Precise coherent control of the individual electronic spins associated with atomlike impurities in the solid state is essential for applications in quantum information processing and quantum metrology. We demonstrate all-optical initialization, fast coherent manipulation, and readout of the electronic spin of the negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy $\left({\text{NV}}^{-}\right)$ center in diamond at $T\sim \text{7}\text{K}$. We then present the observation of a novel double-dark resonance in the spectroscopy of an individual NV center. These techniques open the door for new applications ranging from robust manipulation of spin states using geometric quantum gates to quantum sensing and information processing.

We revisit the stabilization of ionization of atoms subjected to a superintense laser pulse using nonlinear dynamics. We provide an explanation for the lack of complete ionization at high intensity and for the decrease of the ionization probability as intensity is increased. We investigate the role of each part of the laser pulse (ramp-up, plateau, ramp-down) in this process. We emphasize the role of the choice for the ionization criterion, energy versus distance criterion.

We study a scheme for implementing a controlled-Z (cz) gate between two neutral-atom qubits based on the Rydberg blockade mechanism in a manner that is robust to errors caused by atomic motion. By employing adiabatic dressing of the ground electronic state, we can protect the gate from decoherence due to random phase errors that typically arise because of atomic thermal motion. In addition, the adiabatic protocol allows for a Doppler-free configuration that involves counterpropagating lasers in a ${\sigma }_{+}/{\sigma }_{-}$ orthogonal polarization geometry that further reduces motional errors due to Doppler shifts. The residual motional error is dominated by dipole-dipole forces acting on doubly excited Rydberg atoms when the blockade is imperfect. For reasonable parameters, with qubits encoded into the clock states of ${}^{133}\mathrm{Cs}$, we predict that our protocol could produce a cz gate in $<10$ $\mu \mathrm{s}$ with error probability on the order of ${10}^{-3}$.

Using the test-particle method, we solve numerically the Boltzmann equation for an ultracold gas of trapped fermions with realistic particle number and trap geometry in the normal phase. We include a mean-field potential and in-medium modifications of the cross section obtained within a T-matrix formalism. After some tests showing the reliability of our procedure, we apply the method to realistic cases of practical interest, namely the anisotropic expansion of the cloud and the radial quadrupole mode oscillation. Our results are in good agreement with experimental data. Although the in-medium effects significantly increase the collision rate, we find that they have only a moderate effect on the anisotropic expansion and on frequency and damping rate of the quadrupole mode.

We experimentally demonstrate an atom number detector capable of simultaneous detection of two mesoscopic ensembles with single-atom resolution. Such a sensitivity is a prerequisite for quantum metrology at a precision approaching the Heisenberg limit. Our system is based on fluorescence detection of atoms in a hybrid trap in which a dipole barrier divides a magneto-optical trap into two separated wells. We introduce a noise model describing the various sources contributing to the measurement error and report a limit of up to 500 atoms for single-atom resolution in the atom number difference.

We investigate the interaction of metastable $2S$ hydrogen atoms with a perfectly conducting wall, including parity-breaking $S-P$ mixing terms (with full account of retardation). The neighboring $2P_{1/2}$ and $2P_{3/2}$ levels are found to have a profound effect on the transition from the short-range, nonrelativistic regime, to the retarded form of the Casimir-Polder interaction. The corresponding $P$ state admixtures to the metastable $2S$ state are calculated. We find the long-range asymptotics of the retarded Casimir-Polder potentials and mixing amplitudes for general excited states, including a fully quantum electrodynamic treatment of the dipole-quadrupole mixing term. The decay width of the metastable $2S$ state is roughly doubled even at a comparatively large distance of 918 a.u. (Bohr radii) from the perfect conductor. The magnitude of the calculated effects is compared to the unexplained Sokolov effect.

Using the inherent timing stability of pulses from a mode-locked laser, we measure the cesium $6P_{3/2}$ excited-state lifetime. An initial pump pulse excites cesium atoms in two counterpropagating atomic beams to the $6P_{3/2}$ level. A subsequent synchronized probe pulse ionizes atoms that remain in the excited state and the photoions are collected and counted. By selecting pump pulses that vary in time with respect to the probe pulses, we obtain a sampling of the excited-state population in time, resulting in a lifetime value of 30.462(46) ns. The measurement uncertainty (0.15%) is slightly larger than our previous report of 0.12% [J. F. Sell et al., Phys. Rev. A 84, 010501(R) (2011)] due to the inclusion of additional data and systematic errors. In this follow-up paper we present details of the primary systematic errors encountered in the measurement, which include atomic motion within the intensity profiles of the laser beams, quantum beating in the photoion signal, and radiation trapping. Improvements to further reduce the experimental uncertainty are also discussed.

