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Quantum heat engine with ideal gas has been well studied, yet the role of interaction was seldom explored. We construct a quantum Otto heat engine with N repulsive Bosonic particles in a 1D hard wall box. With the advantage of exact solution using Bethe Ansatz, we obtain not only the exact numerical result of efficiency in all interacting strength c, but also analytical results for strong interaction. We find the efficiency \eta recovers to the one of non-interacting case $\eta_{\mathrm{non}}=1-(L_{1}/L_{2})^{2}$ for strong interaction with asympotic behavior $\eta\sim\eta_{\mathrm{non}}-4(N-1)L_{1}\left(L_{2}-L_{1}\right)/(cL_{2}^{3})$. Here, $L_{1}$ and $L_{2}$ are two trap sizes during the cycle. Such recovery reflects the duality between 1D strongly repulsive Bosons and free Fermion. We observe and explain the appearance of a minimum efficiency at a particular interacting strength c, and study its dependence on the temperature., Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures

We study the Hawking radiation of black holes by considering the canonical typicality. For the universe consisting of black holes and their outer part, we directly obtain a non-thermal radiation spectrum of an arbitrary black hole from its entropy, which only depends on a few external qualities (known as hairs), such as mass, charge, and angular momentum. Our result shows that the spectrum of the non-thermal radiation is independent of the detailed quantum tunneling dynamics across black hole horizon. We prove that the black hole information paradox is naturally resolved by taking account the correlation between black hole and its radiation in our approach., 5 pages, 1 figure, pulished on Europhysics Letters, comments are welcomes

We study a transverse-field Ising model (TFIM) in a rotational reference frame. We find that the effective Hamiltonian of the TFIM of this system depends on the system's rotation velocity. Since the rotation contributes an additional transverse field, the dynamics of TFIM sensitively responses to the rotation velocity at the critical point of quantum phase transition. This observation means that the TFIM can be used for quantum sensing of rotation velocity that can sensitively detect rotation velocity of the total system at the critical point. It is found that the resolution of the quantum sensing scheme we proposed is characterized by the half-width of Loschmidt echo of the dynamics of TFIM when it couples to a quantum system S. And the resolution of this quantum sensing scheme is proportional to the coupling strength \delta between the quantum system S and the TFIM, and to the square root of the number of spins N belonging the TFIM., Comment: 6 pages,6 figures

With the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick (LMG) model as an illustration, we construct a thermodynamic cycle composed of two isothermal processes and two isomagnetic field processes and study the thermodynamic performance of this cycle accompanied by the quantum phase transition (QPT). We find that for a finite particle system working below the critical temperature, the efficiency of the cycle is capable of approaching the Carnot limit when the external magnetic field \lambda_{1} corresponding to one of the isomagnetic processes reaches the crosspoint of the ground states' energy level, which can become critical point of the QPT in large N limit. Our analysis proves that the system's energy level crossings at low temperature limits can lead to significant efficiency improvement of the quantum heat engine. In the case of the thermodynamics limit, analytical partition function is obtained to study the efficiency of the cycle at high and low temperature limits. At low temperatures, when the magnetic fields of the isothermal processes are located on both sides of the critical point of the QPT, the cycle obtains the maximum efficiency and the Carnot efficiency can be achieved. This observation demonstrate that the QPT of the LMG model below critical temperature is beneficial to the thermodynamic cycle's operation., Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures

AbsractSymmetry degree is utilized to characterize the asymmetry of a physical system with respect to a symmetry group. The scalar form of symmetry degree (SSD) based on Frobenius-norm has been introduced recently to present a quantitative description of symmetry. Here we present the vector form of the symmetry degree (VSD) which possesses more advantages than the SSD. Mathematically, the dimension of VSD is defined as the conjugacy class number of the symmetry group, the square length of the VSD gives rise to the SSD and the direction of VSD is determined by the orders of the conjugacy classes. The merits of applying VSD both for finite and infinite symmetry groups include the additional information of broken symmetry operators with single symmetry breaking perturbation, and the capability of distinguishing distinct symmetry breaking perturbations which exactly give rise to degenerate SSD. Additionally, the VSD for physical systems under symmetry breaking perturbations can be regarded as a projection of the initial VSD without any symmetry breaking perturbations, which can be described by an evolution equation. There are the same advantages by applying VSD for the accidental degeneracy and spontaneous symmetry breaking.

