QUROPE Quantum Information Processing and Communication in Europe

Integrated photonics has enabled countless technologies in telecommunications, spectroscopy, metrology, quantum optics, and quantum information processing. Using highly confined guided optical modes is the key that has made integrated circuits possible and has lead to scaling of complex designs, benefiting from their small footprint. At the same time, the field of quantum acoustics has recently gained significant attention due to its various potential advantages over its photonic counterparts, including smaller mode volume, lower energy, and orders of magnitude slower propagation speeds, as well as the potential for interconnecting distinct quantum systems. Developing analogous integrated phononic technology is critical for realizing the full potential of phonons and could lead to groundbreaking new applications, such as scalable quantum computing and hybrid quantum devices. In this work, we demonstrate for the first time a 4-port directional coupler for quantum mechanical excitations - a crucial component for integrated phononic circuits. Adjusting the length of the coupling region allows to realize phononic beam splitters with varying splitting ratios. By sending a single-phonon Fock state onto one of these phononic splitters, we demonstrate the capability of using the directional coupler directly in the quantum regime. Our work provides an essential step towards an integrated phononic platform for both classical and quantum technologies applications.

In this work, we develop a stochastic matrix product state (stoMPS) approach that combines the MPS technique and Monte Carlo samplings and can be applied to simulate quantum lattice models down to low temperature. In particular, we exploit a procedure to unbiasedly sample the local tensors in the matrix product states, which has one physical index of dimension $d$ and two geometric indices of dimension $D$, and find the results can be continuously improved by enlarging $D$. We benchmark the methods on small system sizes and then compare the results to those obtained with minimally entangled typical thermal states, finding that stoMPS has overall better performance with finite $D$. We further exploit the MPS sampling to simulate long spin chains, as well as the triangular and square lattices with cylinder circumference $W$ up to 4. Our results showcase the accuracy and effectiveness of stochastic tensor networks in finite-temperature simulations.

Bound states in the continuum (BICs) are quantum states with normalizable wave functions and energies that lie within the continuous spectrum for which extended or dispersive states are also available. These special states, which have shown great applicability in photonic systems for devices such as lasers and sensors, are also predicted to exist in electronic low-dimensional solid-state systems. The non-trivial topology of materials is within the known mechanisms that prevent the bound states to couple with the extended states. In this work we search for topologically protected BICs in a quantum Hall bar with an anti-dot formed by a pore far from the borders of the bar. The bound state energies and wavefunctions are calculated by means of the Recursive S-Matrix method. The resulting bound state energies coexist with extended states and exhibit a pattern complimentary to the Hofstadter butterfly. A symmetry-breaking diagonal disorder was introduced, showing that the BICs with energies far from the Landau levels remain robust. Moreover, the energy difference between consecutive BICs multiplied by the anti-dot perimeter follows the same curve despite disorder. Finally, a BIC-mediated current switching effect was found in a multi-terminal setup, which might permit their experimental detection.

We consider multileg ladders of Rydberg atoms which have been proposed as quantum simulators for the compact Abelian Higgs model (CAHM) in 1+1 dimensions [Y. Meurice, Phys. Rev. D 104, 094513 (2021)] and modified versions of theses simulators such as triangular prisms. Starting with the physical Hamiltonian for the analog simulator, we construct translation-invariant effective Hamiltonians by integrating over the simulator high-energy states produced by the blockade mechanism when some of the atoms are sufficiently close to each others. Remarkably, for all the simulators considered, the effective Hamiltonians have the three types of terms present for the CAHM (Electric field, matter charge and currents energies) but, in addition, terms quartic in the electric field. For the two leg ladder, these additional terms cannot be removed by fine-tuning the adjustable parameters of currently available devices. For positive detuning, the new terms create highly-degenerate vacua resulting in a very interesting phase diagram. Using numerical methods, we demonstrate the close correspondence between the physical simulator and the effective description for the ground state energy and real-time evolution. We discuss the phase diagram at fixed geometry with variable Rabi frequency and detuning and show that a rich variety of phases can be reached with potential interest in the context of QCD at finite density. We illustrate how the effective description can be used to design simulators with desirable properties from the point of view of constructing hybrid event generators.