We demonstrate a method for preparing and detecting all eigenstates of a three-level microwave dressed system with a single trapped ion. The method significantly reduces the experimental complexity of gate operations with dressed-state qubits, as well as allowing all three of the dressed states to be prepared and detected, thereby providing access to a qutrit that is well protected from magnetic field noise. In addition, we demonstrate individual addressing of the clock transitions in two ions using a strong static magnetic field gradient, showing that our method can be used to prepare and detect microwave dressed states in a string of ions when performing multi-ion quantum operations with microwave and radio frequency fields. The individual addressability of clock transitions could also allow for the control of pairwise interaction strengths between arbitrary ions in a string using lasers.

We analyze the conditions under which local operations and classical communication enable entanglement transformations between bipartite pure Gaussian states. A set of necessary and sufficient conditions had been found [G. Giedke et al., Quant. Inf. Comput. 3, 211 (2003)] for the interconversion between such states that is restricted to Gaussian local operations and classical communication. Here, we exploit majorization theory in order to derive more general (sufficient) conditions for the interconversion between bipartite pure Gaussian states that goes beyond Gaussian local operations. While our technique is applicable to an arbitrary number of modes for each party, it allows us to exhibit surprisingly simple examples of $2\times 2$ Gaussian states that necessarily require non-Gaussian local operations to be transformed into each other.

We measured differential cross sections for exciting the three lowest electronically excited states in furan, as functions both of electron energy and of scattering angle. Emphasis of the present work is on recording detailed excitation functions, revealing resonances in the excitation process. The cross section for the first triplet state has a shoulder in the first 2 eV above threshold, assigned to the high-energy tails of the shape resonances, followed by two peaks at 6.5 and 8.0 eV, assigned to two ${}^2(\pi ,{\pi }^{*2})$ core-excited shape resonances with substantial configuration mixing. The excitation mechanism thus closely follows that of the prototype case of ethene, except that as the number of double bonds doubles, the numbers of both shape and core-excited resonances also double. The cross section for the singlet states around 6 eV (primarily the $S_2{}^1{B}_2$ state) rises linearly with energy and attains very high values in the forward direction as expected for a dipole-allowed transition, but has a vertical onset at higher scattering angles, possibly due to a threshold core-excited ${}^2(\pi ,{\pi }^{*}3\overline{s})$ resonance responsible also for dissociative attachment. Elastic cross sections are also presented. Both elastic and inelastic absolute values compare favorably with existing measurements where available, except very near threshold. The results are compared to existing calculations.

Advanced pulsed cryogenic molecular-beam electric deflection methods involving position-sensitive mass spectrometry and 7.87-eV ionizing radiation were used to measure the polarizabilities of more than half of the metallic elements in the Periodic Table. Concurrent Stern-Gerlach deflection measurements verified the ground-state condition of the measured atoms. Comparison with state-of-the-art calculations exposes significant systematic and isolated discrepancies throughout the Periodic Table.

Ab initio QED calculations of the ground-state binding energies of berylliumlike ions are performed for the wide range of the nuclear charge number: $Z=18–96$. The calculations are carried out in the framework of the extended Furry picture starting with three different types of the screening potential. The rigorous QED calculations up to the second order of the perturbation theory are combined with the third- and higher-order electron-correlation contributions obtained within the Breit approximation by the use of the large-scale configuration-interaction Dirac-Fock-Sturm method. The effects of nuclear recoil and nuclear polarization are taken into account. The ionization potentials are obtained by subtracting the binding energies of the corresponding lithiumlike ions. In comparison with the previous calculations the accuracy of the binding energies and the ionization potentials is significantly improved.

We provide an elementary description of the dynamics of defect centers in crystals in terms of a quantum optical master equation which includes spontaneous decay and a simplified vibronic interaction with lattice phonons. We present the general solution of the dynamical equation by means of the eigensystem of the Liouville operator and exemplify the usage of this damping basis to calculate the dynamics of the electronic and vibrational degrees of freedom and to provide an analysis of the spectra of scattered light. The dynamics and spectral features are discussed with respect to the applicability for color centers, especially for negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond.

