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We investigate quantum-enhanced metrology in a triple point criticality and discover that quantum criticality can not always enhance measuring precision. We have developed suitable adiabatic evolution protocols approaching a final point around the triple point to effectively restrain excitations, which could accelerate the adiabatic evolutions and lead to an exponential super-Heisenberg scaling. This scaling behavior is quite valuable in practical parameter estimating experiments with limited coherence time. The super-Heisenberg scaling will degrade into a sub-Heisenberg scaling if the adiabatic parameter modulations adopted can not reduce excitations and weaken the slowing down effect. Additionally, a feasible experimental scheme is also suggested to achieve the anticipated exponential super-Heisenberg scaling. Our findings strongly indicate that criticality-enhanced metrology can indeed significantly enhance measuring precision to a super-Heisenberg scaling when combining a triple point and beneficial parameter modulations in the adiabatic evolution, which will be conducive to the exploration of other super-Heisenberg scaling and their applications.

The phenomenon of quantum many-body scars has received widespread attention both in theoretical and experimental physics in recent years due to its unique physical properties. In this paper, based on the $su(2)$ algebraic relations, we propose a general method for constructing scar models by combining simple modules.This allows us to investigate many-body scar phenomena in high-spin systems. We numerically verify the thermalization and non-integrability of this model and demonstrate the dynamical properties of the scar states. We also provide a theoretical analysis of the properties of these scar states. For spin-$1$ case, we find that our 1D chain model reduces to the famous PXP model[C. J. Turner et al. Phys. Rev. B 98, 155134(2018)] under special parameter condition. In addition, due to the continuous tunability of the parameters, our model also enables us to investigate the transitions of QMBS from non-integrable to integrable system., Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures

Artificial monopoles have been engineered in various systems, yet there has been no systematic study of the singular vector potentials associated with the monopole field. We show that the Dirac string, the line singularity of the vector potential, can be engineered, manipulated, and made manifest in a spinor atomic condensate. We elucidate the connection among spin, orbital degrees of freedom, and the artificial gauge, and show that there exists a mapping between the vortex filament and the Dirac string. We also devise a proposal where preparing initial spin states with relevant symmetries can result in different vortex patterns, revealing an underlying correspondence between the internal spin states and the spherical vortex structures. Such a mapping also leads to a new way of constructing spherical Landau levels, and monopole harmonics. Our observation provides insights into the behavior of quantum matter possessing internal symmetries in curved spaces., Comment: 5 pages + 5 figures + 5 appendices. In comparison with the previous version, we have (1) added supplementary material as appendices, and (2) made some minor revisions in the main text. Also, a simulation video for creating two artificial Dirac Strings with a mixed spin-1 state, is available at https://youtu.be/PCQGMqd-DfQ

The quantum many-body problem is an important topic in condensed matter physics. To efficiently solve the problem, several methods have been developped to improve the representation ability of wave-functions. For the Fermi-Hubbard model under periodic boundary conditions, current state-of-the-art methods are neural network backflows and the hidden fermion Slater determinant. The backflow correction is an efficient way to improve the Slater determinant of free-particles. In this work we propose a tensor representation of the backflow corrected wave-function, we show that for the spinless $t$-$V$ model, the energy precision is competitive or even lower than current state-of-the-art fermionic tensor network methods. For models with spin, we further improve the representation ability by considering backflows on fictitious particles with different spins, thus naturally introducing non-zero backflow corrections when the orbital and the particle have opposite spins. We benchmark our method on molecules under STO-3G basis and the Fermi-Hubbard model with periodic and cylindrical boudary conditions. We show that the tensor representation of backflow corrections achieves competitive or even lower energy results than current state-of-the-art neural network methods., Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, comments are welcome

In open systems, topological edge states quickly lose coherence and cannot be used in topological quantum computation and quantum memory. Here we show that for dissipative quantum spin (or fermionic) systems, topologically non-Hermitian Liouville-Majorana edge modes (LMEMs) can survive in the extended Liouville-Fock space, which is beyond the scope of topological modes defined in usual Hermitian system. By vectorizing the Lindblad equation of the system using the third quantization, we prove that it reduces to a series of non-Hermitian Kitaev chains in the extended Liouville-Fock space, and topologically LMEMs are protected due to its internal symmetry. Furthermore, we provide an explicit method for detecting these modes and prove that the purity of the density matrix characterizes the long-range correlation of LMEMs. The work opens new avenues of searching for novel stable topological states in open systems induced by quantum jumps., Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures

Recent experimental advances in the field of cold-atom cavity QED provide a powerful tool for exploring non-equilibrium correlated quantum phenomena beyond conventional condensed-matter scenarios. We present the dynamical phase diagram of a driven Bose-Einstein condensate coupled with the light field of a cavity, with a transverse driving field red-detuned from atomic resonance. We identify regions in parameter space showing dynamical instabilities in the form of limit cycles, which evolve into chaotic behavior in the strong driving limit. Such limit cycles originate from the interplay between cavity dissipation and atom-induced resonance frequency shift, which modifies the phase of cavity mode and gives excessive negative feedback on the atomic density modulation, leading to instabilities of the superradiant scattering. We find interesting merging of the limit cycles related by a $Z_2$ symmetry, and identify a new type of limit cycle formed by purely atomic excitations. The effects of quantum fluctuations and atomic interactions are also investigated., Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures

Exceptional points (EPs), at which more than one eigenvalue and eigenvector coalesce, are unique spectral features of Non-Hermiticity (NH) systems. They exist widely in open systems with complex energy spectra. We experimentally demonstrate the appearance of paired EPs in a periodical driven degenerate optical cavity along the synthetic orbital angular momentum (OAM) dimension with a tunable parameter. The complex-energy band structures and the key features of EPs, i.e. their Fermi arcs, parity-time symmetry breaking transition, energy swapping, and half-integer band windings are directly observed by detecting the cavity's transmission spectrum. Our results advance the fundamental understanding of NH physics and demonstrate the flexibility of using the photonic synthetic dimensions to implement NH systems.

Synthetic dimensions based on particles' internal degrees of freedom, such as frequency, spatial modes and arrival time, have attracted significant attention. They offer ideal large-scale lattices to simulate nontrivial topological phenomena. Exploring more synthetic dimensions is one of the paths toward higher dimensional physics. In this work, we design and experimentally control the coupling among synthetic dimensions consisting of the intrinsic photonic orbital angular momentum and spin angular momentum degrees of freedom in a degenerate optical resonant cavity, which generates a periodically driven spin-orbital coupling system. We directly characterize the system's properties, including the density of states, energy band structures and topological windings, through the transmission intensity measurements. Our work demonstrates a novel mechanism for exploring the spatial modes of twisted photons as the synthetic dimension, which paves the way to design rich topological physics in a highly compact platform.

We consider a hybrid atom-optomechanical system consisting of a mechanical membrane inside an optical cavity and an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate outside the cavity. The condensate is confined in an optical lattice potential formed by a traveling laser beam reflected off one cavity mirror. We derive the cavity-mediated effective atom-atom interaction potential, and find that it is non-uniform, site-dependent, and does not decay as the interatomic distance increases. We show that the presence of this effective interaction breaks the Z$_2$ symmetry of the system and gives rise to new quantum phases and phase transitions. When the long-range interaction dominates, the condensate breaks the translation symmetry and turns into a novel self-organized lattice-like state with increasing particle densities for sites farther away from the cavity. We present the phase diagram of the system, and investigate the stabilities of different phases by calculating their respective excitation spectra. The system can serve as a platform to explore various self-organized phenomena induced by the long-range interactions., Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures

We provide an explicit way to implement non-Abelian spin-orbital-angular-momentum (SOAM) coupling in spinor Bose-Einstein condensates using magnetic gradient coupling. For a spherical surface trap addressable using high-order Hermite-Gaussian beams, we show that this system supports various degenerate ground states carrying different total angular momenta $\mathbf{J}$, and the degeneracy can be tuned by changing the strength of SOAM coupling. For weakly interacting spinor condensates with $f=1$, the system supports various meta-ferromagnetic phases and meta-polar states described by quantized total mean angular momentum $|\langle \mathbf{J} \rangle|$. Polar states with $Z_2$ symmetry and Thomson lattices formed by defects of spin vortices are also discussed. The system can be used to prepare various stable spin vortex states with nontrivial topology, and serve as a platform to investigate strong-correlated physics of neutral atoms with tunable ground-state degeneracy., Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures

The relaxation of many-body system is still a challenging problem that has not well been understood. In this work we exactly calculate the dynamics of the quantum $XY$ model with boundary dissipation, in which the density matrix in terms of Majorana operators can be decoupled into independent subspaces represented by different number of Majorana fermions. The relaxation is characterized by multiply time scales, and in the long-time limit it is determined by the single particle relaxation process in a typical time scale $T^*$. For the bulk bands, we find $T^* \propto N^3/\gamma n^2 $ in the weak dissipation limit; and $T^* \propto \gamma N^3/ n^2$ in the strong dissipation limit, where $N$ is the chain length, $\gamma$ is the dissipation rate and $n$ is the band index. For the edge modes $T^* \propto 1/\gamma$, indicating of most vulnerable to dissipation in the long chain limit. These results are counter-intuitive because it means any weak dissipation can induce relaxation, while strong dissipation can induce weak relaxation. We find that these two limits correspond to two different physics, which are explained based on the first and second-order perturbation theory in an equivalent non-Hermitian model.Furthermore, we show that even in the long chain limit the relaxation may exhibit strong odd-even effect. These results shade new insight into the dynamics of topological qubits in environment., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures

High-dimensional entanglement has demonstrated potential for increasing channel capacity and resistance to noise in quantum information processing. However, its distribution is a challenging task, imposing a severe restriction on its application. Here we report the first distribution of three-dimensional orbital angular momentum (OAM) entanglement via a 1-km-long optical fibre. Using an actively-stabilizing phase pre-compensation technique, we successfully transport one photon of a three-dimensional OAM entangled photon pair through the fibre. The distributed OAM entangled state still shows a fidelity up to 71\% with respect to the three-dimensional maximal-entangled-state (MES). In addition, we certify that the high-dimensional quantum entanglement survives the transportation by violating a generalized Bell inequality, obtaining a violation of $\sim3$ standard deviations with $I_{3}=2.12\pm0.04$. The method we developed can be extended to higher OAM dimension and larger distances in principle. Our results make a significant step towards future OAM-based high-dimensional long-distance quantum communication., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures

The Haldane phase represents one of the most important symmetry protected states in modern physics. This state can be realized using spin-1 and spin-${1\over 2}$ Heisenberg models and bosonic particles. Here we explore the emergent Haldane phase in an alternating bond $\mathbb{Z}_3$ parafermion chain, which is different from the previous proposals from fundamental statistics and symmetries. We show that this emergent phase can also be characterized by a modified long-range string order, as well as four-fold degeneracy in the ground state energies and entanglement spectra. This phase is protected by both the charge conjugate and parity symmetry, and the edge modes are shown to satisfy parafermionic statistics, in which braiding of the two edge modes yields a ${2\pi \over 3}$ phase. This model also supports rich phases, including topological ferromagnetic parafermion (FP) phase, trivial paramagnetic parafermion phase, classical dimer phase and gapless phase. The boundaries of the FP phase are shown to be gapless and critical with central charge $c = 4/5$. Even in the topological FP phase, it is also characterized by the long-range string order, thus we observe a drop of string order across the phase boundary between the FP phase and Haldane phase. These phenomena are quite general and this work opens a new way for finding exotic topological phases in $\mathbb{Z}_k$ parafermion models., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures

We study the instability of a ring Bose-Einstein condensate under a periodic modulation of inter-atomic interactions. The condensate exhibits temporal and spatial patterns induced by the parametric resonance, which can be characterized by Bogoliubov quasi-particle excitations in the Floquet basis. As the ring geometry significantly limits the number of excitable Bogoliubov modes, we are able to capture the non-linear dynamics of the condensate using a three-mode model. We further demonstrate the robustness of the temporal and spatial patterns against disorder, which are attributed to the mode-locking mechanism under the ring geometry. Our results can be observed in cold atomic systems and are also relevant to physical systems described by the non-linear Schrodinger's equation.