We investigate the impact of measuring one subsystem on the holographic complexity of another. While a naive expectation might suggest a reduction in complexity due to the collapse of the state to a trivial product state during quantum measurements, our findings reveal a counterintuitive result: in numerous scenarios, measurements on one subsystem can amplify the complexity of another. We first present a counting argument elucidating this complexity transition in random states. Then, employing the subregion "complexity=volume" (CV) proposal, we identify a complexity phase transition induced by projection measurements in various holographic CFT setups, including CFT vacuum states, thermofield double states, and the joint system of a black hole coupled to a bath. According to the AdS/BCFT correspondence, the post-measurement dual geometry involves an end-of-the-world brane created by the projection measurement. The complexity phase transition corresponds to the transition of the entanglement wedge to the one connected to the brane. In the context of the thermofield double setup, complete projection on one side can transform the other side into a boundary state black hole with higher complexity or a pure AdS with lower complexity. In the joint system of a black hole coupled to a nongraviting bath, where (a part of) the radiation is measured, the BCFT features two boundaries: one for the black hole and the other for the measurement. We construct the bulk dual involving intersecting or non-intersecting branes, and investigate the complexity transition induced by the projection measurement. Notably, for a subsystem that contains the black hole brane, its RT surface may undergo a transition, giving rise to a complexity jump.

Entanglement between massive particles is a purely quantum mechanical phenomenon with no counterpart in classical physics. Although polarized photons are suitable for applications of quantum entanglement over large distances, fundamental studies of entanglement in massive objects are often conducted for confined quantum systems, such as superconductors, quantum dots, and trapped ions. Here, we generate entanglement in a novel bipartite quantum system containing two massive objects: a photoelectron, which is a free particle propagating rapidly in space, and a light-dressed atomic ion with tunable coupled energy levels. Because of the entanglement, the measured photoelectron spectra reveal information about the coherent dynamics in the residual ion interacting with femtosecond extreme ultraviolet pulses delivered by a seeded free-electron laser. The observations are supported by a quantum optics based analytical model, which was further validated by numerical simulations based on the time-dependent Dirac equation. The degree of entanglement between the two objects is interpreted in terms of the entanglement entropy of the reduced system, as a function of the interaction time between the laser pulse and the dressed ion. Our results uncover the potential for using short-wavelength coherent light pulses from free-electron lasers to generate entangled photoelectron and ion systems for studying `spooky' action at a distance across ultrafast timescales.

Distributed quantum computing, particularly distributed quantum machine learning, has gained substantial prominence for its capacity to harness the collective power of distributed quantum resources, transcending the limitations of individual quantum nodes. Meanwhile, the critical concern of privacy within distributed computing protocols remains a significant challenge, particularly in standard classical federated learning (FL) scenarios where data of participating clients is susceptible to leakage via gradient inversion attacks by the server. This paper presents innovative quantum protocols with quantum communication designed to address the FL problem, strengthen privacy measures, and optimize communication efficiency. In contrast to previous works that leverage expressive variational quantum circuits or differential privacy techniques, we consider gradient information concealment using quantum states and propose two distinct FL protocols, one based on private inner-product estimation and the other on incremental learning. These protocols offer substantial advancements in privacy preservation with low communication resources, forging a path toward efficient quantum communication-assisted FL protocols and contributing to the development of secure distributed quantum machine learning, thus addressing critical privacy concerns in the quantum computing era.

Electrons in materials containing heavy elements are fundamentally relativistic and should in principle be described using the Dirac equation. However, the current standard for treatment of electrons in such materials involves density functional theory methods originally formulated from the Schr\"{o}dinger equation. While some extensions of the Schr\"{o}dinger-based formulation have been explored, such as the scalar relativistic approximation with or without spin-orbit coupling, these solutions do not provide a way to fully account for all relativistic effects of electrons, and the language used to describe such solutions are still based in the language of the Schr\"{o}dinger equation. In this article, we provide a different method for translating between the Dirac and Schr\"{o}dinger viewpoints in the context of a Coulomb potential. By retaining the Dirac four-vector notation and terminology in taking the non-relativistic limit, we see a much deeper connection between the Dirac and Schr\"{o}dinger equation solutions that allow us to more directly compare the effects of relativity in the angular and radial functions. Through this viewpoint, we introduce the concepts of densitals and Dirac spherical harmonics that allow us to translate more easily between the Dirac and Schr\"{o}dinger solutions. These concepts allow us to establish a useful language for discussing relativistic effects in materials containing elements throughout the full periodic table and thereby enable a more fundamental understanding of the effects of relativity on electronic structure.

We introduce a reversible theory of exact entanglement manipulation by establishing a necessary and sufficient condition for state transfer under trace-preserving transformations that completely preserve the positivity of partial transpose (PPT). Under these free transformations, we show that logarithmic negativity emerges as the pivotal entanglement measure for determining entangled states' transformations, analogous to the role of entropy in the second law of thermodynamics. Previous results have proven that entanglement is irreversible under quantum operations that completely preserve PPT and leave open the question of reversibility for quantum operations that do not generate entanglement asymptotically. However, we find that going beyond the complete positivity constraint imposed by standard quantum mechanics enables a reversible theory of exact entanglement manipulation, which may suggest a potential incompatibility between the reversibility of entanglement and the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics.

