Power of Sequential Protocols in Hidden Quantum Channel Discrimination.

In many natural and engineered systems, unknown quantum channels act on a subsystem that cannot be directly controlled and measured, but is instead learned through a controllable subsystem that weakly interacts with it. We study quantum channel discrimination (QCD) under these restrictions, which we call hidden system QCD. We find sequential protocols achieve perfect discrimination and saturate the Heisenberg limit. In contrast, depth-1 parallel and multishot protocols cannot solve hidden system QCD. This suggests sequential protocols are superior in experimentally realistic situations.

Tunable Flux Vortices in Two-Dimensional Dirac Superconductors.

The nontrivial geometry encoded in the quantum mechanical wave function has important consequences for both noninteracting and interacting systems. Yet, our understanding of the relationship between geometrical effects in noninteracting systems and their interacting counterparts is far from complete. Here, we demonstrate how the single-particle Berry curvature associated with the normal phase in two dimensions modifies the fluxoid quantization of a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superconductor. A discussion of the experimental scenarios where this anomalous quantization is expected is provided. Our work demonstrates the importance of variational Ansätze in making a clear connection between the Berry phases of single-particle and many-body wave functions.

Realization of an Electrically Tunable Narrow-Bandwidth Atomically Thin Mirror Using Monolayer MoSe_{2}.

The advent of two-dimensional semiconductors, such as van der Waals heterostructures, propels new research directions in condensed matter physics and enables development of novel devices with unique functionalities. Here, we show experimentally that a monolayer of MoSe_{2} embedded in a charge controlled heterostructure can be used to realize an electrically tunable atomically thin mirror, which effects 87% extinction of an incident field that is resonant with its exciton transition. The corresponding maximum reflection coefficient of 41% is only limited by the ratio of the radiative decay rate to the nonradiative linewidth of exciton transition and is independent of incident light intensity up to 400 W/cm^{2}. We demonstrate that the reflectivity of the mirror can be drastically modified by applying a gate voltage that modifies the monolayer charge density. Our findings could find applications ranging from fast programable spatial light modulators to suspended ultralight mirrors for optomechanical devices.