## Journals

### Photon scattering from a system of multilevel quantum emitters. I. Formalism

Author(s): Sumanta Das, Vincent E. Elfving, Florentin Reiter, and Anders S. Sørensen

We introduce a formalism to solve the problem of photon scattering from a system of multilevel quantum emitters. Our approach provides a direct solution of the scattering dynamics. As such the formalism gives the scattered fields' amplitudes in the limit of a weak incident intensity. Our formalism i...

[Phys. Rev. A 97, 043837] Published Tue Apr 17, 2018

Categories: Journals, Physics

### Photon scattering from a system of multilevel quantum emitters. II. Application to emitters coupled to a one-dimensional waveguide

Author(s): Sumanta Das, Vincent E. Elfving, Florentin Reiter, and Anders S. Sørensen

In a preceding paper we introduced a formalism to study the scattering of low-intensity fields from a system of multilevel emitters embedded in a three-dimensional (3D) dielectric medium. Here we show how this photon-scattering relation can be used to analyze the scattering of single photons and wea...

[Phys. Rev. A 97, 043838] Published Tue Apr 17, 2018

Categories: Journals, Physics

### Optical-nanofiber-based interface for single molecules

Author(s): Sarah M. Skoff, David Papencordt, Hardy Schauffert, Bernhard C. Bayer, and Arno Rauschenbeutel

Optical interfaces for quantum emitters are a prerequisite for implementing quantum networks. Here, we couple single molecules to the guided modes of an optical nanofiber. The molecules are embedded within a crystal that provides photostability and, due to the inhomogeneous broadening, a means to sp...

[Phys. Rev. A 97, 043839] Published Tue Apr 17, 2018

Categories: Journals, Physics

### Relativistic spin-orbit interactions of photons and electrons

Author(s): D. A. Smirnova, V. M. Travin, K. Y. Bliokh, and F. Nori

Laboratory optics, typically dealing with monochromatic light beams in a single reference frame, exhibits numerous spin-orbit interaction phenomena due to the coupling between the spin and orbital degrees of freedom of light. Similar phenomena appear for electrons and other spinning particles. Here ...

[Phys. Rev. A 97, 043840] Published Tue Apr 17, 2018

Categories: Journals, Physics

### Topological photonic orbital-angular-momentum switch

Author(s): Xi-Wang Luo, Chuanwei Zhang, Guang-Can Guo, and Zheng-Wei Zhou

The large number of available orbital-angular-momentum (OAM) states of photons provides a unique resource for many important applications in quantum information and optical communications. However, conventional OAM switching devices usually rely on precise parameter control and are limited by slow s...

[Phys. Rev. A 97, 043841] Published Tue Apr 17, 2018

Categories: Journals, Physics

### Continuous-variable measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution with virtual photon subtraction

PRA: Quantum information - Tue, 2018-04-17 12:00

Author(s): Yijia Zhao, Yichen Zhang, Bingjie Xu, Song Yu, and Hong Guo

The method of improving the performance of continuous-variable quantum key distribution protocols by postselection has been recently proposed and verified. In continuous-variable measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (CV-MDI QKD) protocols, the measurement results are obtained from...

[Phys. Rev. A 97, 042328] Published Tue Apr 17, 2018

Categories: Journals, Physics

### Continuous-variable measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution with photon subtraction

PRA: Quantum information - Tue, 2018-04-17 12:00

Author(s): Hong-Xin Ma, Peng Huang, Dong-Yun Bai, Shi-Yu Wang, Wan-Su Bao, and Gui-Hua Zeng

It has been found that non-Gaussian operations can be applied to increase and distill entanglement between Gaussian entangled states. We show the successful use of the non-Gaussian operation, in particular, photon subtraction operation, on the continuous-variable measurement-device-independent quant...