We investigate the behavior of the maximal violations of the CHSH inequality and V$\grave{e}$rtesi's inequality under the local filtering operations. An analytical method has been presented for general two-qubit systems to compute the maximal violation of the CHSH inequality and the lower bound of the maximal violation of V$\acute{e}$rtesi's inequality over the local filtering operations. We show by examples that there exist quantum states whose non-locality can be revealed after local filtering operation by the V$\acute{e}$rtesi's inequality instead of the CHSH inequality., 12 pages, 2 figures

We theoretically investigate a scattering configuration in Compton scattering, in which the orientation of the electron spin is reversed and simultaneously, the photon polarization changes from linear polarization into circular polarization. The intrinsic angular momentum of electron and photon are computed along the coincident propagation direction of the incoming and outgoing photon. We find that this intrinsic angular momentum is not conserved in the considered scattering process. We also discuss the generation of entanglement for the considered scattering setup and present an angle dependent investigation of the corresponding differential cross section, Stokes parameters and spin expectation., Comment: 15 pages, 13 figures

Recently, there has been a renewed interest in the quantification of coherence or other coherence-like concepts within the framework of quantum resource theory. However, rigorously defined or not, the notion of coherence or decoherence has already been used by the community for decades since the advent of quantum theory. Intuitively, the definitions of coherence and decoherence should be the two sides of the same coin. Therefore, a natural question is raised: how can the conventional decoherence processes, such as the von Neumann-L\"{u}ders (projective) measurement postulation or partially dephasing channels, fit into the bigger picture of the recently established theoretic framework? Here we show that the state collapse rules of the von Neumann or L\"{u}ders-type measurements, as special cases of genuinely incoherent operations (GIO), are consistent with the resource theories of quantum coherence. New hierarchical measures of coherence are proposed for the L\"{u}ders-type measurement and their relationship with measurement-dependent discord is addressed. Moreover, utilizing the fixed point theory for $C^\ast$-algebra, we prove that GIO indeed represent a particular type of partially dephasing (phase-damping) channels which have a matrix representation based on the Schur product. By virtue of the Stinespring's dilation theorem, the physical realizations of incoherent operations are investigated in detail and we find that GIO in fact constitute the core of strictly incoherent operations (SIO) and generally incoherent operations (IO) and the unspeakable notion of coherence induced by GIO can be transferred to the theories of speakable coherence by the corresponding permutation or relabeling operators., Comment: 11 pages, no figures

Energy is often partitioned into heat and work by two independent paths corresponding to the change in the eigenenergies or the probability distributions of a quantum system. The discrepancies of the heat and work for various quantum thermodynamic processes have not been well characterized in literature. Here we show how the work in quantum machines is differentially related to isochoric, isothermal, and adiabatic processes. We prove that the energy exchanges during the quantum isochoric and isothermal processes are simply depending on the change in the eigenenergies or the probability distributions. However, for a time-dependent system in a non-adiabatic quantum evolution, the transitions between the different quantum states representing the quantum coherence can affect the essential thermodynamic properties, and thus the general definitions of the heat and work should be clarified with respect to the microscopic generic time-dependent system. By integrating the coherence effects in the exactly-solvable dynamics of quantum-spin precession, the internal energy is rigorously transferred as the work in the thermodynamic adiabatic process. The present study demonstrates that quantum adiabatic process is sufficient but not necessary for thermodynamic adiabatic process., Comment: 7 pages, 1 figures

We provide a general dynamical approach for the quantum Zeno and anti-Zeno effects in an open quantum system under repeated non-demolition measurements. In our approach the repeated measurements are described by a general dynamical model without the wave function collapse postulation. Based on that model, we further study both the short-time and long-time evolutions of the open quantum system under repeated non-demolition measurements, and derive the measurement-modified decay rates of the excited state. In the cases with frequent ideal measurements at zero-temperature, we re-obtain the same decay rate as that from the wave function collapse postulation (Nature, 2000, 405: 546). The correction to the ideal decay rate is also obtained under the non-ideal measurements. Especially, we find that the quantum Zeno and anti-Zeno effects are possibly enhanced by the non-ideal natures of measurements. For the open system under measurements with arbitrary period, we generally derive the rate equation for the long-time evolution for the cases with arbitrary temperature and noise spectrum, and show that in the long-time evolution the noise spectrum is effectively tuned by the repeated measurements. Our approach is also able to describe the quantum Zeno and anti-Zeno effects given by the phase modulation pulses, as well as the relevant quantum control schemes.

