Quantum Physics

We introduce a systematic approach for designing 3D nonlinear photonic crystals and pump beams for generating desired quantum correlations between structured photon-pairs. Our model is fully differentiable, allowing accurate and efficient learning and discovery of novel designs.

Quantum emitters in diamond are leading optically-accessible solid-state qubits. Among these, Group IV-vacancy defect centers have attracted great interest as coherent and stable optical interfaces to long-lived spin states. Theory indicates that their inversion symmetry provides first-order insensitivity to stray electric fields, a common limitation for optical coherence in any host material. Here we experimentally quantify this electric field dependence via an external electric field applied to individual tin-vacancy (SnV) centers in diamond. These measurements reveal that the permanent electric dipole moment and polarizability are at least four orders of magnitude smaller than for the diamond nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers, representing the first direct measurement of the inversion symmetry protection of a Group IV defect in diamond. Moreover, we show that by modulating the electric-field-induced dipole we can use the SnV as a nanoscale probe of local electric field noise, and we employ this technique to highlight the effect of spectral diffusion on the SnV.

Optimization algorithms play a central role in chemistry since optimization is the computational keystone of most molecular and electronic structure calculations. Herein, we introduce the iterative power algorithm (IPA) for global optimization and a formal proof of convergence for both discrete and continuous global search problems, which is essential for applications in chemistry such as molecular geometry optimization. IPA implements the power iteration method in quantics tensor train (QTT) representations. Analogous to the imaginary time propagation method with infinite mass, IPA starts with an initial probability distribution and iteratively applies the recurrence relation ? k+1 (x)=U(x) ? k (x)/?�U ? k ??L 1 , where U(x)= e ?�V(x) is defined in terms of the potential energy surface (PES) V(x) . Upon convergence, the probability distribution becomes a delta function, so the global minimum can be obtained as the position expectation value. QTT representations are generated by fast adaptive interpolation of multidimensional arrays to bypass the curse of dimensionality and the need to evaluate V(x) for all possible x . We illustrate the capabilities of IPA for global search optimization of two multidimensional PESs, including a differentiable model PES of a DNA chain and a discrete non-differentiable PES, V(p)=mod(N,p) , that resolves the prime factors of an integer N , with p in the space of prime numbers folded as a d -dimensional 2 1 ? 2 2 ??��?2 d tensor. We find that IPA resolves multiple degenerate global minima even when separated by large energy barriers in the highly rugged landscape of the potentials. Therefore, IPA should be of great interest for a wide range of other optimization problems ubiquitous in molecular and electronic structure calculations.

This paper is a `spiritual child' of the 2005 lecture notes Kindergarten Quantum Mechanics, which showed how a simple, pictorial extension of Dirac notation allowed several quantum features to be easily expressed and derived, using language even a kindergartner can understand. Central to that approach was the use of pictures and pictorial transformation rules to understand and derive features of quantum theory and computation. However, this approach left many wondering `where's the beef?' In other words, was this new approach capable of producing new results, or was it simply an aesthetically pleasing way to restate stuff we already know? The aim of this sequel paper is to say `here's the beef!', and highlight some of the major results of the approach advocated in Kindergarten Quantum Mechanics, and how they are being applied to tackle practical problems on real quantum computers. We will focus mainly on what has become the Swiss army knife of the pictorial formalism: the ZX-calculus. First we look at some of the ideas behind the ZX-calculus, comparing and contrasting it with the usual quantum circuit formalism. We then survey results from the past 2 years falling into three categories: (1) completeness of the rules of the ZX-calculus, (2) state-of-the-art quantum circuit optimisation results in commercial and open-source quantum compilers relying on ZX, and (3) the use of ZX in translating real-world stuff like natural language into quantum circuits that can be run on today's (very limited) quantum hardware. We also take the title literally, and outline an ongoing experiment aiming to show that ZX-calculus enables children to do cutting-edge quantum computing stuff. If anything, this would truly confirm that `kindergarten quantum mechanics' wasn't just a joke.

