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Relativistic effective charge model of a multi-electron atom. (arXiv:1912.02619v2 [physics.atom-ph] UPDATED)

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2020-07-10 10:53

A relativistic version of the effective charge model for computation of observable characteristics of multi-electron atoms and ions is developed. A complete and orthogonal Dirac hydrogen basis set, depending on one parameter -- effective nuclear charge $Z^{*}$ -- identical for all single-electron wave functions of a given atom or ion, is employed for the construction of the secondary-quantized representation. The effective charge is uniquely determined by the charge of the nucleus and a set of electron occupation numbers for a given state. We thoroughly study the accuracy of the leading-order approximation for the total binding energy and demonstrate that it is independent of the number of electrons of a multi-electron atom. In addition, it is shown that the fully analytical leading-order approximation is especially suited for the description of highly charged ions since our wave functions are almost coincident with the Dirac-Hartree-Fock ones for the complete spectrum. Finally, we evaluate various atomic characteristics, such as scattering factors and photoionization cross-sections, and thus envisage that the effective charge model can replace other models of comparable complexity, such as the Thomas-Fermi-Dirac model for all applications where it is still utilized.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Renormalization Group Flows, the $a$-Theorem and Conformal Bootstrap. (arXiv:1912.09479v3 [hep-th] UPDATED)

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2020-07-10 10:53

Every renormalization group flow in $d$ spacetime dimensions can be equivalently described as spectral deformations of a generalized free CFT in $(d-1)$ spacetime dimensions. This can be achieved by studying the effective action of the Nambu-Goldstone boson of broken conformal symmetry in anti-de Sitter space and then taking the flat space limit. This approach is particularly useful in even spacetime dimension where the change in the Euler anomaly $a_{UV}-a_{IR}$ can be related to anomalous dimensions of lowest twist multi-trace operators in the dual CFT. As an application, we provide a simple proof of the 4d $a$-theorem using the dual description. Furthermore, we reinterpret the statement of the $a$-theorem in 6d as a conformal bootstrap problem in 5d.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Software tools for quantum control: Improving quantum computer performance through noise and error suppression. (arXiv:2001.04060v2 [quant-ph] UPDATED)

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2020-07-10 10:53

Manipulating quantum computing hardware in the presence of imperfect devices and control systems is a central challenge in realizing useful quantum computers. Susceptibility to noise limits the performance and capabilities of noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices, as well as any future quantum computing technologies. Fortunately quantum control enables efficient execution of quantum logic operations and algorithms with built-in robustness to errors, without the need for complex logical encoding. In this manuscript we introduce software tools for the application and integration of quantum control in quantum computing research, serving the needs of hardware R&D teams, algorithm developers, and end users. We provide an overview of a set of python-based classical software tools for creating and deploying optimized quantum control solutions at various layers of the quantum computing software stack. We describe a software architecture leveraging both high-performance distributed cloud computation and local custom integration into hardware systems, and explain how key functionality is integrable with other software packages and quantum programming languages. Our presentation includes a detailed mathematical overview of central product features including a flexible optimization toolkit, filter functions for analyzing noise susceptibility in high-dimensional Hilbert spaces, and new approaches to noise and hardware characterization. Pseudocode is presented in order to elucidate common programming workflows for these tasks, and performance benchmarking is reported for numerically intensive tasks, highlighting the benefits of the selected cloud-compute architecture. Finally, we present a series of case studies demonstrating the application of quantum control solutions using these tools in real experimental settings for both trapped-ion and superconducting quantum computer hardware.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Tripartite Genuine Non-Gaussian Entanglement in Three-Mode Spontaneous Parametric Downconversion. (arXiv:2001.07050v2 [quant-ph] UPDATED)

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2020-07-10 10:53

We show that the states generated by a three-mode spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC) interaction Hamiltonian possess tripartite entanglement of a different nature to other paradigmatic three-mode entangled states generated by the combination of two-mode SPDCs interactions. While two-mode SPDC generates gaussian states whose entanglement can be characterized by standard criteria based on two-mode quantum correlations, these criteria fail to capture the entanglement generated by three-mode SPDC. We use criteria built from three-mode correlation functions to show that the class of states recently generated in a superconducting-circuit implementation of three-mode SPDC ideally have tripartite entanglement, contrary to recent claims in the literature. These criteria are suitable for triple SPDC but we show that they fail to detect tripartite entanglement in other states which are known to possess it, which illustrates the existence of two fundamentally different notions of tripartite entanglement in three-mode continuous variable systems.