Since quantum coherence is an undoubted characteristic trait of quantum physics, the quantification and application of quantum coherence has been one of the long-standing central topics in quantum information science. Within the framework of a resource theory of quantum coherence proposed recently, a \textit{fiducial basis} should be pre-selected for characterizing the quantum coherence in specific circumstances, namely, the quantum coherence is a \textit{basis-dependent} quantity. Therefore, a natural question is raised: what are the maximum and minimum coherences contained in a certain quantum state with respect to a generic basis? While the minimum case is trivial, it is not so intuitive to verify in which basis the quantum coherence is maximal. Based on the coherence measure of relative entropy, we indicate the particular basis in which the quantum coherence is maximal for a given state, where the Fourier matrix (or more generally, \textit{complex Hadamard matrices}) plays a critical role in determining the basis. Intriguingly, though we can prove that the basis associated with the Fourier matrix is a stationary point for optimizing the $l_1$ norm of coherence, numerical simulation shows that it is not a global optimal choice., 10 pages, 1 figures. Accepted for publication in Physical Review A

Squeezed-state interferometry plays an important role in quantum-enhanced optical phase estimation, as it allows the estimation precision to be improved up to the Heisenberg limit by using ideal photon-number-resolving detectors at the output ports. Here we show that for each individual $N$-photon component of the phase-matched coherent $\otimes$ squeezed vacuum input state, the classical Fisher information always saturates the quantum Fisher information. Moreover, the total Fisher information is the sum of the contributions from each individual $N$-photon components, where the largest $N$ is limited by the finite number resolution of available photon counters. Based on this observation, we provide an approximate analytical formula that quantifies the amount of lost information due to the finite photon number resolution, e.g., given the mean photon number $\bar{n}$ in the input state, over $96$ percent of the Heisenberg limit can be achieved with the number resolution larger than $5\bar{n}$., A new analytical result of the Fisher information (Eq.(18), or more generally, Eq.(B9)) has been derived to quantify how much the phase information is kept (or lost) due to finite number resolution of the photon-counting detectors

We present the realization of a St\"uckelberg interferometer with two mechanical modes in a two-coupled-cantilever--based optomechanical system. By optically tuning the frequency of one cantilever inside a cavity, we show that nonadiabatic crossing of the mechanical modes twice creates the interference fringes of the mechanical oscillations as a result of coherent splitting and subsequent recombination of the oscillations. By measuring the nonadiabatic phase acquired at the transition, we unveil an in-depth analog between the two-mode and quantum two-level systems. With this interferometry-based technique, transferring of oscillation between spatially separated cantilevers is achieved with 97% efficiency.

We theoretically show the negative refraction existing in M\"obius molecules. The negative refractive index is induced by the nontrivial topology of the molecules. With the M\"obius boundary condition, the effective electromagnetic fields felt by the electron in a M\"obius ring is spatially inhomogeneous. In this regard, the ${D}_{N}$ symmetry is broken in M\"obius molecules and thus the magnetic response is induced through the effective magnetic field. Our findings provide an alternative architecture for negative refractive index materials based on the nontrivial topology of M\"obius molecules.

We study the impact of inter-pulse phase fluctuation in free-electron X-ray laser on the signal in the photon echo spectroscopy, which is one of the simplest non-linear spectroscopic methods. A two-pulse echo model is considered with two-level atoms as the sample. The effect of both fluctuation amplitude and correlation strength of the random phase fluctuation is studied both numerically and analytically. We show that the random phase effect only affects the amplitude of the photon echo, yet not change the recovering time. Such random phase induces the fluctuation of recovering amplitude in the photon echo signals among different measurements. We show the normal method of measuring coherence time retains by averaging across the signals in different repeats in current paper., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures

We study how the decoherence of macroscopic objects is induced intrisinically by relativistic effect. With the degree of freedom of center of mass (CM) characterizing the collective quantum state of a macroscopic object (MO), it is found that a MO consisting of N particles can decohere with time scale no more than sqrt(N). Here, the special relativity can induce the coupling of the collective motion mode and the relative motion modes in an order of 1/c2, which intrinsically results in the above minimum decoherence., 10 pages, 3 figures

Spontaneous symmetry breaking is related to the appearance of emergent phenomena, while a non-vanishing order parameter has been viewed as the sign of turning into such symmetry breaking phase. Recently, we have proposed a continuous measure of symmetry of a physical system using group theoretical approach. Within this framework, we study the spontaneous symmetry breaking in the conventional superconductor and Bose-Einstein condensation by showing both the two many body systems can be mapped into the many spin model. Moreover we also formulate the underlying relation between the spontaneous symmetry breaking and the order parameter quantitatively. The degree of symmetry stays unity in the absence of the two emergent phenomena, while decreases exponentially at the appearance of the order parameter which indicates the inextricable relation between the spontaneous symmetry and the order parameter., 7 pages, 1 figure

