Physics

General theory of wave propagation through graded interfaces between positive- and negative-refractive-index media

The introduction of metamaterials and transformation optics has brought the possibilities for manipulating electromagnetic waves to an unprecedented level, suggesting applications like super-resolution imaging, cloaking, subwavelength focusing, and field localization. The refractive index of metamat...

[Phys. Rev. A 96, 043848] Published Fri Oct 20, 2017

Categories: Journals, Physics

Manipulating counter-rotating interactions in the quantum Rabi model via modulation of the transition frequency of the two-level system

Author(s): Jin-Feng Huang, Jie-Qiao Liao, Lin Tian, and Le-Man Kuang

We propose a theoretical approach to manipulate the counter-rotating (CR) interactions in the quantum Rabi model by introducing a sinusoidal modulation to the transition frequency of the quantum two-level system. By choosing appropriate modulation frequency and amplitude, enhancement and suppression...

[Phys. Rev. A 96, 043849] Published Fri Oct 20, 2017

Categories: Journals, Physics

Focus: Probing Cell Squishiness

APS Physics - Fri, 2017-10-20 12:00

Author(s): Michael Schirber

A new atomic force microscopy technique can map the elastic properties of living cells.

[Physics 10, 117] Published Fri Oct 20, 2017

Categories: Physics

Digital quantum simulator in the presence of a bath

PRA: Quantum information - Fri, 2017-10-20 12:00

Author(s): Yi-Cong Zheng and Hui-Khoon Ng

For a digital quantum simulator (DQS) imitating a target system, we ask the following question: Under what conditions is the simulator dynamics similar to that of the target in the presence of coupling to a bath? In this paper, we derive conditions for close simulation for three different physical r...

[Phys. Rev. A 96, 042329] Published Fri Oct 20, 2017

Categories: Journals, Physics

Perfect polarization for arbitrary light beams. (arXiv:1710.06869v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2017-10-20 10:45

Polarization of light is harnessed in an abundance of classical and quantum applications. Characterizing polarization in a classical sense is done resoundingly successfully using the Stokes parameters, and numerous proposals offer new quantum counterparts of this characterization. The latter often rely on distance measures from completely polarized or unpolarized light. We here show that the accepted class of perfectly polarized quantum states of light is severely lacking in terms of both pure states and mixed states. By appealing to symmetry and geometry arguments we determine all of the states corresponding to perfect polarization, and show that the accepted class of completely polarized quantum states is only a subset of our result. We use this result to reinterpret the canonical degree of polarization, commenting on its interpretation for classical and quantum light. Our results are necessary for any further characterizations of light's polarization.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Light, matter, and quantum randomness generation: A relativistic quantum information perspective. (arXiv:1710.06875v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2017-10-20 10:45

We study how quantum randomness generation based on unbiased measurements on a hydrogen-like atom can get compromised by virtue of the unavoidable coupling of the atom with the electromagnetic field. Concretely, we show that an adversary with access to the quantum EM field, but not the atom, can perform an attack on the randomness of a set of unbiased quantum measurements. We analyze the light-atom interaction in 3+1 dimensions with no single-mode or rotating-wave approximations. In our study, we also take into account the non-pointlike nature of the atom and the exchanges of angular momentum between atom and field and compare with previous results obtained under scalar approximations. We show that preparing the atom in the ground state in the presence of no field excitations is, in general, not the safest state to generate randomness in atomic systems (such as trapped ions or optical lattices).

Categories: Journals, Physics

Tunneling induced electron transfer between separated protons. (arXiv:1710.06877v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2017-10-20 10:45

We study electron transfer between two separated nuclei using local control theory. By conditioning the algorithm in a symmetric system formed by two protons, one can favored slow transfer processes, where tunneling is the main mechanism, achieving transfer efficiencies close to unity assuming fixed nuclei. The solution can be parametrized using sequences of pump and dump pi pulses, where the pump pulse is used to excite the electron to a highly excited state where the time for tunneling to the target nuclei is on the order of femtoseconds. The time delay must be chosen to allow for full population transfer via tunneling, and the dump pulse is chosen to remove energy from the state to avoid tunneling back to the original proton. Finally, we study the effect of the nuclear kinetic energy on the transfer efficiency. Even in the absence of relative motion between the protons, the spreading of the nuclear wave function is enough to reduce the yield of electronic transfer to less than one half.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Probing Wigner Rotations for Any Group. (arXiv:1710.06883v1 [hep-th])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2017-10-20 10:45

Wigner rotations are transformations that affect spinning particles and cause the observable phenomenon of Thomas precession. Here we study these rotations for arbitrary symmetry groups with a semi-direct product structure. In particular we establish a general link between Wigner rotations and Thomas precession by relating the latter to the holonomies of a certain Berry connection on a momentum orbit. Along the way we derive a formula for infinitesimal, Lie-algebraic transformations of one-particle states.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Characterizing maximal families of mutually unbiased bases. (arXiv:1710.07046v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2017-10-20 10:45

