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Methods to probe and understand the dynamic response of materials following impulsive excitation are important for many fields, from materials and energy sciences to chemical and neuroscience. To design more efficient nano, energy, and quantum devices, new methods are needed to uncover the dominant excitations and reaction pathways. In this work, we implement a newly-developed superlet transform—a super-resolution time-frequency analytical method—to analyze and extract phonon dynamics in a laser-excited two-dimensional (2D) quantum material. This quasi-2D system, 1T-TaSe₂, supports both equilibrium and metastable light-induced charge density wave (CDW) phases mediated by strongly coupled phonons. We compare the effectiveness of the superlet transform to standard time-frequency techniques. We find that the superlet transform is superior in both time and frequency resolution, and use it to observe and validate novel physics. In particular, we show fluence-dependent changes in the coupled dynamics of three phonon modes that are similar in frequency, including the CDW amplitude mode, that clearly demonstrate a change in the dominant charge-phonon couplings. More interestingly, the frequencies of the three phonon modes, including the strongly-coupled CDW amplitude mode, remain time- and fluence-independent, which is unusual compared to previously investigated materials. Our study opens a new avenue for capturing the coherent evolution and couplings of strongly-coupled materials and quantum systems.

 

Communication networks have multiple users, each sending and receiving messages. A multiple access channel (MAC) models multiple senders transmitting to a single receiver, such as the uplink from many mobile phones to a single base station. The optimal performance of a MAC is quantified by a capacity region of simultaneously achievable communication rates. We study the two-sender classical MAC, the simplest and best-understood network, and find a surprising richness in both a classical and quantum context. First, we find that quantum entanglement shared between senders can substantially boost the capacity of a classical MAC. Second, we find that optimal performance of a MAC with bounded-size inputs may require unbounded amounts of entanglement. Third, determining whether a perfect communication rate is achievable using finite-dimensional entanglement is undecidable. Finally, we show that evaluating the capacity region of a two-sender classical MAC is in fact NP-hard.

 

Ultracold collisions of the polyatomic species CaOH are considered, in internal states where the collisions should be dominated by long-range dipole–dipole interactions. The computed rate constants suggest that evaporative cooling can be quite efficient for these species, provided they start at temperatures achievable by laser cooling. The rate constants are shown to become more favorable for evaporative cooling as the electric field increases. Moreover, long-range dimer states (CaOH)${}_2^{*}$are predicated to occur, having lifetimes on the order of microseconds.

 

We present a reproducible ab-initio method to produce benchmark tests between time-dependent Schrödinger equation (TDSE) in the single-active-electron approximation (SAE) and time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) in the highly nonlinear multiphoton and tunneling regime of strong-field physics. To this end we compare results for high-order harmonic generation from valence shells in atoms using the SAE-TDSE approach and TDDFT calculations. As key to the benchmark comparison we obtain an analytic form of SAE potentials based on density functional theory, which we applied for different atoms and ions. The ionization energies of atomic ground and excited states, as well as the energies of inner shells, for the SAE potentials agree well with experimental data. Using these potentials we find remarkable agreement between the results of the two independent numerical approaches (TDDFT and SAE-TDSE) for the high-order harmonic yields in helium, demonstrating the accuracy of the SAE potentials as well as the predictive power of SAE-TDSE and TDDFT calculations for the nonperturbative and highly nonlinear strong-field process of high harmonic generation in the ultraviolet and visible wavelength regime. Finally, as another application of the SAE potentials, high harmonic spectra from outer and inner valence shells are calculated and it is shown that unphysical artifacts in the SAE-spectra from the individual shells are removed once all the amplitudes are considered.

 

Protocols for designing and manipulating qubits with ultracold alkali atoms in 3D optical lattices are introduced. These qubits are formed from two‐atom spin superposition states that create a decoherence‐free subspace immune to stray magnetic fields, dramatically improving coherence times while still enjoying the single‐site addressability and Feshbach resonance control of state‐of‐the‐art alkali atom systems. The protocol requires no continuous driving or spin‐dependent potentials, and instead relies upon the population of a higher motional band to realize naturally tunable in‐site exchange and cross‐site superexchange interactions. As a proof‐of‐principle example of their utility for entanglement generation for quantum computation, it is shown that the cross‐site superexchange interactions can be used to engineer 1D cluster states. Explicit protocols for experimental preparation and manipulation of the qubits are also discussed, as well as methods for measuring more complex quantities such as out‐of‐time‐ordered correlation functions (OTOCs).

