Tunable broadband polarization retarders.

We theoretically propose a type of tunable polarization retarder, which is composed of sequences of half-wave and quarter-wave polarization retarders, allowing operation at broad spectral bandwidth. The constituent retarders are composed of stacked standard half-wave retarders and quarter-wave retarders rotated at designated angles relative to their fast polarization axes. The proposed composite retarder (CR) can be tuned to an arbitrary value of the retardance by varying the middle retarder alone while maintaining its broadband spectral bandwidth intact.

Defying Conventional Wisdom in Spectroscopy: Power Narrowing on IBM Quantum.

Power broadening-the broadening of the spectral line profile of a two-state quantum transition as the amplitude of the driving field increases-is a well-known and thoroughly examined phenomenon in spectroscopy. It typically occurs in continuous-wave driving when the intensity of the radiation field increases beyond the saturation intensity of the transition. In pulsed-field excitation, linear power broadening occurs for a pulse of rectangular temporal shape. Pulses with smooth shapes are known to exhibit much less power broadening, e.g., logarithmic for a Gaussian pulse shape. It has been predicted, but never experimentally verified, that pulse shapes which vanish in time as ∼|t|^{-λ} should exhibit the opposite effect-power narrowing-in which the postpulse transition line width decreases as the amplitude of the driving pulse increases. In this Letter, power narrowing is demonstrated for a class of powers-of-Lorentzian pulse shapes on the IBM Quantum processor ibmq_manila. Reduction of the line width by a factor of over 10 is observed when increasing the pulse area from π to 7π, in a complete reversal of the power broadening paradigm. Moreover, thorough study is conducted on the truncation of the pulse wings which introduces a (small) power-broadened term which prevents power narrowing from reaching extreme values. In the absence of other power broadening mechanisms, Lorentzian pulses truncated at sufficiently small values can achieve as narrow line profiles as desired.

High-Fidelity Quantum Control by Polychromatic Pulse Trains.

We introduce a quantum control technique using polychromatic pulse trains, consisting of pulses with different carrier frequencies, i.e., different detunings with respect to the qubit transition frequency. We derive numerous polychromatic pulse trains, which generate broadband, narrowband, and passband excitation profiles for different target transition probabilities. This makes it possible to create high-fidelity excitation profiles which are either (i) robust to deviations in the experimental parameters, which is attractive for quantum computing, or (ii) more sensitive to such variations, which is attractive for crosstalk elimination and quantum sensing. The method is demonstrated experimentally using one of IBM's superconducting quantum processors, in a very good agreement between theory and experiment. These results demonstrate both the excellent coherence properties of the IBM qubits and the accuracy, robustness, and flexibility of the proposed quantum control technique. They also show that the detuning is a control parameter which is as efficient as the pulse phase that is commonly used in composite pulses. Hence the method opens a variety of perspectives for quantum control in areas where phase manipulation is difficult or inaccurate.

Two-Qubit Entanglement Generation through Non-Hermitian Hamiltonians Induced by Repeated Measurements on an Ancilla.

In contrast to classical systems, actual implementation of non-Hermitian Hamiltonian dynamics for quantum systems is a challenge because the processes of energy gain and dissipation are based on the underlying Hermitian system-environment dynamics, which are trace preserving. Recently, a scheme for engineering non-Hermitian Hamiltonians as a result of repetitive measurements on an ancillary qubit has been proposed. The induced conditional dynamics of the main system is described by the effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian arising from the procedure. In this paper, we demonstrate the effectiveness of such a protocol by applying it to physically relevant multi-spin models, showing that the effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian drives the system to a maximally entangled stationary state. In addition, we report a new recipe to construct a physical scenario where the quantum dynamics of a physical system represented by a given non-Hermitian Hamiltonian model may be simulated. The physical implications and the broad scope potential applications of such a scheme are highlighted.

Two-qubit quantum gate and entanglement protected by circulant symmetry.

We propose a method for the realization of the two-qubit quantum Fourier transform (QFT) using a Hamiltonian which possesses the circulant symmetry. Importantly, the eigenvectors of the circulant matrices are the Fourier modes and do not depend on the magnitude of the Hamiltonian elements as long as the circulant symmetry is preserved. The QFT implementation relies on the adiabatic transition from each of the spin product states to the respective quantum Fourier superposition states. We show that in ion traps one can obtain a Hamiltonian with the circulant symmetry by tuning the spin-spin interaction between the trapped ions. We present numerical results which demonstrate that very high fidelity can be obtained with realistic experimental resources. We also describe how the gate can be accelerated by using a "shortcut-to-adiabaticity" field.

Compensation of the trap-induced quadrupole interaction in trapped Rydberg ions.