We show that maximal families of mutually unbiased bases are characterized in all dimensions by partitioned unitary error bases, up to a choice of a family of Hadamards. Furthermore, we give a new construction of partitioned unitary error bases, and thus maximal families of mutually unbiased bases, from a finite field, which is simpler and more direct than previous proposals. We introduce new tensor diagrammatic characterizations of maximal families of mutually unbiased bases, partitioned unitary error bases, and finite fields as algebraic structures defined over Hilbert spaces.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Quantum-classical truncated Newton method for high-dimensional energy landscapes. (arXiv:1710.07063v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2017-10-20 10:45

We develop a quantum-classical hybrid algorithm for function optimization that is particularly useful in the training of neural networks since it makes use of particular aspects of high-dimensional energy landscapes. Due to a recent formulation of semi-supervised learning as an optimization problem, the algorithm can further be used to find the optimal model parameters for deep generative models. In particular, we present a truncated saddle-free Newton's method based on recent insight from optimization, analysis of deep neural networks and random matrix theory. By combining these with the specific quantum subroutines we are able to exhaust quantum computing in order to arrive at a new quantum-classical hybrid algorithm design. Our algorithm is expected to perform at least as well as existing classical algorithms while achieving a polynomial speedup. The speedup is limited by the required classical read-out. Omitting this requirement can in theory lead to an exponential speedup.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Quantifying Quantum-Mechanical Processes. (arXiv:1710.07068v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2017-10-20 10:45

The act of describing how a physical process changes a system is the basis for understanding observed phenomena. For quantum-mechanical processes in particular, the affect of processes on quantum states profoundly advances our knowledge of the natural world, from understanding counter-intuitive concepts to the development of wholly quantum-mechanical technology. Here, we show that quantum-mechanical processes can be quantified using a generic classical-process model through which any classical strategies of mimicry can be ruled out. We demonstrate the success of this formalism using fundamental processes postulated in quantum mechanics, the dynamics of open quantum systems, quantum-information processing, the fusion of entangled photon pairs, and the energy transfer in a photosynthetic pigment-protein complex. Since our framework does not depend on any specifics of the states being processed, it reveals a new class of correlations in the hierarchy between entanglement and Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering and paves the way for the elaboration of a generic method for quantifying physical processes.

Categories: Journals, Physics

The influence of the choice of post-processing method on Bell inequalities. (arXiv:1710.07082v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2017-10-20 10:45

In every experimental test of a Bell inequality, we are faced with the problem of inefficient detectors. How we treat the events when no particle was detected has a big influence on the properties of the inequality. In this work, we study this influence. We show that the choice of post-processing can change the critical detection efficiency, the equivalence between different inequalities or the applicability of the non-signaling principle. We also consider the problem of choosing the optimal post-processing strategy. We show that this is a non-trivial problem and that different strategies are optimal for different ranges of detector efficiencies.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Lindblad Formalism based on Fermion-to-Qubit mapping for Non-equilibrium Open-Quantum Systems. (arXiv:1710.07124v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2017-10-20 10:45

We present an alternative form of master equation, applicable on the analysis of non-equilibrium dynamics of fermionic open quantum systems. The formalism considers a general scenario, composed by a multipartite quantum system in contact with several reservoirs, each one with a specific chemical potential and in thermal equilibrium. With the help of Jordan-Wigner transformation, we perform a fermion-to-qubit mapping to derive a set of Lindblad superoperators that can be straightforwardly used on a wide range of physical setups.To illustrate our approach, we explore the effect of a charge sensor, acting as a probe, over the dynamics of electrons on coupled quantum molecules. The probe consists on a quantum dot attached to source and drain leads, that allows a current flow. The dynamics of populations, entanglement degree and purity show how the probe is behind the sudden deaths and rebirths of entanglement, at short times. Then, the evolution leads the system to an asymptotic state being a statistical mixture. Those are signatures that the probe induces dephasing, a process that destroys the coherence of the quantum system.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Quantum theory of structured monochromatic light. (arXiv:1710.07137v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2017-10-20 10:45

Applications that envisage utilizing the orbital angular momentum (OAM) at the single photon level assume that the OAM degrees of freedom that the photons inherit from the classical wave solutions are orthogonal. To test this critical assumption, we quantize the beam-like solutions of the vector Helmholtz equation from first principles to delineate its elementary quantum mechanical degrees of freedom. We show that although the beam-photon operators do not in general satisfy the canonical commutation relations, implying that the photon states they create are not orthogonal, the states are nevertheless bona fide eigenstates of the number and Hamiltonian operators. The explicit representation for the photon operators presented in this work forms a natural basis to study light-matter interactions and quantum information processing at the single photon level.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Non-Markovianity in a collision model with environmental block. (arXiv:1710.07142v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2017-10-20 10:45

