate that the mechanism for the speedup of dynamical evolution is closely associated with both the energy of the system and exchange of information between the system and its environment. It is shown that the nonequilibrium feature of the environment can speed up the quantum evolution in both Markovian and non-Markovian dynamics regions. We emphasize that the non-Markovian effect of the system dynamics is neither necessary nor sufficient to speed up the quantum evolution in a nonequilibrium environment.

We discuss the ground-state properties of a one-dimensional bosonic system doped with an impurity (the so-called Bose polaron problem). We introduce a formalism that allows us to calculate analytically the thermodynamic zero-temperature properties of this system with weak and moderate boson-boson interaction strengths for any boson-impurity interaction. Our approach is validated by comparison to exact quantum Monte Carlo calculations. In addition, we test the method in finite-size systems using numerical results based upon the similarity renormalization group. We argue that the introduced approach provides a simple analytical tool for studies of strongly interacting impurity problems in one dimension.

We consider the problem of certifying binary observables based on a Bell inequality violation alone, a task known as self-testing of measurements. We introduce a family of commutation-based measures, which encode all the distinct arrangements of two projective observables on a qubit. These quantities by construction take into account the usual limitations of self-testing and since they are ``weighted'' by the (reduced) state, they automatically deal with rank-deficient reduced density matrices. We show that these measures can be estimated from the observed Bell violation in several scenarios and the proofs rely only on standard linear algebra. The trade-offs turn out to be tight, and in particular, they give nontrivial statements for arbitrarily small violations. On the other extreme, observing the maximal violation allows us to deduce precisely the form of the observables, which immediately leads to a complete rigidity statement. In particular, we show that for all $n\ensuremath{\ge}3$ the $n$-partite Mermin-Ardehali-Belinskii-Klyshko inequality self-tests the $n$-partite…

We predict the existence of interaction-driven edge states of bound two-photon quasiparticles in a dimer periodic array of nonlinear optical cavities. The energy spectrum of photon pairs is dramatically richer than in the noninteracting case or in a simple lattice, featuring collapse and revival of multiple edge and bulk modes as well as edge states in continuum. We link the edge-state existence to the two-photon quantum walk graph connectivity. Our results offer a route to control quantum entanglement and provide insights into the physics of many-body topological states.

The Perdew-Zunger self-interaction correction cures many common problems associated with semilocal density functionals, but suffers from a size-extensivity problem when Kohn-Sham orbitals are used in the correction. Fermi-L\"owdin-orbital self-interaction correction (FLOSIC) solves the size-extensivity problem, allowing its use in periodic systems and resulting in better accuracy in finite systems. Although the previously published FLOSIC algorithm Pederson et al., J. Chem. Phys. 140, 121103 (2014). appears to work well in many cases, it is not fully self-consistent. This would be particularly problematic for systems where the occupied manifold is strongly changed by the correction. In this paper, we demonstrate a different algorithm for FLOSIC to achieve full self-consistency with only marginal increase of computational cost. The resulting total energies are found to be lower than previously reported non-self-consistent results.

Through analyzing the effective dynamics of two Rydberg atoms under the dispersive coupling process, we give a method to modify the traditional antiblockade regime with simultaneous driving without adding any extra controls and resources. The modified regime can be used to construct controlled-PHASE and controlled-NOT gates in one step without manipulating the shape and amplitude, and tailoring sequences of the driving pulses. For the controlled-PHASE gate, only one pumping process from the ground state to the Rydberg state of each atom is required thus the resource is minimal. And the atomic addressability is not necessary. The scheme can be improved a lot after adding single-qubit operations since arbitrary phases can be achieved accurately with a short period of evolution time. For one-step construction of controlled-NOT gate, two schemes with high fidelities are given and discussed. Besides, the modified regime can also be used to improve the performance of the dissipation-based quantum entanglement preparation scheme. The optimal value of the modified condition for entanglement…

We propose to simulate a Dirac field near an event horizon using ultracold atoms in an optical lattice. Such a quantum simulator allows for the observation of the celebrated Unruh effect. Our proposal involves three stages: (1) preparation of the ground state of a massless two-dimensional Dirac field in Minkowski space-time; (2) quench of the optical lattice setup to simulate how an accelerated observer would view that state; (3) measurement of the local quantum fluctuation spectra by one-particle excitation spectroscopy in order to simulate a De Witt detector. According to Unruh's prediction, fluctuations measured in such a way must be thermal. Moreover, following Takagi's inversion theorem, they will obey the Bose-Einstein distribution, which will smoothly transform into the Fermi-Dirac as one of the dimensions of the lattice is reduced.