The quadrupole interaction between the Rydberg electronic states of a Rydberg ion and the radio frequency electric field of the ion trap is analyzed. Such a coupling is negligible for the lowest energy levels of a trapped ion but it is important for a trapped Rydberg ion due to its large electric quadrupole moment. This coupling cannot be neglected by the standard rotating-wave approximation because it is comparable to the frequency of the trapping electric field. We investigate the effect of the quadrupole coupling by performing a suitable effective representation of the Hamiltonian. For a single ion we show that in this effective picture the quadrupole interaction is replaced by rescaled laser intensities and additional Stark shifts of the Rydberg levels. Hence this detrimental quadrupole coupling can be efficiently compensated by an appropriate increase of the Rabi frequencies. Moreover, we consider the strong dipole-dipole interaction between a pair of Rydberg ions in the presence of the quadrupole coupling. In the effective representation we observe reducing of the dipole-dipole coupling as well as additional spin-spin interaction.

Highly Efficient Detection and Separation of Chiral Molecules through Shortcuts to Adiabaticity.

A highly efficient method for optical or microwave detection and separation of left- and right-handed chiral molecules is proposed. The method utilizes a closed-loop three-state system in which the population dynamics depends on the phases of the three couplings. Because of the different signs of the coupling between two of the states for the opposite chiralities the population dynamics is chirality dependent. By using the "shortcuts to adiabaticity" concept applied to the stimulated Raman adiabatic passage technique, one can achieve 100% contrast between the two enantiomers in the population of a particular state. It can be probed by light-induced fluorescence for large ensembles or through resonantly enhanced multiphoton ionization for single molecules.

Arbitrarily Accurate Pulse Sequences for Robust Dynamical Decoupling.

We introduce universally robust sequences for dynamical decoupling, which simultaneously compensate pulse imperfections and the detrimental effect of a dephasing environment to an arbitrary order, work with any pulse shape, and improve performance for any initial condition. Moreover, the number of pulses in a sequence grows only linearly with the order of error compensation. Our sequences outperform the state-of-the-art robust sequences for dynamical decoupling. Beyond the theoretical proposal, we also present convincing experimental data for dynamical decoupling of atomic coherences in a solid-state optical memory.

High-precision force sensing using a single trapped ion.

We introduce quantum sensing schemes for measuring very weak forces with a single trapped ion. They use the spin-motional coupling induced by the laser-ion interaction to transfer the relevant force information to the spin-degree of freedom. Therefore, the force estimation is carried out simply by observing the Ramsey-type oscillations of the ion spin states. Three quantum probes are considered, which are represented by systems obeying the Jaynes-Cummings, quantum Rabi (in 1D) and Jahn-Teller (in 2D) models. By using dynamical decoupling schemes in the Jaynes-Cummings and Jahn-Teller models, our force sensing protocols can be made robust to the spin dephasing caused by the thermal and magnetic field fluctuations. In the quantum-Rabi probe, the residual spin-phonon coupling vanishes, which makes this sensing protocol naturally robust to thermally-induced spin dephasing. We show that the proposed techniques can be used to sense the axial and transverse components of the force with a sensitivity beyond the range, i.e. in the (xennonewton, 10(-27)). The Jahn-Teller protocol, in particular, can be used to implement a two-channel vector spectrum analyzer for measuring ultra-low voltages.

Perspective: Stimulated Raman adiabatic passage: The status after 25 years.

The first presentation of the STIRAP (stimulated Raman adiabatic passage) technique with proper theoretical foundation and convincing experimental data appeared 25 years ago, in the May 1st, 1990 issue of The Journal of Chemical Physics. By now, the STIRAP concept has been successfully applied in many different fields of physics, chemistry, and beyond. In this article, we comment briefly on the initial motivation of the work, namely, the study of reaction dynamics of vibrationally excited small molecules, and how this initial idea led to the documented success. We proceed by providing a brief discussion of the physics of STIRAP and how the method was developed over the years, before discussing a few examples from the amazingly wide range of applications which STIRAP now enjoys, with the aim to stimulate further use of the concept. Finally, we mention some promising future directions.

Correction of arbitrary field errors in population inversion of quantum systems by universal composite pulses.

We introduce universal broadband composite pulse sequences for robust high-fidelity population inversion in two-state quantum systems, which compensate deviations in any parameter of the driving field (e.g., pulse amplitude, pulse duration, detuning from resonance, Stark shifts, unwanted frequency chirp, etc.) and are applicable with any pulse shape. We demonstrate the efficiency and universality of these composite pulses by experimental data on rephasing of atomic coherences in a Pr(3+):Y(2)SiO(5) crystal.

Dynamical suppression of unwanted transitions in multistate quantum systems.