We observe spin squeezing in three-component Bose gases where all three hyperfine states are coupled by synthetic spin-orbit coupling. This phenomenon is a direct consequence of spin-orbit coupling, as can be seen clearly from an effective spin Hamiltonian. By solving this effective model analytically with the aid of a Holstein-Primakoff transformation for spin-1 system in the low excitation limit, we conclude that the spin-nematic squeezing, a novel category of spin squeezing existing exclusively in large spin systems, is enhanced with increasing spin-orbit intensity and effective Zeeman field, which correspond to Rabi frequency and two-photon detuning within the Raman scheme for synthetic spin-orbit coupling, respectively. These trends of dependence are in clear contrast to spin-orbit coupling induced spin squeezing in spin-1/2 systems. We also analyze the effects of harmonic trap and interaction with realistic experimental parameters numerically, and find that a strong harmonic trap favors spin-nematic squeezing. We further show spin-nematic squeezing can be interpreted as two-mode entanglement or two-spin squeezing at low excitation. Our findings can be observed in ^{87}Rb gases with existing techniques of synthetic spin-orbit coupling and spin-selectively imaging., 6 pages, 4 figures

A central challenge in quantum computing is to identify more computational problems for which utilization of quantum resources can offer significant speedup. Here, we propose a hybrid quantum-classical scheme to tackle the quantum optimal control problem. We show that the most computationally demanding part of gradient-based algorithms, namely computing the fitness function and its gradient for a control input, can be accomplished by the process of evolution and measurement on a quantum simulator. By posing queries to and receiving messages from the quantum simulator, classical computing devices update the control parameters until an optimal control solution is found. To demonstrate the quantum-classical scheme in experiment, we use a nine-spin nuclear magnetic resonance system, on which we have succeeded in preparing a seven-correlated quantum state without involving classical computation of the large Hilbert space evolution., Revised version. Results improved. Title is changed

We formulate the Frobenius-norm-based measures for quantum coherence and asymmetry respectively. In contrast to the resource theory of coherence and asymmetry, we construct a natural measure of quantum coherence inspired from optical coherence theory while the group theoretical approach is employed to quantify the asymmetry of quantum states. Besides their simple structures and explicit physical meanings, we observe that these quantities are intimately related to the purity (or linear entropy) of the corresponding quantum states. Remarkably, we demonstrate that the proposed coherence quantifier is not only a measure of mixedness, but also an intrinsic (basis-independent) quantification of quantum coherence contained in quantum states, which can also be viewed as a normalized version of Brukner-Zeilinger invariant information. In our context, the asymmetry of N-qubit quantum systems is considered under local independent and collective SU(2) transformations. Intriguingly, it is illustrated that the collective effect has a significant impact on the asymmetry measure, and quantum correlation between subsystems plays a non-negligible role in this circumstance., Comment: 13 pages and no figures

Symmetry is conventionally described in a contrariety manner that the system is either completely symmetric or completely asymmetric. Using group theoretical approach to overcome this dichotomous problem, we introduce the degree of symmetry (DoS) as a non-negative continuous number ranging from zero to unity. DoS is defined through an average of the fidelity deviations of Hamiltonian or quantum state over its transformation group G, and thus is computable by making use of the completeness relations of the irreducible representations of G. The monotonicity of DoS can effectively probe the extended group for accidental degeneracy while its multi-valued natures characterize some (spontaneous) symmetry breaking., 5 pages, 3 figures

Photon impingement is capable of liberating electrons in electronic devices and driving the electron flux from the lower chemical potential to higher chemical potential. Previous studies hinted that the thermodynamic efficiency of a nano-sized photoelectric converter at maximum power is bounded by the Curzon-Ahlborn efficiency. In this study, we apply quantum effects to design a photoelectric converter based on a three-level quantum dot (QD) interacting with fermionic baths and photons. We show that, by adopting a pair of suitable degenerate states, quantum coherences induced by the couplings of quantum dots (QDs) to sunlight and fermion baths can coexist steadily in nano-electronic systems. Our analysis indicates that the efficiency at maximum power is no more limited to Curzon-Ahlborn efficiency through manipulation of carefully controlled quantum coherences., 6 pages, 3 figures

Polarized light microscopy using path-entangled $N$-photon states (i.e., the N00N states) has been demonstrated to surpass the shot-noise limit at very low light illumination. However, the microscopy images suffer from divergence of phase sensitivity, which inevitably reduces the image quality. Here, we show that due to experimental imperfections, such a singularity also takes place in the microscopy that uses twin-Fock states of light for illumination. We propose two schemes to completely eliminate this singularity: (i) locking the phase shift sensed by the beams at the optimal working point, by using a spatially dependent offset phase; (ii) a combination of two binary-outcome photon counting measurements, one with a fixed offset phase and the other without any offset phase. Our observations remain valid for any kind of binary-outcome measurement and may open the way for quantum-enhanced microscopy with high $N$ photon states., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures

We present a fully quantum solution to the Gibbs paradox (GP) with an illustration based on a gedanken experiment with two particles trapped in an infinite potential well. The well is divided into two cells by a solid wall, which could be removed for mixing the particles. For the initial thermal state with correct two-particle wavefunction according to their quantum statistics, the exact calculations show the entropy changes are the same for boson, fermion and non-identical particles. With the observation that the initial unmixed state of identical particles in the conventional presentations actually is not of a thermal equilibrium, our analysis reveals the quantum origin of the paradox, and confirms Jaynes’ observation that entropy increase in Gibbs mixing is only due to the including more observables. To further show up the subtle role of the quantum mechanism in the GP, we study the different finite size effect on the entropy change and show the work performed in the mixing process is different for various types of particles.

We explore how to cool collective atomic excitations in an optically-driven three-level atomic ensemble, which may be described by a model of two coupled harmonic oscillators (HOs) with a time-dependent coupling. Moreover, the model of two coupled HOs is further generalized to address the resolved sideband cooling issues, where the lower-frequency HO can be cooled whenever the cooling process dominates over the heating one during the sideband transitions. Unusually, due to the absence of the heating process, the optimal result for cooling collective excitations in an atomic ensemble could break the standard resolved sideband cooling limit for general models of two coupled HOs.

The thermodynamic influence of quantum probing on an object is studied. Here, quantum probing is understood to be a pre-measurement based on a non-demolition interaction, which records some information of the probed object but does not change its energy state when both the probing apparatus and the probed object are isolated from the environment. It is argued that when the probing apparatus and the probed object are immersed in the same equilibrium environment, the probing can affect the effective temperature of the object or induce a quantum isothermal process for the object to transfer its energy. This thermodynamic feature can be regarded as a witness of quantum probing.

Feshbach resonance is a resonance for two-atom scattering with two or more channels, in which a bound state is achieved in one channel. We show that this resonance phenomenon not only exists during the collisions of massive particles, but also emerges during the coherent transport of massless particles, that is, photons confined in the coupled resonator arrays linked by a separated cavity or a tunable two level system (TLS). When the TLS is coupled to one array to form a bound state in this setup, the vanishing transmission appears to display the photonic Feshbach resonance. This process can be realized through various experimentally feasible solid state systems, such as the couple defected cavities in photonic crystals and the superconducting qubit coupled to the transmission line. The numerical simulation based on the finite-different time-domain (FDTD) method confirms our assumption about the physical implementation.

We theoretically explore the possibility of creating spin entanglement by simultaneously coupling two electronic spins to a nuclear ensemble. By microscopically modeling the spin ensemble with a single mode boson field, we use the time-dependent Fr\"{o}hlich transformation (TDFT) method developed most recently [Yong Li, C. Bruder, and C. P. Sun, Phys. Rev. A \textbf{75}, 032302 (2007)] to calculate the effective coupling between the two spins. Our investigation shows that the total system realizes a solid state based architecture for cavity QED. Exchanging such kind effective boson in a virtual process can result in an effective interaction between two spins. It is discovered that a maximum entangled state can be obtained when the velocity of the electrons matches the initial distance between them in a suitable way. Moreover, we also study how the number of collective excitations influences the entanglement. It is shown that the larger the number of excitation is, the less the two spins entangle each other., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures

We study a dynamic mechanism to passively suppress the thermal noise of a micromechanical resonator through an intrinsic self-feedback that is genuinely non-Markovian. We use two coupled resonators, one as the target resonator and the other as an ancillary resonator, to illustrate the mechanism and its noise reduction effect. The intrinsic feedback is realized through the dynamics of coupling between the two resonators: the motions of the target resonator and the ancillary resonator mutually influence each other in a cyclic fashion. Specifically, the states that the target resonator has attained earlier will affect the state it attains later due to the presence of the ancillary resonator. We show that the feedback mechanism will bring forth the effect of noise suppression in the spectrum of displacement, but not in the spectrum of momentum., 11 pages, 7 figures

We study the dynamic generation of spin entanglement between two distant sites in an XY model with $1/r^{2}$-decay long range couplings. Due to the linear dispersion relation $\epsilon (k)\sim |k|$ of magnons in such model, we show that a well-located spin state can be dynamically split into two moving entangled local wave packets without changing their shapes. Interestingly, when such two wave packets meet at the diametrically opposite site after the fast period $\tau =\pi $, the initial well-located state can be recurrent completely. Numerical calculation is performed to confirm the analytical result even the ring system of sizes $N$ up to several thousands are considered. The truncation approximation for the coupling strengths is also studied. Numerical simulation shows that the above conclusions still hold even the range of the coupling strength is truncated at a relative shorter scale comparing to the size of the spin system., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures

We study quantum dynamics of wave packet motion of Bloch electrons in quantum networks with the tight-binding approach for different types of nearest-neighbor interactions. For various geometrical configurations, these networks can function as some optical devices, such as beam splitters and interferometers. When the Bloch electrons with the Gaussian wave packets input these devices, various quantum coherence phenomena can be observed, e.g., the perfect quantum state transfer without reflection in a Y-shaped beam, the multi- mode entanglers of electron wave by star shaped network and Bloch electron interferometer with the lattice Aharonov-Bohm effects. Behind these conceptual quantum devices are the physical mechanism that, for hopping parameters with some specific values, a connected quantum networks can be reduced into a virtual network, which is a direct sum of some irreducible subnetworks. Thus, the perfect quantum state transfer in each subnetwork in this virtual network can be regarded as a coherent beam splitting process. Analytical and numerical investigations show the controllability of wave packet motion in these quantum networks by the magnetic flux through some loops of these networks, or by adjusting the couplings on nodes. We find the essential differences in these quantum coherence effects when the different wave packets enter these quantum networks initially. With these quantum coherent features, they are expected to be used as quantum information processors for the fermion system based on the possible engineered solid state systems, such as the array of quantum dots that can be implemented experimentally.

Within the unified framework of exploiting the relative entropy as a distance measure of quantum correlations, we make explicit the hierarchical structure of quantum coherence, quantum discord and quantum entanglement in multipartite systems. On this basis, we introduce a new measure of quantum coherence, the basis-free quantum coherence and prove that this quantity is exactly equivalent to quantum discord. Furthermore, since the original relative entropy of coherence is a basis-dependent quantity, we investigate the local and nonlocal unitary creation of quantum coherence, focusing on the two-qubit unitary gates. Intriguingly, our results demonstrate that nonlocal unitary gates do not necessarily outperform the local unitary gates. Finally, the additivity relationship of quantum coherence in tripartite systems is discussed in detail, where the strong subadditivity of von Neumann entropy plays an essential role., Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures. Any comments are appreciated

We investigate, within the weak measurement theory, the advantages of non-classical pointer states over semi-classical ones for coherent, squeezed vacuum, and Schr\"{o}inger cat states. These states are utilized as pointer state for the system operator $\hat{A}$ with property $\hat{A}^{2}=\hat{I}$, where $\hat{I}$ represents the identity operator. We calculate the ratio between the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of non-postselected and postselected weak measurements. The latter is used to find the quantum Fisher information for the above pointer states. The average shifts for those pointer states with arbitrary interaction strength are investigated in detail. One key result is that we find the postselected weak measurement scheme for non-classical pointer states to be superior to semi-classical ones. This can improve the precision of measurement process., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures

With the assistance of a single cyclic three-level system, which can be realized by a superconducting flux qubit, we study theoretically the degenerate microwave parametric down-conversion (PDC) in a superconducting transmission line resonator with the fundamental and second harmonic modes involved. By adiabatically eliminating the excited states of the three-level system, we obtain an effective microwave PDC Hamiltonian for the two resonator modes in such a circuit QED system. The corresponding PDC efficiency in our model can be much larger than that in the similar circuit QED system based on a single two-level superconducting qubit [K. Moon and S. M. Girvin, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 95}, 140504 (2005)]. Furthermore, we consider the squeezing and bunching behavior of the fundamental mode resulting from the coherent drive to the second harmonic one., 6 pages, 4 figures submitted to Phys. Rev. A

In quantum mechanics, the variance-based Heisenberg-type uncertainty relations are a series of mathematical inequalities posing the fundamental limits on the achievable accuracy of the state preparations. In contrast, we construct and formulate two quantum uncertainty equalities, which hold for all pairs of incompatible observables and indicate the new uncertainty relations recently introduced by L. Maccone and A. K. Pati [Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 260401 (2014)]. Furthermore, we present an explicit interpretation lying behind the derivations and relate these relations to the so-called intelligent states. As an illustration, we investigate the properties of these uncertainty inequalities in the qubit system and a state-independent bound is obtained for the sum of variances. Finally, we apply these inequalities to the spin squeezing scenario and its implication in interferometric sensitivity is also discussed., 9 pages, 4 figures. Any comments will be appreciated