The search for strategies to harness the temperature of quantum systems is one of the main goals in quantum thermodynamics. Here we study the dynamics of a system made of a pair of quantum harmonic oscillators, represented by single-mode cavity fields, interacting with a thermally excited beam of phaseonium atoms, which act as ancillas. The two cavities are arranged in a cascade configuration, so that the second cavity interacts with phaseonium atoms only after their interaction with the first one. We provide exact closed dynamics of the first cavity for arbitrarily long interaction times. We highlight the role played by the characteristic coherence phase of phaseonium atoms in determining the steady states of the cavity fields as well as that of the ancillas. Also, we show how the second cavity follows a non-Markovian evolution due to interactions with the "used" ancillary atoms, that enables information exchange with the first cavity. Adjusting the parameters of the phaseonium atoms, we can determine the final stable temperature reached by the cavities. In this way, the cavities can be heated up as well as cooled down. These results provide useful insights towards the use of different types of ancillas for thermodynamic cycles in cavity QED scenarios.

The Pancharatnam phase is a generalization of the Berry phase that applies to discrete sequences of quantum states. Here, we show that the Pancharatnam phase is a natural invariant for a wide class of quantum many-body dynamics involving measurements. We specifically investigate how a non-trivial Pancharatnam phase arises in the trajectories of Floquet quantum error-correcting codes and show that this phase can be extracted in a "computationally-assisted" interferometry protocol, involving additional post-processing based on the measurement record that defines a given quantum many-body trajectory. This Pancharatnam phase can also be directly related to the Berry phase accrued by continuous unitary evolution within a gapped phase. For the $\mathbb Z_2$ Floquet code of Hastings and Haah, we show that the associated family of unitary evolutions is the radical chiral Floquet phase. We demonstrate this correspondence explicitly by studying an exactly-solvable model of interacting spins.

We propose an efficient yet simple protocol to generate arbitrary symmetric entangled states with only global single-qubit rotations in a teared Hilbert space. The system is based on spin-1/2 qubits in a resonator such as atoms in an optical cavity or superconducting qubits coupled to a metal microwave resonator. By sending light or microwave into the resonator, it induces AC Stark shifts on particular angular-momentum eigenstates (Dicke states) of qubits. Then we are able to generate barriers that hinder transitions between adjacent Dicke states and tear the original Hilbert space into pieces. Therefore, a simple global single-qubit rotation becomes highly non-trivial, and thus generates entanglement among the many-body system. By optimal control of energy shifts on Dicke states, we are able to generate arbitrary symmetric entangled states. We also exemplify that we can create varieties of useful states with near-unity fidelities in only one or very few steps, including W states, spin-squeezed states (SSS), and Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states. Particularly, the SSS can be created by only one step with a squeezing parameter $\xi_R^2\sim1/N^{0.843}$ approaching the Heisenberg limit (HL). Our finding establishes a way for universal entanglement generations with only single-qubit drivings where all the multiple-qubit controls are integrated into simply switching on/off microwave. It has direct applications in the variational quantum optimizer which is available with existing technology.

We nearly triple the number of logical qubits per physical qubit of surface codes in the teraquop regime by concatenating them into high-density parity check codes. These "yoked surface codes" are arrayed in a rectangular grid, with parity checks (yokes) measured along each row, and optionally along each column, using lattice surgery. Our construction assumes no additional connectivity beyond a nearest neighbor square qubit grid operating at a physical error rate of $10^{-3}$.

We introduce a family of local models of dynamics based on ``word problems'' from computer science and group theory, for which we can place rigorous lower bounds on relaxation timescales. These models can be regarded either as random circuit or local Hamiltonian dynamics, and include many familiar examples of constrained dynamics as special cases. The configuration space of these models splits into dynamically disconnected sectors, and for initial states to relax, they must ``work out'' the other states in the sector to which they belong. When this problem has a high time complexity, relaxation is slow. In some of the cases we study, this problem also has high space complexity. When the space complexity is larger than the system size, an unconventional type of jamming transition can occur, whereby a system of a fixed size is not ergodic, but can be made ergodic by appending a large reservoir of sites in a trivial product state. This manifests itself in a new type of Hilbert space fragmentation that we call fragile fragmentation. We present explicit examples where slow relaxation and jamming strongly modify the hydrodynamics of conserved densities. In one example, density modulations of wavevector $q$ exhibit almost no relaxation until times $O(\exp(1/q))$, at which point they abruptly collapse. We also comment on extensions of our results to higher dimensions.