L0-regularization-based compressed sensing (L0-RBCS) is capable of outperforming L1-RBCS, but it is difficult to solve an optimization problem for L0-RBCS that cannot be formulated as a convex optimization. To achieve the optimization for L0-RBCS, we propose a quantum-classical hybrid system consisting of a quantum machine and a classical digital processor. Because forming a densely-connected network on a quantum machine is required for solving this problem, the coherent Ising machine (CIM) is one of suitable quantum machines for composing this hybrid system. To evaluate theoretically the performance of the CIM-classical hybrid system, a truncated Wigner stochastic differential equation (W-SDE) is obtained from the master equation for the density operator of the network of degenerate optical parametric oscillators, and macroscopic equations are derived from the W-SDE using statistical mechanics. We show that the system performance in principle approaches the theoretical limit of compressed sensing and in practical situations this hybrid system can exceed L1-RBCS's estimation accuracy.

This is a dialogue between Huw Price and Travis Norsen, loosely inspired by a letter that Price received from J. S. Bell in 1988. The main topic of discussion is Bell's views about retrocausal approaches to quantum theory, and their relevance to contemporary issues.

We propose a superconducting qutrit-resonator chain model, and analytically work out forms of its topological edge states. The existence of the zero-energy mode enables to generate a state transfer between two ends of the chain, accompanied with state flips of all intermediate qutrits, based on which N -body Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states can be generated with great robustness against disorders of coupling strengths. Three schemes of generating large-scale GHZ states are designed, each of which possesses the robustness against loss of qutrits or of resonators, meeting a certain performance requirement of different experimental devices. With experimentally feasible qutrit-resonator coupling strengths and available coherence times of qutrits and resonators, it has a potential to generate large-scale GHZ states among dozens of qutrits with a high fidelity. Further, we show the experimental consideration of generating GHZ states based on the circuit QED system, and discuss the prospect of realizing fast GHZ states.

Combinatorial optimization on near-term quantum devices is a promising path to demonstrating quantum advantage. However, the capabilities of these devices are constrained by high noise levels and limited error mitigation. In this paper, we propose an iterative Layer VQE (L-VQE) approach, inspired by the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE). We present a large-scale numerical study, simulating circuits with up to 40 qubits and 352 parameters, that demonstrates the potential of the proposed approach. We evaluate quantum optimization heuristics on the problem of detecting multiple communities in networks, for which we introduce a novel qubit-frugal formulation. We numerically compare L-VQE with QAOA and demonstrate that QAOA achieves lower approximation ratios while requiring significantly deeper circuits. We show that L-VQE is more robust to sampling noise and has a higher chance of finding the solution as compared with standard VQE approaches. Our simulation results show that L-VQE performs well under realistic hardware noise.

The excited state population of single solid-state emitters is subjected to energy fluctuations around the equilibrium driven by the bath and relaxation through the emission of phonons or photons. Simultaneous measurement of the associated spectral dynamics requires a technique with a high spectral and temporal resolution with an additionally high temporal dynamic range. We propose a pulsed excitation-laser analog of Photon-Correlation Fourier Spectroscopy (PCFS), which extracts the lineshape and spectral diffusion dynamics along the emission lifetime trajectory of the emitter, effectively discriminating spectral dynamics from relaxation and bath fluctuations. This lifetime-resolved PCFS correlates photon-pairs at the output arm of a Michelson interferometer in both their time-delay between laser-excitation and photon-detection and the time-delay between two photons. We propose the utility of the technique for systems with changing relative contributions to the emission from multiple states, for example, quantum emitters exhibiting phonon-mediated exchange between different fine-structure states.

We study a quantum Otto engine at finite time, where the working substance is composed of a two-level system interacting with a harmonic oscillator, described by the quantum Rabi model. We obtain the limit cycle and calculate the total work extracted, efficiency, and power of the engine by numerically solving the master equation describing the open system dynamics. We relate the total work extracted and the efficiency at maximum power with the quantum correlations embedded in the working substance, which we consider through entanglement of formation and quantum discord. Interestingly, we find that the engine can overcome the Curzon-Ahlborn efficiency when the working substance is in the ultrastrong coupling regime. This high-efficiency regime roughly coincides with the cases where the entanglement in the working substance experiences the greatest reduction in the hot isochoric stage. Our results highlight the efficiency performance of correlated working substances for quantum heat engines.