Categories: Journals, Physics

A Generalized Nachtmann Theorem in CFT. (arXiv:2002.12390v2 [hep-th] UPDATED)

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2020-07-10 10:53

Correlators of unitary quantum field theories in Lorentzian signature obey certain analyticity and positivity properties. For interacting unitary CFTs in more than two dimensions, we show that these properties impose general constraints on families of minimal twist operators that appear in the OPEs of primary operators. In particular, we rederive and extend the convexity theorem which states that for the family of minimal twist operators with even spins appearing in the reflection-symmetric OPE of any scalar primary, twist must be a monotonically increasing convex function of the spin. Our argument is completely non-perturbative and it also applies to the OPE of nonidentical scalar primaries in unitary CFTs, constraining the twist of spinning operators appearing in the OPE. Finally, we argue that the same methods also impose constraints on the Regge behavior of certain CFT correlators.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Hermitian zero modes protected by nonnormality: Application of pseudospectra. (arXiv:2005.01704v2 [cond-mat.mes-hall] UPDATED)

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2020-07-10 10:53

Recently, it was established that there exists a direct relation between the non-Hermitian skin effects, -strong dependence of spectra on boundary conditions for non-Hermitian Hamiltonians-, and boundary zero modes for Hermitian topological insulators. On the other hand, in terms of the spectral theory, the skin effects can also be interpreted as instability of spectra for nonnormal (non-Hermitian) Hamiltonians. Applying the latter interpretation to the former relation, we develop a theory of zero modes with quantum anomaly for general Hermitian lattice systems. Our theory is applicable to a wide range of systems: Majorana chains, non-periodic lattices, and long-range hopping systems. We relate exact zero modes and quasi-zero modes of a Hermitian system to spectra and pseudospectra of a non-Hermitian system, respectively. These zero and quasi-zero modes of a Hermitian system are robust against a class of perturbations even if there is no topological protection. The robustness is measured by nonnormality of the corresponding non-Hermitian system. We also present explicit construction of such zero modes by using a graphical representation of lattice systems. Our theory reveals the presence of nonnormality-protected zero modes, as well as the usefulness of the nonnormality and pseudospectra as tools for topological and/or non-Hermitian physics.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Statistical Mechanics of Quantum Error-Correcting Codes. (arXiv:2007.03822v2 [quant-ph] UPDATED)

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2020-07-10 10:53

We study stabilizer quantum error-correcting codes (QECC) generated under hybrid dynamics of local Clifford unitaries and local Pauli measurements in one dimension. Building upon 1) a general formula relating the error-susceptibility of a subregion to its entanglement properties, and 2) a previously established mapping between entanglement entropies and domain wall free energies of an underlying spin model, we propose a statistical mechanical description of the QECC in terms of "entanglement domain walls". Free energies of such domain walls generically feature a leading volume law term coming from its "surface energy", and a sub-volume law correction coming from thermodynamic entropies of its transverse fluctuations. These are most easily accounted for by capillary-wave theory of liquid-gas interfaces, which we use as an illustrative tool. We show that the information-theoretic decoupling criterion corresponds to a geometric decoupling of domain walls, which further leads to the identification of the "contiguous code distance" of the QECC as the crossover length scale at which the energy and entropy of the domain wall are comparable. The contiguous code distance thus diverges with the system size as the subleading entropic term of the free energy, protecting a finite code rate against local undetectable errors. We support these correspondences with numerical evidence, where we find capillary-wave theory describes many qualitative features of the QECC; we also discuss when and why it fails to do so.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Universal criticality of thermodynamic curvatures for charged AdS black holes. (arXiv:2007.03255v2 [gr-qc] UPDATED)

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2020-07-10 10:53

In this paper, we analytically study the critical exponents and universal amplitudes of the thermodynamic curvatures such as the intrinsic and extrinsic curvature at the critical point of the small-large black hole phase transition for the charged AdS black holes. At the critical point, it is found that the normalized intrinsic curvature $R_N$ and extrinsic curvature $K_N$ has critical exponents 2 and 1, respectively. Based on them, the universal amplitudes $R_Nt^2$ and $K_Nt$ are calculated with the temperature parameter $t=T/T_c-1$ where $T_c$ the critical value of the temperature. Near the critical point, we find that the critical amplitude of $R_Nt^2$ and $K_Nt$ is $-\frac{1}{2}$ when $t\rightarrow0^+$, whereas $R_Nt^2\approx -\frac{1}{8}$ and $K_Nt\approx-\frac{1}{4}$ in the limit $t\rightarrow0^-$. These results not only hold for the four dimensional charged AdS black hole, but also for the higher dimensional cases. Therefore, such universal properties will cast new insight into the thermodynamic geometries and black hole phase transitions.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Quantum Lower and Upper Bounds for 2D-Grid and Dyck Language. (arXiv:2007.03402v2 [cs.DS] UPDATED)

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2020-07-10 10:53

We study the quantum query complexity of two problems.