We introduce a tight-binding chain with a single impurity to act as a quantum data bus for perfect quantum state transfer. Our proposal is based on the weak coupling limit of the two outermost quantum dots to the data bus. First show that the data bus has an energy gap between the ground and first-excited states in the single-particle case induced by the impurity in the single particle case. By connecting two quantum dots to two sites of the data bus, the system can accomplish a high-fidelity and long-distance quantum state transfer. Numerical simulations were performed for a finite system; the results show that the numerical and analytical results of the effective coupling strength agree well with each other. Moreover, we study the robustness of this quantum communication protocol in the presence of disorder in the couplings between the nearest-neighbor quantum dots. We find that the gap of the system plays an important role in robust quantum state transfer., Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures. Any suggestions and comments are welcome!

We theoretically design and analytically study a controllable beam splitter for the spin wave propagating in a star-shaped (e.g., a $Y$-shaped beam) spin network. Such a solid state beam splitter can display quantum interference and quantum entanglement by the well-aimed controls of interaction on nodes. It will enable an elementary interferometric device for scalable quantum information processing based on the solid system., 5 pages, 4 figures, derivation of formulae changed

The canonical statistics describes the statistical properties of an open system by assuming its coupling with the heat bath is infinitesimal in comparison with the total energy in thermodynamic limit. In this paper, we generally derive a noncanonical density matrix for the open system with a finite coupling to the heat bath, which deforms the energy shell to effectively modify the conventional canonical way. The obtained noncanonical distribution reflects the back action of system on the bath and thus depicts the statistical correlations between two subsystems by the mutual information as a result of energy conservation.

We propose a theoretical scheme to observe the loss of quantum coherence through the coupling of the superconducting charge qubit system to a nanomechanical resonator (NAMR), which has already been successfully fabricated in experiment and is convenient to manipulate. With a similar form to the usual cavity QED system, this qubit-NAMR composite system with engineered coupling exhibits the collapse and revival phenomenon in a progressive decoherence process. Corresponding to the two components of superposition of the two charge eigenstates, the state of the nanomechanical resonator evolves simultaneously towards two distinct quasi-classical states. Therefore the generalized “which way” detection by the NAMR induces the quantum decoherence of the charge qubit.

Controlling the decoherence induced by the interaction of quantum system with its environment is a fundamental challenge in quantum technology. Utilizing Floquet theory, we explore the constructive role of temporal periodic driving in suppressing decoherence of a spin-1/2 particle coupled to a spin bath. It is revealed that, accompanying the formation of a Floquet bound state in the quasienergy spectrum of the whole system including the system and its environment, the dissipation of the spin system can be inhibited and the system tends to coherently synchronize with the driving. It can be seen as an analog to the decoherence suppression induced by the structured environment in spatially periodic photonic crystal setting. Comparing with other decoherence control schemes, our protocol is robust against the fluctuation of control parameters and easy to realize in practice. It suggests a promising perspective of periodic driving in decoherence control., 8 pages, 5 figures

Since the initial discovery of the Wootters-Zurek no-cloning theorem, a wide variety of quantum cloning machines have been proposed aiming at imperfect but optimal cloning of quantum states within its own context. Remarkably, most previous studies have employed the Bures fidelity or the Hilbert-Schmidt norm as the figure of merit to characterize the quality of the corresponding cloning scenarios. However, in many situations, what we truly care about is the relevant information about certain parameters encoded in quantum states. In this work, we investigate the multiple phase estimation problem in the framework of quantum cloning machines, from the perspective of quantum Fisher information matrix (QFIM). Focusing on the generalized d-dimensional equatorial states, we obtain the analytical formulas of QFIM for both universal quantum cloning machine (UQCM) and phase-covariant quantum cloning machine (PQCM), and prove that PQCM indeed performs better than UQCM in terms of QFIM. We highlight that our method can be generalized to arbitrary cloning schemes where the fidelity between the single-copy input and output states is input-state independent. Furthermore, the attainability of the quantum Cramer-Rao bound is also explicitly discussed., 10 pages, 3 figures. Any suggestions and comments are welcome!

We study a waveguide QED system with a rectangular waveguide and a two-level system inside, where the transverse magnetic TMmn modes define the quantum channels of guided photons. It is discovered that the loss of photons from the TM11 channel into the others can be overcome by replacing it with a certain coherent superposition of TMmn channels, which is named the controllable channel (CC), as the photons in the CC can be perfectly reflected or transmitted by the two-level system and never lost into the other channels. A dark state emerges when the photon is incident from one of the scattering-free channels orthogonal to the CC. The underlying physics mechanism is the multichannel interference associated with Fano resonance.

We investigate the performance of quantum fisher information under the Unruh-Hawking effect, where one of the observers (eg, Rob) is uniformly accelerated with respect to other partners. In the context of relativistic quantum information theory, we demonstrate that quantum fisher information, as an important measure of the information content of quantum states, has a rich and subtle physical structure comparing with entanglement or Bell nonlocality. In this work, we mainly focus on the parameterized (and arbitrary) pure two-qubit states, where the weight parameter $\theta$ and phase parameter $\phi$ are naturally introduced. Intriguingly, we prove that $\mathcal{F}_\theta$ keeps unchanged for both scalar and Dirac fields. Meanwhile, we observe that $\mathcal{F}_\phi$ decreases with the increase of acceleration $r$ but remains finite in the limit of infinite acceleration. More importantly, our results show that the symmetry of $\mathcal{F}_\phi$ (with respect to $\theta=\pi/4$) has been broken by the influence of Unruh effect for both cases., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures. Comments are welcome!

We propose to realize mechanical parity-time PT symmetry in two coupled optomechanical systems. To provide gain to one mechanical resonator and the same amount of damping to the other, the two optical cavities should be driven by blue- and red-detuned laser fields, respectively. After adiabatically eliminating the degrees of freedom of the cavity modes, we derive a formula to describe the PT symmetry of two coupled mechanical resonators. Mechanical PT-symmetric phase transition is demonstrated by the dynamical behavior of the mechanical resonators. Moreover, we study the effect of the quantum noises on the dynamical behavior of the mechanical resonators when the system is in the quantum regime., 12 pages, 11 figures

We propose a single-photon frequency converter via a one-dimensional waveguide coupled to a $V$-type atom. The on-demand classical field allows the atom to absorb a photon with a given frequency, then emit a photon with a carried frequency different from the absorbed one. The absorption and re-emission process is formulated as a two-channel scattering process. We study the single-photon frequency conversion mechanism in two kinds of realistic physical system: coupled resonator waveguide with cosine dispersion relation and an optical waveguide with linear dispersion relation respectively. We find that the driving field prefers weak in coupled resonator waveguide but arbitrarily strong in optical waveguide to achieve an optical transfer efficiency., 7 pages, 5 figures

We study the steady state of a three-level system in contact with a non-equilibrium environment, which is composed of two independent heat baths at different temperatures. We derive a master equation to describe the non-equilibrium process of the system. For the three level systems with two dipole transitions, i.e., the $\Lambda$-type and V-type, we find that the interferences of two transitions in a non-equilibrium environment can give rise to non-vanishing steady quantum coherence, namely, there exist non-zero off-diagonal terms in the steady state density matrix (in the energy representation). Moreover, the non-vanishing off-diagonal terms increase with the temperature difference of the two heat baths. Such interferences of the transitions were usually omitted by secular approximation, for it was usually believed that they only take effect in short time behavior and do not affect the steady state. Here we show that, in non-equilibrium systems, such omission would lead to the neglect of the steady quantum coherence., Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures

In any realistic quantum metrology scenarios, the ultimate precision in the estimation of parameters is limited not only by the so-called Heisenberg scaling, but also the environmental noise encountered by the underlying system. In the context of quantum estimation theory, it is of great significance to carefully evaluate the impact of a specific type of noise on the corresponding quantum Fisher information (QFI) or quantum Fisher information matrix (QFIM). Here we investigate the multiple phase estimation problem for a natural parametrization of arbitrary pure states under white noise. We obtain the explicit expression of the symmetric logarithmic derivative (SLD) and hence the analytical formula of QFIM. Moreover, the attainability of the quantum Cram\'{e}r-Rao bound (QCRB) is confirmed by the commutability of SLDs and the optimal estimators are elucidated for the experimental purpose. These findings generalize previously known partial results and highlight the role of white noise in quantum metrology., Comment: 5 pages and no figures. Any comments are welcome!

The linear driving for a single-mode optical field in a cavity can result from the external driving of classical field even when the coupling between the classical field and the cavity is weak. We revisit this well known effect with a microscopic model where a classical field is applied to a wall of the cavity to excite the atoms in the wall, and re-combination of the low excitations of the wall mediates a linear driving for the single-mode field inside the cavity. With such modeling about the indirect driving through the quantum excitations of the wall, we theoretically predict several non-linear optical effects for the strong coupling cases, such as photon anti-bunching and photon squeezing. In the sense, we propose the most simplified non-linear quantum photonics model., Comment: 8pages,7figures