[Phys. Rev. A 97, 042329] Published Tue Apr 17, 2018

Categories: Journals, Physics

### Unconditional separation of finite and infinite-dimensional quantum correlations. (arXiv:1804.05116v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Tue, 2018-04-17 05:33

Determining the relationship between quantum correlation sets is a long-standing open problem. The most well-studied part of the hierarchy is captured by the chain of inclusions $\mathcal C_q \subseteq \mathcal C_{qs} \subsetneq \mathcal C_{qa} \subseteq \mathcal C_{qc}$. The separation $\mathcal C_{qs} \neq \mathcal C_{qa}$, showing that the set of quantum spatial correlations is not closed, was proven in breakthrough work by Slofstra [arXiv:1606.03140 (2016), arXiv:1703.08618 (2017)]. Resolving the question of $\mathcal C_{qa} = \mathcal C_{qc}$ would resolve the Connes Embedding Conjecture and would represent major progress in the mathematical field of operator algebras. In this work, we resolve the ambiguity in the first inclusion, showing that $\mathcal{C}_q \neq \mathcal{C}_{qs}$. We provide an explicit construction of a correlation that can be attained on a tensor product of infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces but not finite-dimensional ones. This property is also conjectured to be possessed by any correlation which maximally violates the $I_{3322}$ inequality.

Categories: Journals, Physics

### Observation of anomalous {\pi} modes in photonic Floquet engineering. (arXiv:1804.05134v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Tue, 2018-04-17 05:33

Periodically-driven topological phases have attracted considerable attentions in condensed matters, but experimental demonstration of such driven quantum systems with anomalous topological phases remains a great challenge. Here, a photonic Floquet simulator (PFS) was designed and systematically investigated to study engineered topological phases in a periodically-driven Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model. The PFS was composed of an ultra-thin coupled microwave waveguide array with periodically-bending profiles, and was thoroughly tested the quantum transition from the adiabatic limit (slow-driving) to the high-frequency limit (fast-driving). Surprisingly, between the two opposite limits, a robust periodically-driven end state, propagating along the boundary but periodically emerging into/from the bulk of the array, was experimentally observed for the first time. Theoretically, we demonstrated that this driven end state is the topological protected anomalous {\pi}-mode, and appears only at certain driving frequencies and Floquet gauges (i.e., input positions). Our experimental realization of 'topological Floquet engineering' will prompt great interest in periodically-driven topological phases in the fields of photonics, condensed matters and ultra-cold atoms.

Categories: Journals, Physics

### Is coherence catalytic?. (arXiv:1804.05154v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Tue, 2018-04-17 05:33

Quantum coherence, the ability to control the phases in superposition states is a resource, and it is of crucial importance, therefore, to understand how it is consumed in use. It has been suggested that catalytic coherence is possible, that is repeated use of the coherence without degradation or reduction in performance. The claim has particular relevance for quantum thermodynamics because, were it true, it would allow free energy that is locked in coherence to be extracted $\textit{indefinitely}$. We address this issue directly with a careful analysis of the proposal by $\AA{}$berg. We find that coherence $\textit{cannot}$ be used catalytically, or even repeatedly without limit.

Categories: Journals, Physics

### Quantum temporal steering in a dephasing channel with quantum criticality. (arXiv:1804.05171v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Tue, 2018-04-17 05:33

We investigate the quantum temporal steering (TS), i.e., a temporal analogue of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering, in a dephasing channel which is modeled by a central spin half surrounded by a spin-1/2 \textit{XY} chain where quantum phase transition happens. The TS parameter $S_{\text{TS}}$ and the TS weight $W_{\text{TS}}$ are employed to characterize the TS dynamics. We analytically obtain the dependence of $S_{\text{TS}}$ on the decoherence factor. The numerical results show an obvious suppression of $S_{\text{TS}}$ and $W_{\text{TS}}$ when the \textit{XY} chain approaches to the critical point. In view of the significance of quantum channel, we develop a new concept, \textit{TS weight power}, in order to quantify the capacity of the quantum channel in dominating TS behavior. This new quantity enables us to indicate the quantum criticality of the environment by the quantum correlation of TS in the coupled system.

Categories: Journals, Physics

### The quantum theory of time, the block universe and human experience. (arXiv:1804.05177v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Tue, 2018-04-17 05:33

Advances in our understanding of the physical universe have impacted dramatically on how we view ourselves. Right at the core of all modern thinking about the universe is the assumption that dynamics is an elemental feature that exists without question. However, ongoing research into the quantum nature of time is challenging this view: my recently-introduced quantum theory of time suggests that dynamics may be a phenomenological consequence of a fundamental violation of time reversal symmetry. I show here that there is consistency between the new theory and the block universe view. I also discuss the new theory in relation to the human experience of existing in the present moment, able to reflect on the past and contemplate a future that is yet to happen.