We present an alternative collision model to simulate the dynamics of an open quantum system. In our model, the unit to represent the environment is, instead of the single particle, the block which is consisted of a number of environment particles. The introduced blocks enable us to study the effects of different strategies of system-environment interactions and states of the blocks on the non-Markovianties. We demonstrate our idea in the Gaussian channels of an all-optical system. We show that the non-Markovianity of the channel working in the strategy that the system collides with environmental particles in each block in a certain order will be affected by the size of the block and the embedded entanglement. We find that the effects of heating and squeezing the vacuum environmental state will quantitatively enhance the non-Markovianity.

Categories: Journals, Physics

A witness to quantify high-dimensional entanglement. (arXiv:1710.07146v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2017-10-20 10:45

Exploiting photonic high-dimensional entanglement allows one to expand the bandwidth of quantum communication and information processing protocols through increased photon information capacity. However, the characterization of entanglement in higher dimensions is experimentally challenging because the number of measurements required scales unfavourably with dimension. While bounds can be used to certify high-dimensional entanglement, they do not quantify the degree to which quantum states are entangled. Here, we propose a quantitative measure that is both an entanglement measure and a dimension witness, which we coin the P-concurrence. We derive this measure by requiring entanglement to extend to qubit subspaces that constitute the high-dimensional state. The computation of the P-concurrence is not contingent on reconstructing the full density matrix, and requires less measurements compared to standard quantum state tomography by orders of magnitude. This allows for faster and more efficient characterization of high-dimensional quantum states.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Time Reversal of Arbitrary Photonic Temporal Modes via Nonlinear Optical Frequency Conversion. (arXiv:1710.07159v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2017-10-20 10:45

Single-photon wave packets can carry quantum information between nodes of a quantum network. An important general operation in photon-based quantum information systems is blind reversal of a photon's temporal wave-packet envelope, that is, the ability to reverse an envelope without knowing the temporal state of the photon. We present an all-optical means for doing so, using nonlinear-optical frequency conversion driven by a short pump pulse. This scheme allows for quantum operations such as a temporal-mode parity sorter. We also verify that the scheme works for arbitrary states (not only single-photon ones) of an unknown wave packet.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Basic mechanisms in the laser control of non-Markovian dynamics. (arXiv:1710.07188v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2017-10-20 10:45

Referring to a Fano-type model qualitative analogy we develop a comprehensive basic mechanism for the laser control of the non-Markovian bath response in strongly coupled Open Quantum Systems (OQS). A converged Hierarchy Equations Of Motion (HEOM) is worked out to numerically solve the master equation of a spin-boson Hamiltonian to reach the reduced electronic density matrix of a heterojunction in the presence of strong THz laser pulses. Robust and efficient control is achieved increasing by a factor ?2 non-Markovianity measured by the time evolution of the volume of accessible states. The consequences of such fields on the central system populations and coherence are examined, putting the emphasis on the relation between the increase of non- Markovianity and the slowing down of decoherence processes.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Topological Quantum Computation with Gapped Boundaries and Boundary Defects. (arXiv:1710.07197v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2017-10-20 10:45

We survey some recent work on topological quantum computation with gapped boundaries and boundary defects and list some open problems.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Constructions of the soluble potentials for the non-relativistic quantum system by means of the Heun functions. (arXiv:1710.07199v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2017-10-20 10:45

The Schr\"{o}dinger equation $\psi"(x)+\kappa^2 \psi(x)=0$ where $\kappa^2=k^2-V(x)$ is rewritten as a more popular form of a second order differential equation through taking a similarity transformation $\psi(z)=\phi(z)u(z)$ with $z=z(x)$. The Schr\"{o}dinger invariant $I_{S}(x)$ can be calculated directly by the Schwarzian derivative $\{z, x\}$ and the invariant $I(z)$ of the differential equation $u_{zz}+f(z)u_{z}+g(z)u=0$. We find an important relation for moving particle as $\nabla^2=-I_{S}(x)$ and thus explain the reason why the Schr\"{o}dinger invariant $I_{S}(x)$ keeps constant. As an illustration, we take the typical Heun differential equation as an object to construct a class of soluble potentials and generalize the previous results through choosing different $\rho=z'(x)$ as before. We get a more general solution $z(x)$ through integrating $(z')^2=\alpha_{1}z^2+\beta_{1}z+\gamma_{1}$ directly and it includes all possibilities for those parameters. Some particular cases are discussed in detail.

Categories: Journals, Physics