We investigate the maximum rates for transmitting quantum information, distilling entanglement, and distributing secret keys between a sender and a receiver in a multipoint communication scenario, with the assistance of unlimited two-way classical communication involving all parties. First we consider the case where a sender communicates with an arbitrary number of receivers, a so-called quantum broadcast channel. Here we also provide a simple analysis in the bosonic setting where we consider quantum broadcasting through a sequence of beamsplitters. Then, we consider the opposite case where an arbitrary number of senders communicate with a single receiver, a so-called quantum multiple-access channel. Finally, we study the general case of all-in-all quantum communication where an arbitrary number of senders communicate with an arbitrary number of receivers. Since our bounds are formulated for quantum systems of arbitrary dimension, they can be applied to many different physical scenarios involving multipoint quantum communication.

The standard approach to fault-tolerant quantum computation is to store information in a quantum error correction code, such as the surface code, and process information using a strategy that can be summarized as distill then synthesize. In the distill step, one performs several rounds of distillation to create high-fidelity logical qubits in a magic state. Each such magic state provides one good $T$ gate. In the synthesize step, one seeks the optimal decomposition of an algorithm into a sequence of many $T$ gates interleaved with Clifford gates. This gate-synthesis problem is well understood for multiqubit gates that do not use any Hadamards. We present an in-depth analysis of a unified framework that realizes one round of distillation and multiqubit gate synthesis in a single step. We call these synthillation protocols, and show they lead to a large reduction in resource overheads. This is because synthillation can implement a general class of circuits using the same number of $T$ states as gate synthesis, yet with the benefit of quadratic error suppression. This general class…

A current bottleneck for quantum computation is the realization of high-fidelity two-qubit quantum operations between two or more quantum bits in arrays of coupled qubits. Gates based on parametrically driven tunable couplers offer a convenient method to entangle multiple qubits by selectively activating different interaction terms in the effective Hamiltonian. Here, we theoretically and experimentally study a superconducting qubit setup with two transmon qubits connected via a capacitively coupled tunable bus. We develop a time-dependent Schrieffer-Wolff transformation and derive analytic expressions for exchange-interaction gates swapping excitations between the qubits (iswap) and for two-photon gates creating and annihilating simultaneous two-qubit excitations (bswap). We find that the bswap gate is generally slower than the more commonly used iswap gate, but features favorable scalability properties with less severe frequency-crowding effects, which typically degrade the fidelity in multiqubit setups. Our theoretical results are backed by experimental measurements as well as…

Free-space optical communication links are promising channels for establishing secure quantum communication. Here we study the transmission of nonclassical light through a turbulent atmospheric link under diverse weather conditions, including rain or haze. To include these effects, the theory of light transmission through atmospheric links in the elliptic-beam approximation presented by Vasylyev et al. [D. Vasylyev et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 090501 (2016)] is further generalized. It is demonstrated, with good agreement between theory and experiment, that low-intensity rain merely contributes additional deterministic losses, whereas haze also introduces additional beam deformations of the transmitted light. Based on these results, we study theoretically the transmission of quadrature squeezing and Gaussian entanglement under these weather conditions.

Dynamically varying system parameters along a path enclosing an exceptional point is known to lead to chiral mode conversion. But is it necessary to include this non-Hermitian degeneracy inside the contour for this process to take place? We show that a sufficiently slow variation of parameters, even away from the system's exceptional point, can also lead to a robust asymmetric state exchange. To study this process, we consider a prototypical two-level non-Hermitian Hamiltonian with a constant coupling between elements. Closed-form solutions are obtained when the amplification or attenuation coefficients in this arrangement are varied in conjunction with the resonance detuning along a circular contour. Using asymptotic expansions, this input-independent mode conversion is theoretically proven to take place irrespective of whether the exceptional point is enclosed upon encirclement. Our results significantly broaden the range of parameter space required for the experimental realization of such chiral mode conversion processes.