Categories: Journals, Physics

### Adaptive quantum tomography of high-dimensional bipartite systems. (arXiv:1804.05226v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Tue, 2018-04-17 05:33

Adaptive measurements have recently been shown to significantly improve the performance of quantum state and process tomography. However, the existing methods either cannot be straightforwardly applied to high-dimensional systems or are prohibitively computationally expensive. Here we propose and experimentally implement a novel tomographic protocol specially designed for the reconstruction of high-dimensional quantum states. The protocol shows qualitative improvement in infidelity scaling with the number of measurements and is fast enough to allow for complete state tomography of states with dimensionality up to 36.

Categories: Journals, Physics

### Optimizing a Polynomial Function on a Quantum Simulator. (arXiv:1804.05231v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Tue, 2018-04-17 05:33

Gradient descent method, as one of the major methods in numerical optimization, is the key ingredient in many machine learning algorithms. As one of the most fundamental way to solve the optimization problems, it promises the function value to move along the direction of steepest descent. For the vast resource consumption when dealing with high-dimensional problems, a quantum version of this iterative optimization algorithm has been proposed recently[arXiv:1612.01789]. Here, we develop this protocol and implement it on a quantum simulator with limited resource. Moreover, a prototypical experiment was shown with a 4-qubit Nuclear Magnetic Resonance quantum processor, demonstrating a optimization process of polynomial function iteratively. In each iteration, we achieved an average fidelity of 94\% compared with theoretical calculation via full-state tomography. In particular, the iterative point gradually converged to the local minimum. We apply our method to multidimensional scaling problem, further showing the potentially capability to yields an exponentially improvement compared with classical counterparts. With the onrushing tendency of quantum information, our work could provide a subroutine for the application of future practical quantum computers.

Categories: Journals, Physics

### Summoning, No-Signaling and Relativistic Bit Commitments. (arXiv:1804.05246v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Tue, 2018-04-17 05:33

Summoning is a task between two parties, Alice and Bob, with distributed networks of agents in space-time. Bob gives Alice a random quantum state, known to him but not her, at some point. She is required to return the state at some later point, belonging to a subset defined by communications received from Bob at other points. Many results about summoning, including the impossibility of unrestricted summoning tasks and the necessary conditions for specific types of summoning tasks to be possible, follow directly from the quantum no-cloning theorem and the relativistic no-superluminal-signalling principle. The impossibility of cloning devices can be derived from the impossibility of superluminal signalling and the projection postulate, together with assumptions about the devices' location-independent functioning. In this qualified sense, known summoning results follow from the causal structure of space-time and the properties of quantum measurements. Bounds on the fidelity of approximate cloning can be similarly derived. Bit commitment protocols and other cryptographic protocols based on the no-summoning theorem can thus be proven secure against some classes of post-quantum but non-signalling adversaries.

Categories: Journals, Physics

### Kicked Hall Systems: Quantum-Dynamical and Spectral Manifestations of Generic Superweak Chaos. (arXiv:1804.05280v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Tue, 2018-04-17 05:33

Classical "kicked Hall systems" (KHSs), i.e., periodically kicked charges in the presence of uniform magnetic and electric fields that are perpendicular to each other and to the kicking direction, have been introduced and studied recently. It was shown that KHSs exhibit, under generic conditions, the phenomenon of "superweak chaos" (SWC), i.e., for small kick strength $\kappa$ a KHS behaves as if this strength were effectively $\kappa^2$ rather than $\kappa$. Here we investigate quantum-dynamical and spectral manifestations of this generic SWC. We first derive general expressions for quantum effective Hamiltonians for the KHSs. We then show that the phenomenon of quantum antiresonance (QAR), i.e., "frozen" quantum dynamics with flat quasienergy (QE) bands, takes place for integer values of a scaled Planck constant $\hbar_{\rm s}$ and under the same generic conditions for SWC. This appears to be the most generic occurrence of QAR in quantum systems. The vicinity of QAR is shown to correspond semiclassically to SWC. A global spectral manifestation of SWC is the fact that a scaled QE spectrum as function of $\hbar_{\rm s}$, at fixed small value of $\kappa /\hbar_{\rm s}$, features an approximately "doubled" structure. In the case of standard (cosine) potentials, this structure is that of a universal (parameters-independent) double Hofstadter butterfly. Also, for standard potentials and for small $\hbar_{\rm s}$ (semiclassical regime), the evolution of the kinetic-energy expectation value exhibits a relatively slow quantum-diffusive behavior having universal features. These approximate spectral and quantum-dynamical universalities agree with predictions from the effective Hamiltonian.