 

The ability to cool quantum gases into the quantum degenerate realm has opened up possibilities for an extreme level of quantum-state control. In this paper, we investigate one such control protocol that demonstrates the resonant amplification of quasimomentum pairs from a Bose–Einstein condensate by the periodic modulation of the two-bodys-wave scattering length. This shows a capability to selectively amplify quantum fluctuations with a predetermined momentum, where the momentum value can be spectroscopically tuned. A classical external field that excites pairs of particles with the same energy but opposite momenta is reminiscent of the coherently-driven nonlinearity in a parametric amplifier crystal in nonlinear optics. For this reason, it may be anticipated that the evolution will generate a ‘squeezed’ matter-wave state in the quasiparticle mode on resonance with the modulation frequency. Our model and analysis is motivated by a recent experiment by Clarket althat observed a time-of-flight pattern similar to an exploding firework (Clarket al2017Nature551356–9). Since the drive is a highly coherent process, we interpret the observed firework patterns as arising from a monotonic growth in the two-body correlation amplitude, so that the jets should contain correlated atom pairs with nearly equal and opposite momenta. We propose a potential future experiment based on applying Ramsey interferometry to experimentally probe these pair correlations.

 

Sawtooth Wave Adiabatic Passage (SWAP) laser cooling was recently demonstrated using a narrow-linewidth single-photon optical transition in atomic strontium and may prove useful for cooling other atoms and molecules. However, many atoms and molecules lack the appropriate narrow optical transition. Here we use such an atom,⁸⁷Rb, to demonstrate that two-photon Raman transitions with arbitrarily-tunable linewidths can be used to achieve 1D SWAP cooling without significantly populating the intermediate excited state. Unlike SWAP cooling on a narrow transition, Raman SWAP cooling allows for a final 1D temperature well below the Doppler cooling limit (here, 25 times lower); and the effective excited state decay rate can be modified in time, presenting another degree of freedom during the cooling process. We also develop a generic model for Raman Landau–Zener transitions in the presence of small residual free-space scattering for future applications of SWAP cooling in other atoms or molecules.

 

We explore the prospects and benefits of combining the techniques of cavity optomechanics with efforts to image spins using magnetic resonance force microscopy (MRFM). In particular, we focus on a common mechanical resonator used in cavity optomechanics—high-stress stoichiometric silicon nitride (Si₃N₄) membranes. We present experimental work with a ‘trampoline’ membrane resonator that has a quality factor above 10⁶and an order of magnitude lower mass than a comparable standard membrane resonators. Such high-stress resonators are on a trajectory to reach 0.1$\mathrm{aN}/\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$force sensitivities at MHz frequencies by using techniques such as soft clamping and phononic-crystal control of acoustic radiation in combination with cryogenic cooling. We present a demonstration of force-detected electron spin resonance of an ensemble at room temperature using the trampoline resonators functionalized with a magnetic grain. We discuss prospects for combining such a resonator with an integrated Fabry–Perot cavity readout at cryogenic temperatures, and provide ideas for future impacts of membrane cavity optomechanical devices on MRFM of nuclear spins.

 

Numerical techniques to efficiently model out-of-equilibrium dynamics in interacting quantum many-body systems are key for advancing our capability to harness and understand complex quantum matter. Here we propose a new numerical approach which we refer to as generalized discrete truncated Wigner approximation (GDTWA). It is based on a discrete semi-classical phase space sampling and allows to investigate quantum dynamics in lattice spin systems with arbitraryS ≥ 1/2. We show that the GDTWA can accurately simulate dynamics of large ensembles in arbitrary dimensions. We apply it forS > 1/2 spin-models with dipolar long-range interactions, a scenario arising in recent experiments with magnetic atoms. We show that the method can capture beyond mean-field effects, not only at short times, but it also can correctly reproduce long time quantum-thermalization dynamics. We benchmark the method with exact diagonalization in small systems, with perturbation theory for short times, and with analytical predictions made for models which feature quantum-thermalization at long times. We apply our method to study dynamics in largeS > 1/2 spin-models and compute experimentally accessible observables such as Zeeman level populations, contrast of spin coherence, spin squeezing, and entanglement quantified by single-spin Renyi entropies. We reveal that largeSsystems can feature larger entanglement than correspondingS = 1/2 systems. Our analyses demonstrate that the GDTWA can be a powerful tool for modeling complex spin dynamics in regimes where other state-of-the art numerical methods fail.

 

Abstract Rapid testing is essential to fighting pandemics such as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the disease caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Exhaled human breath contains multiple volatile molecules providing powerful potential for non-invasive diagnosis of diverse medical conditions. We investigated breath detection of SARS-CoV-2 infection using cavity-enhanced direct frequency comb spectroscopy (CE-DFCS), a state-of-the-art laser spectroscopic technique capable of a real-time massive collection of broadband molecular absorption features at ro-vibrational quantum state resolution and at parts-per-trillion volume detection sensitivity. Using a total of 170 individual breath samples (83 positive and 87 negative with SARS-CoV-2 based on reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction tests), we report excellent discrimination capability for SARS-CoV-2 infection with an area under the receiver-operating-characteristics curve of 0.849(4). Our results support the development of CE-DFCS as an alternative, rapid, non-invasive test for COVID-19 and highlight its remarkable potential for optical diagnoses of diverse biological conditions and disease states.