We investigate the time- and energy-minimum optimal solutions for the robust control of two-level quantum systems against offset or control-field uncertainties. Using the Pontryagin maximum principle, we derive the global optimal pulses for the first robustness orders. We show that the dimension of the control landscape is lower than or equal to $2N$ for a field robust to the $N\mathrm{th}$ order, which leads to an estimate of its complexity.

We propose to utilize symmetry-protected zero modes of a photonic lattice to realize a single-mode, fixed-frequency, and spatially tunable laser. These properties are the consequence of the underlying non-Hermitian particle-hole symmetry, with which the energy spectrum satisfies ${\ensuremath{\varepsilon}}_{m}=\ensuremath{-}{\ensuremath{\varepsilon}}_{n}^{*}$. Unlike in the Hermitian case, the symmetric phase of particle-hole symmetry is no longer restricted to $\ensuremath{\varepsilon}=0$ but extends along the imaginary-$\ensuremath{\varepsilon}$ axis, which is set by the single-cavity frequency and symmetry-protected against position and coupling disorder of the photonic lattice. By selectively pumping different cavities in the photonic lattice, we control the spontaneous symmetry restoration process, which provides a convenient method to tune the spatial profile of the laser without changing its frequency.

We demonstrate a spin-based, all-dielectric electrometer based on an ensemble of nitrogen-vacancy (${\mathrm{NV}}^{\ensuremath{-}}$) defects in diamond. An applied electric field causes energy-level shifts symmetrically away from the ${\mathrm{NV}}^{\ensuremath{-}}$'s degenerate triplet states via the Stark effect; this symmetry provides immunity to temperature fluctuations allowing for shot-noise-limited detection. Using an ensemble of ${\mathrm{NV}}^{\ensuremath{-}}\mathrm{s}$, we demonstrate shot-noise-limited sensitivities approaching 1 (V/cm)/$\sqrt{\text{Hz}}$ under ambient conditions, at low frequencies ($<10$ Hz), and over a large dynamic range (20 dB). A theoretical model for the ensemble of ${\mathrm{NV}}^{\ensuremath{-}}\mathrm{s}$ fits well with measurements of the ground-state electric susceptibility parameter $\ensuremath{\langle}{k}_{\ensuremath{\perp}}\ensuremath{\rangle}$. Implications of spin-based, dielectric sensors for micron-scale electric-field sensing are discussed.

A designed concatenation of error correction protocols can yield an architecture for continuous-variable quantum repeaters. The idea relies on combining teleportation and entanglement distillation through noiseless linear amplification.

We theoretically study a strongly driven optomechanical system which consists of a passive optical cavity and an active mechanical resonator. When the optomechanical coupling strength is varied, phase transitions, which are similar to those observed in $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric systems, are observed. We show that the optical transmission can be controlled by changing the gain of the mechanical resonator and loss of the optical cavity mode. Especially, we find that (i) for balanced gain and loss, optical amplification and absorption can be tuned by changing the optomechanical coupling strength through a control field; (ii) for unbalanced gain and loss, even with a tiny mechanical gain, both optomechanically induced transparency and anomalous dispersion can be observed around a critical point, which exhibits an ultralong group delay. The time delay $\ensuremath{\tau}$ can be optimized by regulating the optomechanical coupling strength through the control field, and it can be improved up to several orders of magnitude…

We explore the simplification of widely used meta-generalized-gradient approximation (mGGA) exchange-correlation functionals to the Laplacian level of refinement by use of approximate kinetic-energy density functionals (KEDFs). Such deorbitalization is motivated by the prospect of reducing computational cost while recovering a strictly Kohn-Sham local potential framework (rather than the usual generalized Kohn-Sham treatment of mGGAs). A KEDF that has been rather successful in solid simulations proves to be inadequate for deorbitalization, but we produce other forms which, with parametrization to Kohn-Sham results (not experimental data) on a small training set, yield rather good results on standard molecular test sets when used to deorbitalize the meta-GGA made very simple, Tao-Perdew-Staroverov-Scuseria, and strongly constrained and appropriately normed functionals. We also study the difference between high-fidelity and best-performing deorbitalizations and discuss possible implications for use in ab initio molecular dynamics simulations of complicated condensed phase systems.