Categories: Journals, Physics

### Modified Unruh effect from Generalized Uncertainty Principle. (arXiv:1804.05282v1 [hep-th])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Tue, 2018-04-17 05:33

We consider a generalized uncertainty principle (GUP) corresponding to a deformation of the fundamental commutator obtained by adding a term quadratic in the momentum. From this GUP, we compute corrections to the Unruh effect and related Unruh temperature, by first following a heuristic derivation, and then a more standard field theoretic calculation. In the limit of small deformations, we recover the thermal character of the Unruh radiation. Corrections to the temperature at first order in the deforming parameter are compared for the two approaches, and found to be in agreement as for the dependence on the cubic power of the acceleration of the reference frame. The dependence of the shifted temperature on the frequency is also pointed out and discussed.

Categories: Journals, Physics

### Topological valleytronics: Brought to light. (arXiv:1804.05323v1 [cond-mat.mes-hall])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Tue, 2018-04-17 05:33

The topological valley Hall effect was predicted as a consequence of the bulk topology of electronic systems. Now it has been observed in photonic crystals, showing that both topology and valley are innate to classical as well as quantum systems.

The discovery of counterflow in opposite valleys not only demonstrates that the valley can be a novel carrier of information and energy --- particularly valuable for systems without charge and spin --- but also exemplifies that symmetry-protected band topology can be universal to both quantum and classical systems.

Categories: Journals, Physics

### ZX-Rules for 2-qubit Clifford+T Quantum Circuits. (arXiv:1804.05356v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Tue, 2018-04-17 05:33

ZX-calculus is a high-level graphical formalism for qubit computation. In this paper we give the ZX-rules that enable one to derive all equations between 2-qubit Clifford+T quantum circuits. Our rule set is only a small extension of the rules of stabilizer ZX-calculus, and substantially less than those needed for the recently achieved universal completeness. One of our rules is new, and we expect it to also have other utilities.

These ZX-rules are much simpler than the complete of set Clifford+T circuit equations due to Selinger and Bian, which indicates that ZX-calculus provides a more convenient arena for quantum circuit rewriting than restricting oneself to circuit equations. The reason for this is that ZX-calculus is not constrained by a fixed unitary gate set for performing intermediate computations.

Categories: Journals, Physics

### The Geometric Speed Limit of Accessible Quantum State Preparation. (arXiv:1804.05399v1 [quant-ph])

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Tue, 2018-04-17 05:33

We analyze state preparation within a restricted space of local control parameters between adiabatically connected states of control Hamiltonians. We formulate a conjecture that the time integral of energy fluctuations over the protocol duration is bounded from below by the geodesic length set by the quantum geometric tensor. The conjecture implies a geometric lower bound for the quantum speed limit (QSL). We prove the conjecture for arbitrary sufficiently slow protocols using adiabatic perturbation theory, and show that the bound is saturated by geodesic protocols, which keep the energy variance constant along the trajectory. Our conjecture implies that any optimal unit-fidelity protocol, even those which drive the system far from equilibrium, are fundamentally constrained by the quantum geometry of adiabatic evolution. When the control space includes all possible couplings, spanning the full Hilbert space, we recover the well-known Mandelstam-Tamm bound. However, using only accessible local controls to anneal in complex models such as glasses, or target individual excited states in quantum chaotic systems, the geometric bound for the QSL can be exponentially large in the system size due to a diverging geodesic length. We validate our conjecture both analytically by constructing counter-diabatic and fast-forward protocols for a three-level system, and numerically in non-integrable spin chains using optimal control.

Categories: Journals, Physics