We present a Wave Operator Minimization (WOM) method for calculating the Fermi-Dirac density matrix for electronic structure problems at finite temperature while preserving physicality by construction using the wave operator, i.e., the square root of the density matrix. WOM models cooling a state initially at infinite temperature down to the desired finite temperature. We consider both the grand canonical (constant chemical potential) and canonical (constant number of electrons) ensembles. Additionally, we show that the number of steps required for convergence is independent of the number of atoms in the system. We hope that the discussion and results presented in this article reinvigorates interest in density matrix minimization methods.

Extended quantum networks are based on quantum repeaters that often rely on the distribution of entanglement in an efficient and heralded fashion over multiple network nodes. Many repeater architectures require multiplexed sources of entangled photon pairs, multiplexed quantum memories, and photon detection that distinguishes between the multiplexed modes. Here we demonstrate the concurrent employment of (1) spectrally multiplexed cavity-enhanced spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a nonlinear crystal; (2) a virtually-imaged phased array that enables mapping of spectral modes onto distinct spatial modes for frequency-selective detection; and (3) a cryogenically cooled Tm3+:LiNbO3 crystal that allows spectral filtering in an approach that anticipates its use as a spectrally-multiplexed quantum memory. Through coincidence measurements, we demonstrate quantum correlations between energy-correlated photon pairs and a strong reduction of the correlation strength between all other photons. This constitutes an important step towards a frequency multiplexed quantum repeater.

The concept of quantum representation of finite groups has been a fundamental aspect of quantum computing for quite some time, playing a role in every corner, from elementary quantum logic gates to the famous Shor's and Grover's algorithms. In this article, we provide a formal definition of this concept using both group theory and differential geometry. Our work proves the existence of a quantum representation for any finite group and outlines two methods for translating each generator of the group into a quantum circuit, utilizing gate decomposition of unitary matrices and variational quantum algorithms. Additionally, we provide numerical simulations of an explicit example on an open-access platform. Finally, we demonstrate the usefulness and potential of the quantum representation of finite groups by showing its role in the gate-level implementation of the algorithm that solves the hidden subgroup problem.

Current quantum systems have significant limitations affecting the processing of large datasets with high dimensionality, typical of high energy physics. In the present paper, feature and data prototype selection techniques were studied to tackle this challenge. A grid search was performed and quantum machine learning models were trained and benchmarked against classical shallow machine learning methods, trained both in the reduced and the complete datasets. The performance of the quantum algorithms was found to be comparable to the classical ones, even when using large datasets. Sequential Backward Selection and Principal Component Analysis techniques were used for feature's selection and while the former can produce the better quantum machine learning models in specific cases, it is more unstable. Additionally, we show that such variability in the results is caused by the use of discrete variables, highlighting the suitability of Principal Component analysis transformed data for quantum machine learning applications in the high energy physics context.

One of the key applications of AdS/CFT correspondence is the duality it dictates between the entanglement entropy of Anti-de Sitter (AdS) black holes and lower-dimensional conformal field theories (CFTs). Here we employ a square lattice of fermions with inhomogeneous tunneling couplings that simulate the effect rotationally symmetric 3D black holes have on Dirac fields. When applied to 3D BTZ black holes we identify the parametric regime where the theoretically predicted 2D CFT faithfully describes the black hole entanglement entropy. With the help of the universal simulator we further demonstrate that a large family of 3D black holes exhibit the same ground state entanglement entropy behavior as the BTZ black hole. The simplicity of our simulator enables direct numerical investigation of a wide variety of 3D black holes and the possibility to experimentally realize it with optical lattice technology.

Nondeterministic measurement-based techniques are efficient in reshaping the population distribution of a quantum system but suffer from a limited success probability of holding the system in the target state. To reduce the experimental cost, we exploit the state-engineering mechanisms of both conditional and unconditional measurements and propose a two-step protocol assisted by a qubit to cool a resonator down to the ground state with a near-unit probability. In the first step, the unconditional measurements on the ancillary qubit are applied to reshape the target resonator from a thermal state to a reserved Fock state. The measurement sequence is optimized by reinforcement learning for a maximum fidelity. In the second step, the population on the reserved state can be faithfully transferred in a stepwise way to the resonator's ground state with a near-unit fidelity by the conditional measurements on the qubit. Intrinsic nondeterminacy of the projection-based conditional measurement is effectively inhibited by properly spacing the measurement sequence, which makes the Kraus operator act as a lowering operator for neighboring Fock states. Through dozens of measurements, the initial thermal average occupation of the resonator can be reduced by five orders in magnitude with a success probability over $95\%$.