We show theoretically that it is possible to create and manipulate a pair of bound states in the continuum in ultracold atoms by two lasers in the presence of a magnetically tunable Feshbach resonance. These bound states are formed due to coherent superposition of two electronically excited molecular bound states and a quasibound state in the ground-state potential. These superposition states are decoupled from the continuum of two-atom collisional states. Hence, in the absence of other damping processes they are nondecaying. We analyze in detail the physical conditions that can lead to the formation of such states in cold collisions between atoms and discuss the possible experimental signatures of such states. An extremely narrow and asymmetric shape with a distinct minimum of the photoassociative absorption spectrum or the scattering cross section as a function of collision energy will indicate the occurrence of a bound state in the continuum (BIC). We prove that the minimum will occur at the energy at which the BIC is formed. We discuss how a BIC will be useful for efficient the creation of Feshbach molecules and manipulation of cold collisions. Experimental realizations of BIC will pave the way for a new kind of bound-bound spectroscopy in ultracold atoms.

We use fidelity susceptibility to calculate quantum critical scaling exponents for a system consisting of $N$ identical bosons interacting with a single impurity atom in a double-well potential (bosonic Josephson junction). Above a critical value of the boson-impurity interaction energy there is a spontaneous breaking of ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ symmetry corresponding to a second-order quantum phase transition from a balanced to an imbalanced number of particles in either the left- or the right-hand well. We show that the exponents match those in the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick and Dicke models, suggesting that the impurity model is in the same universality class. The phase transition can be interpreted as a measurement of the position of the impurity by the bosons.

A framework is established for evaluating cphase gates that use single-photon cross-phase modulation (XPM) originating from the Kerr nonlinearity. Prior work [J. H. Shapiro, Phys. Rev. A 73, 062305 (2006)], which assumed that the control and target pulses propagated at the same group velocity, showed that the causality-induced phase noise required by a noninstantaneous XPM response function precluded the possibility of high-fidelity $\pi$-radian conditional phase shifts. The framework presented herein incorporates the more realistic case of group-velocity disparity between the control and target pulses, as employed in existing XPM-based fiber-optical switches. Nevertheless, the causality-induced phase noise identified by Shapiro [J. H. Shapiro, Phys. Rev. A 73, 062305 (2006)] still rules out high-fidelity $\pi$-radian conditional phase shifts. This is shown to be so for both a reasonable theoretical model for the XPM response function and for the experimentally measured XPM response function of silica-core fiber.

We consider a single-impurity atom confined to an optical lattice and immersed in a homogeneous Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). Interaction of the impurity with the phonon modes of the BEC leads to the formation of a stable quasiparticle, the polaron. We use a variational mean-field approach to study dispersion renormalization and derive equations describing nonequilibrium dynamics of polarons by projecting equations of motion into mean-field-type wave functions. As a concrete example, we apply our method to study dynamics of impurity atoms in response to a suddenly applied force and explore the interplay of coherent Bloch oscillations and incoherent drift. We obtain a nonlinear dependence of the drift velocity on the applied force, including a sub-Ohmic dependence for small forces for dimensionality $d>1$ of the BEC. For the case of heavy impurity atoms, we derive a closed analytical expression for the drift velocity. Our results show considerable differences with the commonly used phenomenological Esaki-Tsu model.

Many predictions of Doppler-cooling theory of two-level atoms have never been verified in a three-dimensional geometry, including the celebrated minimum achievable temperature $\hslash \Gamma /2k_B$, where $\Gamma$ is the transition linewidth. Here we show that, despite their degenerate level structure, we can use helium-4 atoms to achieve a situation in which these predictions can be verified. We make measurements of atomic temperatures, magneto-optical trap sizes, and the sensitivity of optical molasses to a power imbalance in the laser beams, finding excellent agreement with Doppler theory. We show that the special properties of helium, particularly its small mass and narrow transition linewidth, prevent effective sub-Doppler cooling with red-detuned optical molasses. This discussion can be generalized to identify when a given species is likely to be subject to the same limitation.

We study a distribution of thermal states given by random Hamiltonians with a local structure. We show that the ensemble of thermal states monotonically approaches the unitarily invariant ensemble with decreasing temperature if all particles interact according to a single random interaction and achieves a state $t$-design at temperature $O(1/\log \left(t\right))$. For the system where the random interactions are local, we show that the ensemble achieves a state 1-design. We then provide numerical evidence indicating that the ensemble undergoes a phase transition at finite temperature.

We simulate the time-dependent Schrödinger equation and observe the rescattering dissociation of ${\mathrm{H}}_2$ in strong infrared laser fields. Two dissociation pathways are identified, i.e., the dissociation of ${\mathrm{H}}_2{}^{+}$ in the $2p{\sigma }_u$ state and the dissociation of ${\mathrm{H}}_2$ in doubly excited states. The former accounts for larger proportions as the rescattering energy is larger. The kinetic energy release of dissociative fragments reflects the temporal internuclear distance at the moment the rescattering happens.