Topological orders and associated topological protected excitations satisfying non-Abelian statistics have been widely explored in various platforms. The $\mathbb{Z}_3$ parafermions are regarded as the most natural generation of the Majorana fermions to realize these topological orders. Here we investigate the topological phase and emergent $\mathbb{Z}_2$ spin phases in an extended parafermion chain. This model exhibits rich variety of phases, including not only topological ferromagnetic phase, which supports non-Abelian anyon excitation, but also spin-fluid, dimer and chiral phases from the emergent $\mathbb{Z}_2$ spin model. We generalize the measurement tools in $\mathbb{Z}_2$ spin models to fully characterize these phases in the extended parafermion model and map out the corresponding phase diagram. Surprisingly, we find that all the phase boundaries finally merge to a single supercritical point. In regarding of the rather generality of emergent phenomena in parafermion models, this approach opens a wide range of intriguing applications in investigating the exotic phases in other parafermion models., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures

We present a flexible scheme to realize exact flat Landau levels on curved spherical geometry in a system of spinful cold atoms. This is achieved by Floquet engineering of a magnetic quadrupole field. We show that a synthetic monopole field in real space can be created. We prove that the system can be exactly mapped to the electron-monopole system on sphere, thus realizing Haldane's spherical geometry for fractional quantum Hall physics. The scheme works for either bosons or fermions. We investigate the ground state vortex pattern for an $s$-wave interacting atomic condensate by mapping this system to the classical Thompson's problem. We further study the distortion and stability of the vortex pattern when dipolar interaction is present. Our scheme is compatible with current experimental setup, and may serve as a promising route of investigating quantum Hall physics and exotic spinor vortex matter on curved space., Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures

The large number of available orbital angular momentum (OAM) states of photons provides a unique resource for many important applications in quantum information and optical communications. However, conventional OAM switching devices usually rely on precise parameter control and are limited by slow switching rate and low efficiency. Here we propose a robust, fast and efficient photonic OAM switch device based on a topological process, where photons are adiabatically pumped to a target OAM state on demand. Such topological OAM pumping can be realized through manipulating photons in a few degenerate main cavities and involves only a limited number of optical elements. A large change of OAM at $\sim 10^{q}$ can be realized with only $q$ degenerate main cavities and at most $5q$ pumping cycles. The topological photonic OAM switch may become a powerful device for broad applications in many different fields and motivate novel topological design of conventional optical devices., Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures

We consider the fate of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) with time-reversal symmetry and inversion symmetry in a spin-orbit coupled bilayer system. When these two symmetry operators commute, all the single particle bands are exactly two-fold degenerate in the momentum space. The scattering in the two-fold degenerate rings can relax the spin-momentum locking effect resulting from spin-orbit coupling, thus we can realize the spin polarized plane wave phase even when the inter-particle interaction dominates. When these two operators anti-commute, the lowest two bands may have the same minimal energy, which have totally different spin structures. As a result, the competition between different condensates in these two energetically degenerate rings can give rise to interesting stripe phases with atoms condensed at two or four colinear momenta. We find that the crossover between these two cases is accompanied by the excited band condensation when the interference energy can overcome the increased single particle energy in the excited band. This effect is not based on strong interaction, thus can be realized even with moderate interaction strength., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures

We propose a scheme to simulate topological physics within a single degenerate cavity, whose modes are mapped to lattice sites. A crucial ingredient of the scheme is to construct a sharp boundary so that the open boundary condition can be implemented for this effective lattice system. In doing so, the topological properties of the system can manifest themselves on the edge states, which can be probed from the spectrum of an output cavity field. We demonstrate this with two examples: a static Su-Schrieffer-Heeger chain and a periodically driven Floquet topological insulator. Our work opens up new avenues to explore exotic photonic topological phases inside a single optical cavity., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures

We propose a scheme to realize the two-axis counter-twisting spin-squeezing Hamiltonian inside an optical cavity with the aid of phase-locked atom-photon coupling. By careful analysis and extensive simulation, we demonstrate that our scheme is robust against dissipation caused by cavity loss and atomic spontaneous emission, and it can achieve significantly higher squeezing than one axis twisting. We further show how our idea can be extended to generate two-mode spin-squeezed states in two coupled cavities. Due to its easy implementation and high tunability, our scheme is experimentally realizable with current technologies., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures

Even though the traditional dynamical decoupling methods have the ability to resist dynamic dephasing caused by low frequency noise, they are not appropriate for suppressing the residual geometric dephasing, which arises from the disturbance for the geometric loop in the parameter space. This prevents the precision of quantum manipulation based geometric quantum gates from being promoted further. In this paper, we design two kinds of modified dynamical decoupling schemes to suppress the residual geometric dephasing. The further numerical simulation demonstrates the validity of our schemes., Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures

Photons propagating in Laguerre-Gaussian modes have characteristic orbital angular momentums, which are fundamental optical degrees of freedom. The orbital angular momentum of light has potential application in high capacity optical communication and even in quantum information processing. In this work, we experimentally construct a ring cavity with 4 lenses and 4 mirrors that is completely degenerate for Laguerre-Gaussian modes. By measuring the transmission peaks and patterns of different modes, the ring cavity is shown to supporting more than 31 Laguerre-Gaussian modes. The constructed degenerate cavity opens a new way for using the unlimited resource of available angular momentum states simultaneously., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, optics letters

All-optical photonic devices are crucial for many important photonic technology and applications, ranging from optical communication to quantum information processing. Conventional design of all-optical devices is based on photon propagation and interference in real space, which may reply on large numbers of optical elements and are challenging for precise control. Here we propose a new route for engineering all-optical devices using photon internal degrees of freedom, which form photonic crystals in such synthetic dimensions for photon propagation and interference. We demonstrate this new design concept by showing how important optical devices such as quantum memory and optical filter can be realized using synthetic orbital angular momentum (OAM) lattices in a single main degenerate cavity. The new designing route utilizing synthetic photonic lattices may significantly reduce the requirement for numerous optical elements and their fine tuning in conventional design, paving the way for realistic all-optical photonic devices with novel functionalities., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures

It was shown via numerical simulations that geometric phase (GP) and fidelity susceptibility (FS) in some quantum models exhibit universal scaling laws across phase transition points. Here we propose a singular function expansion method to determine their exact form across the critical points as well as their corresponding constants. For the models such as anisotropic XY model where the energy gap is closed and reopened at the special points ($k_0 = 0, \pi$), scaling laws can be found as a function of system length $N$ and parameter deviation $\lambda - \lambda_c$ (where $\lambda_c$ is the critical parameter). Intimate relations for the coefficients in GP and FS have also been determined. However in the extended models where the gap is not closed and reopened at these special points, the scaling as a function of system length $N$ breaks down. We also show that the second order derivative of GP also exhibits some intriguing scaling laws across the critical points. These exact results can greatly enrich our understanding of GP and FS in the characterization of quantum phase transitions., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures

By using a state of art tensor network state method, we study the ground-state phase diagram of an extended Bose-Hubbard model on the square lattice with frustrated next-nearest neighboring tunneling. In the hardcore limit, tunneling frustration stabilizes a peculiar half supersolid (HSS) phase with one sublattice being superfluid and the other sublattice being Mott Insulator away from half filling. In the softcore case, the model shows very rich phase diagrams above half filling, including three different types of supersolid phases depending on the interaction parameters. The considered model provides a promising route to experimentally search for novel stable supersolid state induced by frustrated tunneling in below half filling region with dipolar atoms or molecules.

We study the nonequilibrium quantum phase transition of an Ising chain in a dissipative cavity driven by an external transverse light field. When driving and dissipation are in balance, the system can reach a nonequilibrium steady state which undergoes a super-radiant phase transition as the driving strength increases. Interestingly, the super-radiant field changes the effective bias of the Ising chain in return and drives its own transition between the ferromagnetic and paramagnetic phase. We study the rich physics in this system with sophisticated behavior, and investigate important issues in its dynamics such as the stability of the system and criticality of the phase transition., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures

Orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light is a fundamental optical degree of freedom that has recently motivated much exciting research in diverse fields ranging from optical communication to quantum information. We show for the first time that it is also a unique and valuable resource for quantum simulation, by demonstrating theoretically how \emph{2d} topological physics can be simulated in a \emph{1d} array of optical cavities using OAM-carrying photons. Remarkably, this newly discovered application of OAM states not only reduces required physical resources but also increases feasible scale of simulation. By showing how important topics such as edge-state transport and topological phase transition can be studied in a small simulator with just a few cavities ready for immediate experimental exploration, we demonstrate the prospect of photonic OAM for quantum simulation which can have a significant impact on the research of topological physics., Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures

By means of variational methods and systematic numerical analysis, we demonstrate the existence of stable solitons in three-dimensional (3D) free space, in the context of binary atomic condensates combining contact self-attraction and spin-orbit coupling, which can be engineered by available experimental techniques. Depending on the relative strength of the intra- and inter-component attraction, the stable solitons feature a semi-vortex or mixed-mode structure. In spite of the fact that the local cubic self-attraction gives rise to the supercritical collapse in 3D, the solitons are stable against random perturbations, motion, and collisions., Comment: 5 pages, 7 figures, accepted by Phys. Rev. Lett

We propose a scheme which can realize an extended two-component Bose-Hubbard model using polaritons confined in an array of optical cavities. In addition to the density-dependent interactions, this model also contains nonlinear coupling terms between the two components of the polariton. Using a mean-field calculation, we obtain the phase diagram which shows how these terms affect the transition between the Mott insulator and the superfluid phase. In addition, we employ both a perturbation approach and an exact diagonalization method to gain more insights into the phase diagram.

We consider the ground-state properties of the two-component spin-orbit coupled ultracold bosons subject to a rotationally symmetric in-plane gradient magnetic field. In the non-interacting case, the ground state supports giant-vortices carrying large angular momenta without rotating the trap. The vorticity is highly tunable by varying the amplitudes and orientations of the magnetic field. Interactions drive the system from a giant-vortex state to various configurations of vortex lattice states along a ring. Vortices exhibit ellipse-shaped envelops with the major and minor axes determined by the spin-orbit coupling and healing lengths, respectively. Phase diagrams of vortex lattice configurations are constructed and their stabilities are analyzed., Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, submitted to PRA

We study the quantum phase transition in a spin chain with variable Ising interaction and position-dependent coupling to a resonator field. Such a complicated model, usually not present in natural physical systems, can be simulated by an array of qubits based on man-made devices and exhibits interesting behavior. We show that, when the coupling between the qubit and field is strong enough, a super-radiant phase transition occurs, and it is possible to pick a particular field mode to undergo this phase transition by properly modulating the strength of the Ising interaction. We also study the impact of the resonator field on the magnetic properties of the spin chain, and find a rich set of phases characterized by distinctive qubit correlation functions., Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures

We present a scheme for engineering the extended two-component Bose-Hubbard model using polariton condensate supported by optical microcavity. Compared to the usual two-component Bose-Hubbard model with only Kerr nonlinearity, our model includes a nonlinear tunneling term which depends on the number difference of the particle in the two modes. In the mean field treatment, this model is an analog to a nonrigid pendulum with a variable pendulum length whose sign can be also changed. We study the dynamic and ground state properties of this model and show that there exists a first-order phase transition as the strength of the nonlinear tunneling rate is varied. Furthermore, we propose a scheme to obtain the polariton condensate wave function., Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures

Here we provide a scheme of transforming the one-axis twisting Hamiltonian into the two-axis twisting one based on high order Trotter-Suzuki Approximation. Compared with the paper [Y. C. Liu et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 013601 (2011)], our method can reduce the number of controlling cycles from $1000$ to $50$. Moreover, it is also spin number independent and takes shorter optimal evolution time contrast with the method in the work [C. Shen et al., Phys. Rev. A 87, 051801 (2013)]. The corresponding error analysis is also provided., Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures

We study the capacitance-coupled Josephson junction array beyond the small-coupling limit. We find that, when the scale of the system is large, its Hamiltonian can be obtained without the small-coupling approximation and the system can be used to simulate strongly frustrated one-dimensional Ising spin problems. To engineer the system Hamiltonian for an ideal theoretical model, we apply a dynamical decoupling technique to eliminate undesirable couplings in the system. Using a 6-site junction array as an example, we numerically evaluate the system to show that it exhibits important characteristics of the frustrated spin model., Comment: 8 pages