We propose a method to suppress unwanted transition channels and achieve perfect population transfer in multistate quantum systems by using composite pulse sequences. Unwanted transition paths may be present due to imperfect light polarization, misalignment of the quantization axis, spatial inhomogeneity of the trapping fields, off-resonant couplings, etc., or they may be merely unavoidable, e.g., due to perturbing excitations in molecules and solids. Compensation of separate or simultaneous deviations in polarization, pulse area, and detuning is demonstrated, even when these deviations are unknown, in three-state V and Ξ (ladder) systems and in a four-state Y system.

Broadband Faraday isolator.

Driving on an analogy with the technique of composite pulses in quantum physics, we theoretically propose a broadband Faraday rotator and thus a broadband optical isolator, which is composed of sequences of ordinary Faraday rotators and achromatic quarter-wave plates rotated at the predetermined angles.

Spatiotemporal control of temperature in nanostructures heated by coherent laser fields.

We demonstrate theoretically that it is possible to exercise coherent control of the temperature in nanostructures by laser fields. In particular we show that by use of nanosecond laser pulses it is possible to induce a temperature distribution on a collection of nanoparticles which can last for up to thousands of nanoseconds before assuming the temperature of the environment. Although the form of the temperature distribution depends on the spatiotemporal control of the optical near field induced by the laser field, it is far from being proportional to the local radiation field at a particular point due to the cooling mechanisms which take place among the nanoparticles. We also show that it is possible to selectively heat a given target nanoparticle with adaptive control of the illuminating laser field without a nanoscale focus.

Variable ultrabroadband and narrowband composite polarization retarders.

We propose and experimentally demonstrate novel types of composite sequences of half-wave and quarter-wave polarization retarders, permitting operation at either ultrabroad spectral bandwidth or narrow bandwidth. The retarders are composed of stacked standard half-wave retarders and quarter-wave retarders of equal thickness. To our knowledge, these home-built devices outperform all commercially available compound retarders, made of several birefringent materials.

Highly efficient broadband conversion of light polarization by composite retarders.

Driving on an analogy with the technique of composite pulses in quantum physics, we propose highly efficient broadband polarization converters composed of sequences of ordinary retarders rotated at specific angles with respect to their fast-polarization axes.

High-fidelity adiabatic passage by composite sequences of chirped pulses.

We present a method for optimization of the technique of adiabatic passage between two quantum states by composite sequences of frequency-chirped pulses with specific relative phases: composite adiabatic passage (CAP). By choosing the composite phases appropriately the nonadiabatic losses can be canceled to any desired order with sufficiently long sequences, regardless of the nonadiabatic coupling. The values of the composite phases are universal for they do not depend on the pulse shapes and the chirp. The accuracy of the CAP technique and its robustness against parameter variations make CAP suitable for high-fidelity quantum information processing.

High-fidelity local addressing of trapped ions and atoms by composite sequences of laser pulses.

A vital requirement for a quantum computer is the ability to locally address, with high fidelity, any of its qubits without affecting their neighbors. We propose an addressing method using composite sequences of laser pulses that dramatically reduces the addressing error in a lattice of closely spaced atoms or ions and at the same time significantly enhances the robustness of qubit manipulations. To this end, we design novel (to our knowledge) high-fidelity composite pulses for the most important single-qubit operations. In principle, this method allows one to beat the diffraction limit, for only atoms situated in a small spatial region around the center of the laser beam are excited, well within the laser beam waist.

First-principles study of Casimir repulsion in metamaterials.

We examine theoretically the Casimir effect between a metallic plate and several types of magnetic metamaterials in pursuit of Casimir repulsion, by employing a rigorous multiple-scattering theory for the Casimir effect. We first examine metamaterials in the form of two-dimensional lattices of inherently nonmagnetic spheres such as spheres made from materials possessing phonon-polariton and exciton-polariton resonances. Although such systems are magnetically active in infrared and optical regimes, the force between finite slabs of these materials and metallic slabs is plainly attractive since the effective electric permittivity is larger than the magnetic permeability for the studied spectrum. When lattices of magnetic spheres made from superparamagnetic composites are employed, we achieve not only Casimir repulsion but almost total suppression of the Casimir effect itself in the micrometer scale.

Plasmon-induced enhancement of quantum interference near metallic nanostructures.

We show that the quantum interference between two spontaneous emission channels can be greatly enhanced when a three-level V-type atom is placed near plasmonic nanostructures such as metallic slabs, nanospheres, or periodic arrays of metal-coated spheres. The spontaneous emission rate is calculated by a rigorous first-principles electromagnetic Green's tensor technique. The enhancement of quantum interference is attributed to the strong dependence of the spontaneous emission rate on the orientation of an atomic dipole relative to the surface of the nanostructure at the excitation frequencies of surface plasmons.