First, we consider the problem of determining if a sequence of parentheses is a properly balanced one (a Dyck word), with a depth of at most $k$. We call this the $Dyck_{k,n}$ problem. We prove a lower bound of $\Omega(c^k \sqrt{n})$, showing that the complexity of this problem increases exponentially in $k$. Here $n$ is the length of the word. When $k$ is a constant, this is interesting as a representative example of star-free languages for which a surprising $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{n})$ query quantum algorithm was recently constructed by Aaronson et al. Their proof does not give rise to a general algorithm. When $k$ is not a constant, $Dyck_{k,n}$ is not context-free. We give an algorithm with $O\left(\sqrt{n}(\log{n})^{0.5k}\right)$ quantum queries for $Dyck_{k,n}$ for all $k$. This is better than the trival upper bound $n$ for $k=o\left(\frac{\log(n)}{\log\log n}\right)$.

Second, we consider connectivity problems on grid graphs in 2 dimensions, if some of the edges of the grid may be missing. By embedding the "balanced parentheses" problem into the grid, we show a lower bound of $\Omega(n^{1.5-\epsilon})$ for the directed 2D grid and $\Omega(n^{2-\epsilon})$ for the undirected 2D grid. The directed problem is interesting as a black-box model for a class of classical dynamic programming strategies including the one that is usually used for the well-known edit distance problem. We also show a generalization of this result to more than 2 dimensions.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Quantum fluctuations hinder finite-time information erasure near the Landauer limit. (arXiv:2007.01882v2 [quant-ph] UPDATED)

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2020-07-10 10:53

Information is physical but information is also processed in finite time. Where computing protocols are concerned, finite-time processing in the quantum regime can dynamically generate coherence. Here we show that this can have significant thermodynamic implications. We demonstrate that quantum coherence generated in the energy eigenbasis of a system undergoing a finite-time information erasure protocol yields rare events with extreme dissipation. These fluctuations are of purely quantum origin. By studying the full statistics of the dissipated heat in the slow driving limit, we prove that coherence provides a non-negative contribution to all statistical cumulants. Using the simple and paradigmatic example of single bit erasure, we show that these extreme dissipation events yield distinct, experimentally distinguishable signatures.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Polarizing the Medium: Fermion-Mediated Interactions between Bosons. (arXiv:2007.00409v2 [cond-mat.quant-gas] UPDATED)

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2020-07-10 10:53

We consider a homogeneous mixture of bosons and polarized fermions. We find that long-range and attractive fermion-mediated interactions between bosons have dramatic effects on the properties of the bosons. We construct the phase diagram spanned by boson-fermion mass ratio and boson-fermion scattering parameter. It consists of stable region of mixing and unstable region toward phase separation. In stable mixing phase, the collective long-wavelength excitations can either be well-behaved with infinite lifetime or be finite in lifetime suffered from the Landau damping. We examine the effects of the induced interaction on the properties of weakly interacting bosons. It turns out that the induced interaction not only enhances the repulsion between the bosons against collapse but also enhances the stability of the superfluid state by suppressing quantum depletion.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Survival of the fractional Josephson effect in time-reversal-invariant topological superconductors. (arXiv:2006.10772v2 [cond-mat.supr-con] UPDATED)

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2020-07-10 10:53

Time-reversal-invariant topological superconductor (TRITOPS) wires host Majorana Kramers pairs that have been predicted to mediate a fractional Josephson effect with $4\pi$ periodicity in the superconducting phase difference. We explore the TRITOPS fractional Josephson effect in the presence of time-dependent local mixing' perturbations that instantaneously preserve time-reversal symmetry. Specifically, we show that just as such couplings render braiding of Majorana Kramers pairs non-universal, the Josephson current becomes either aperiodic or $2\pi$-periodic (depending on conditions that we quantify) unless the phase difference is swept sufficiently quickly. We further analyze topological superconductors with $\mathcal{T}^2 = +1$ time-reversal symmetry and reveal a rich interplay between interactions and local mixing that can be experimentally probed in nanowire arrays.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Electric field imaging using polarized neutrons. (arXiv:2006.03728v2 [physics.ins-det] UPDATED)

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2020-07-10 10:53

We experimentally demonstrate that electrically neutral particles, neutrons, can be used to directly visualize the electrostatic field inside a target volume that can be isolated or occupied. Electric-field images were obtained using a polychromatic, spin-polarized neutron beam with a sensitive polarimetry scheme. This work may enable new diagnostic power of the structure of electric potential, electric polarization, charge distribution, and dielectric constant by imaging spatially dependent electric fields in objects that cannot be accessed by other conventional probes.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Quasirandom quantum channels. (arXiv:1908.06310v3 [quant-ph] UPDATED)

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2020-07-10 10:53

Mixing (or quasirandom) properties of the natural transition matrix associated to a graph can be quantified by its distance to the complete graph. Different mixing properties correspond to different norms to measure this distance. For dense graphs, two such properties known as spectral expansion and uniformity were shown to be equivalent in seminal 1989 work of Chung, Graham and Wilson. Recently, Conlon and Zhao extended this equivalence to the case of sparse vertex transitive graphs using the famous Grothendieck inequality. Here we generalize these results to the non-commutative, or quantum', case, where a transition matrix becomes a quantum channel. In particular, we show that for irreducibly covariant quantum channels, expansion is equivalent to a natural analog of uniformity for graphs, generalizing the result of Conlon and Zhao. Moreover, we show that in these results, the non-commutative and commutative (resp.) Grothendieck inequalities yield the best-possible constants.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Instability in the Hartmann--Hahn double resonance. (arXiv:2005.09298v2 [quant-ph] UPDATED)

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2020-07-10 10:53

The Hartmann-Hahn technique allows sensitivity enhancement of magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy by coupling the spins under study to another spin species that is externally driven. Here we theoretically study the coupled spins' dynamics, and find that for a certain region of driving parameters the system becomes unstable. The required conditions for making this region of instability becoming experimentally accessible are discussed.

Categories: Journals, Physics

A superatom picture of collective nonclassical light emission and dipole blockade in atom arrays. (arXiv:2005.04299v2 [physics.atom-ph] UPDATED)

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2020-07-10 10:53

We show that two-time, second-order correlations of scattered photons from planar arrays and chains of atoms display nonclassical features that can be described by a superatom picture of the canonical single-atom $g_2(\tau)$ resonance fluorescence result. For the superatom, the single-atom linewidth is replaced by the linewidth of the underlying collective low light-intensity eigenmode. Strong light-induced dipole-dipole interactions lead to a correlated response, suppressed joint photon detection events, and dipole blockade that inhibits multiple excitations of the collective atomic state. For targeted subradiant modes, nonclassical nature of emitted light can be dramatically enhanced even compared with that of a single atom.

Categories: Journals, Physics

One-way quantum repeater based on near-deterministic photon-emitter interfaces. (arXiv:1907.05101v4 [quant-ph] UPDATED)

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2020-07-10 10:53

We propose a novel one-way quantum repeater architecture based on photonic tree-cluster states. Encoding a qubit in a photonic tree-cluster protects the information from transmission loss and enables long-range quantum communication through a chain of repeater stations. As opposed to conventional approaches that are limited by the two-way communication time, the overall transmission rate of the current quantum repeater protocol is determined by the local processing time enabling very high communication rates. We further show that such a repeater can be constructed with as little as two stationary qubits and one quantum emitter per repeater station, which significantly increases the experimental feasibility. We discuss potential implementations with diamond defect centers and semiconductor quantum dots efficiently coupled to photonic nanostructures and outline how such systems may be integrated into repeater stations.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Rebound Motion of Localized Dirac Wavefunctions. (arXiv:2004.07938v2 [math-ph] UPDATED)

arXiv.org: Quantum Physics - Fri, 2020-07-10 10:53

It is shown that the carrier of a bounded localized free Dirac wavefunction shrinks from infinity and subsequently expands to infinity again. The motion occurs isotropicly at the speed of light. In between there is the phase of rebound, which is limited in time and space in the order of the diameter of the carrier at its minimal extension. This motion proceeds anisotropicly and abruptly as for every direction in space there is a specific time, at which the change from shrinking to expanding happens instantaneously. Asymptotically, regarding the past and the future as well, the probability of position concentrates up to 1 within any spherical shell whose outer radius increases at light speed.

Categories: Journals, Physics

Mechanical Engineer (Design of vacuum components) (TE-VSC-DLM-2020-94-LD): CERN

brightrecruits jobs - Fri, 2020-07-10 01:00
€15,000.00 - €60,000.00: CERN
For more latest jobs and jobs in Switzerland visit brightrecruits.com
Categories: Jobs

Feature: Physicists Must Engage with AI Ethics, Now

APS Physics - Thu, 2020-07-09 12:00

Author(s): Savannah Thais

Physicists are increasingly utilizing AI and even driving its development, but we cannot divorce ourselves from the ethical implications and impacts of this technology.

[Physics 13, 107] Published Thu Jul 09, 2020

Categories: Physics