A convenient and effective way in the quantum double model to study anyons in a topological space with a tensor product structure is to create and braid anyons using ribbon operators connected to a common base site [A. Kitaev Ann.\ Phys. (N.Y.) \textbf{303}, 2 (2003)]. We show how this scheme can be simulated in a physical system by constructing long ribbon operators connected to a base site that is placed faraway. We describe how to move and braid anyons using these ribbon operators, and how to perform measurement on them. We also give the smallest scale of a system that is sufficient for proof-of-principle demonstration of our scheme., Comment: 16 pages

We propose a scheme to simulate one-dimensional XXZ-type Heisenberg spin models with competing interactions between nearest-neighbors (NNs) and next-NNs in photon-coupled micro-cavities. Our scheme, for the first time, exploits the rich resources and flexible controls available in such a system to realize arbitrarily adjustable ratios between the effective NN and next-NN coupling strengths. Such powerful capability allows us to simulate frustration phenomena and disorder behaviors in 1-d systems arising from next-NN interactions, a large class of problems of great importance in condensed matter physics. Our scheme is robust due to the lack of atomic excitations which suppresses spontaneous emission and cavity decay strongly., Comment: 8 pages

We present design techniques of special optical lattices that allow quantum simulation of spin frustration in two-dimensional systems. By carefully overlaying optical lattices with different periods and orientations, we are able to adjust the ratio between the nearest-neighbor and next-nearest-neighbor interaction strengths in a square spin lattice and realize frustration effects. We show that only laser beams of a single frequency is required, and the parameter space reachable in our design is broad enough to study the important phases in the $J_1$-$J_2$ frustrated Heisenberg model and checkerboard antiferromagnet model. By using the polarization spectroscopy for detection, distinct quantum phases and quantum phase transition points can be characterized straightforwardly. Our design thus offers a suitable setup for simulation of frustrated spin systems., Comment: 7 pages

We study theoretically the superfluidity and stability of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) whose interatomic scattering length is periodically modulated with optical Feshbach resonance. Our numerical study finds that the properties of this periodic BEC are strongly influenced by the modulation strength. When the modulation strength is small, only the Bloch waves close to the Brillouin zone edge suffer both Landau and dynamical instabilities. When the modulation strength is strong enough, all Bloch waves become dynamically unstable. In other words, the periodic BEC loses its superfluidity completely., Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures

The simulation of low-temperature properties of many-body systems remains one of the major challenges in theoretical and experimental quantum information science. We present, and demonstrate experimentally, a universal cooling method which is applicable to any physical system that can be simulated by a quantum computer. This method allows us to distill and eliminate hot components of quantum states, i.e., a quantum Maxwell's demon. The experimental implementation is realized with a quantum-optical network, and the results are in full agreement with theoretical predictions (with fidelity higher than 0.978). These results open a new path for simulating low-temperature properties of physical and chemical systems that are intractable with classical methods., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, plus supplementarity materials

We study the phase transitions in a one dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate on a ring whose atomic scattering length is modulated periodically along the ring. By using a modified Bogoliubov method to treat such a nonlinear lattice in the mean field approximation, we find that the phase transitions are of different orders when the modulation period is 2 and greater than 2. We further perform a full quantum mechanical treatment based on the time-evolving block decimation algorithm which confirms the mean field results and reveals interesting quantum behavior of the system. Our studies yield important knowledge of competing mechanisms behind the phase transitions and the quantum nature of this system., Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures

We demonstrate an efficient numerical method to calculate three-tangle of general mixed states. We construct a "energy function" (target function) for the three-tangle of the mixed state under certain constrains. The "energy function" (target function) is then optimized via a replica exchange Monte Carlo method. We have extensively tested the method for the examples with known analytical results, showing remarkable agreement. The method can be applied to other optimization problems in quantum information theory.

We study a quantum computing system using microwave photons in transmission line resonators on a superconducting chip as qubits. We show that all control necessary for quantum computing can be implemented by coupling to Josephson devices on the same chip, and take advantage of their strong inherent nonlinearities to realize qubit interactions. We analyze the gate error rate to demonstrate that our scheme is realistic even for Josephson devices with limited decoherence times. A conceptually innovative solution based on existing technologies, our scheme provides an integrated and scalable approach to the next key milestone for photonic qubit quantum computing., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures