arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Maciej Lewenstein.
We present a review of the problem of finding out whether a quantum state of two or more parties is entangled or separable. After a formal definition of entangled states, we present a few criteria for identifying entangled states and introduce some entanglement measures. We also provide a classification of entangled states with respect to their usefulness in quantum dense coding, and present some aspects of multipartite entanglement.
The theory of quantum Brownian motion describes the properties of a large class of open quantum systems. Nonetheless, its description in terms of a Born-Markov master equation, widely used in the literature, is known to violate the positivity of the density operator at very low temperatures. We study an extension of existing models, leading to an equation in the Lindblad form, which is free of this problem. We study the dynamics of the model, including the detailed properties of its stationary solution, for both constant and position-dependent coupling of the Brownian particle to the bath, focusing in particular on the correlations and the squeezing of the probability distribution induced by the environment
Exploiting quantum properties to outperform classical ways of information-processing is an outstanding goal of modern physics. A promising route is quantum simulation, which aims at implementing relevant and computationally hard problems in controllable quantum systems. Here we demonstrate that in a trapped ion setup, with present day technology, it is possible to realize a spin model of the Mattis type that exhibits spin glass phases. Remarkably, our method produces the glassy behavior without the need for any disorder potential, just by controlling the detuning of the spin-phonon coupling. Applying a transverse field, the system can be used to benchmark quantum annealing strategies which aim at reaching the ground state of the spin glass starting from the paramagnetic phase. In the vicinity of a phonon resonance, the problem maps onto number partitioning, and instances which are difficult to address classically can be implemented.
Finding the global minimum in a rugged potential landscape is a computationally hard task, often equivalent to relevant optimization problems. Simulated annealing is a computational technique which explores the configuration space by mimicking thermal noise. By slow cooling, it freezes the system in a low-energy configuration, but the algorithm often gets stuck in local minima. In quantum annealing, the thermal noise is replaced by controllable quantum fluctuations, and the technique can be implemented in modern quantum simulators. However, quantum-adiabatic schemes become prohibitively slow in the presence of quasidegeneracies. Here we propose a strategy which combines ideas from simulated annealing and quantum annealing. In such hybrid algorithm, the outcome of a quantum simulator is processed on a classical device. While the quantum simulator explores the configuration space by repeatedly applying quantum fluctuations and performing projective measurements, the classical computer evaluates each configuration and enforces a lowering of the energy. We have simulated this algorithm for small instances of the random energy model, showing that it potentially outperforms both simulated thermal annealing and adiabatic quantum annealing. It becomes most efficient for problems involving many quasi-degenerate ground states.
Cold atoms in an optical lattice with brick-wall geometry have been used to mimic graphene, a two-dimensional material with characteristic Dirac excitations. Here we propose to bring such artificial graphene into the proximity of a second atomic layer with a square lattice geometry. For non-interacting fermions, we find that such bilayer system undergoes a phase transition from a graphene-like semi-metal phase, characterized by a band structure with Dirac points, to a gapped band insulator phase. In the presence of attractive interactions between fermions with pseudospin-1/2 degree of freedom, a competition between semi-metal and superfluid behavior is found at the mean-field level. Using the quantum Monte Carlo method, we also investigate the case of strong repulsive interactions. In the Mott phase, each layer exhibits a different amount of long-range magnetic order. Upon coupling both layers, a valence-bond crystal is formed at a critical coupling strength. Finally, we discuss how these bilayer systems could be realized in existing cold atom experiments.
Determination and characterization of criticality in two-dimensional (2D) quantum many-body systems belong to the most important challenges and problems of quantum physics. In this paper we propose an efficient scheme to solve this problem by utilizing the infinite projected entangled pair state (iPEPS), and tensor network (TN) representations. We show that the criticality of a 2D state is faithfully reproduced by the ground state (dubbed as boundary state) of a one-dimensional effective Hamiltonian constructed from its iPEPS representation. We demonstrate that for a critical state the correlation length and the entanglement spectrum of the boundary state are essentially different from those of a gapped iPEPS. This provides a solid indicator that allows to identify the criticality of the 2D state. Our scheme is verified on the resonating valence bond (RVB) states on kagomé and square lattices, where the boundary state of the honeycomb RVB is found to be described by a $c=1$ conformal field theory. We apply our scheme also to the ground state of the spin-1/2 XXZ model on honeycomb lattice, illustrating the difficulties of standard variational TN approaches to study the critical ground states. Our scheme is of high versatility and flexibility, and can be further applied to investigate the quantum criticality in many other phenomena, such as finite-temperature and topological phase transitions.
Density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) is one of the most powerful numerical methods available for many-body systems. In this work, we develop a perturbation theory of DMRG (PT-DMRG) to largely increase its accuracy in an extremely simple and efficient way. By using the canonical matrix product state (MPS) representation for the ground state of the considered system, a set of orthogonal basis functions $\left\lbrace | ψ_i \rangle \right\rbrace$ is introduced to describe the perturbations to the ground state obtained by the conventional DMRG. The Schmidt numbers of the MPS that are beyond the bond dimension cut-off are used to define such perturbation terms. The perturbed Hamiltonian is then defined as $\tilde{H}_{ij}= \langle ψ_i | \hat{H} | ψ_j \rangle$; its ground state permits to calculate physical observables with a considerably improved accuracy as compared to the original DMRG results. We benchmark the second-order perturbation theory with the help of one-dimensional Ising chain in a transverse field and the Heisenberg chain, where the precision of DMRG is shown to be improved $\rm O(10)$ times. Furthermore, for moderate length $L$ the errors of DMRG and PT-DMRG both scale linearly with $L^{-1}$. The linear relation between the dimension cut-off of DMRG and that of PT-DMRG with the same precision shows a considerable improvement of efficiency, especially for large dimension cut-off's. In thermodynamic limit we show that the errors of PT-DMRG scale with $\sqrt{L^{-1}}$. Our work suggests an effective way to define the tangent space of the ground state MPS, which may shed lights on the properties beyond the ground state. Such second-order PT-DMRG can be readily generalized to higher orders, as well as applied to the models in higher dimensions.
Emission of high-order harmonics from solids provides a new avenue in attosecond science. On one hand, it allows to investigate fundamental processes of the non-linear response of electrons driven by a strong laser pulse in a periodic crystal lattice. On the other hand, it opens new paths toward efficient attosecond pulse generation, novel imaging of electronic wave functions, and enhancement of high-order harmonic generation (HHG) intensity. A key feature of HHG in a solid (as compared to the well-understood phenomena of HHG in an atomic gas) is the delocalization of the process, whereby an electron ionized from one site in the periodic lattice may recombine with any other. Here, we develop an analytic model, based on the localized Wannier wave functions in the valence band and delocalized Bloch functions in the conduction band. This Wannier-Bloch approach assesses the contributions of individual lattice sites to the HHG process, and hence addresses precisely the question of localization of harmonic emission in solids. We apply this model to investigate HHG in a ZnO crystal for two different orientations, corresponding to wider and narrower valence and conduction bands, respectively. Interestingly, for narrower bands, the HHG process shows significant localization, similar to harmonic generation in atoms. For all cases, the delocalized contributions to HHG emission are highest near the band-gap energy. Our results pave the way to controlling localized contributions to HHG in a solid crystal, with hard to overestimate implications for the emerging area of atto-nanoscience.
Quantum systems allow one to sense physical parameters beyond the reach of classical statistics---with resolutions greater than $1/N$, where $N$ is the number of constituent particles independently probing a parameter. In the canonical phase sensing scenario the \emph{Heisenberg Limit} $1/N^{2}$ may be reached, which requires, as we show, both the relative size of the largest entangled block and the geometric measure of entanglement to be nonvanishing as $N\to\infty$. Yet, we also demonstrate that in the asymptotic $N$ limit any precision scaling arbitrarily close to the Heisenberg Limit ($1/N^{2-\varepsilon}$ with any $\varepsilon>0$) may be attained, even though the system gradually becomes noisier and separable, so that both the above entanglement quantifiers asymptotically vanish. Our work shows that sufficiently large quantum systems achieve nearly optimal resolutions despite their relative amount of entanglement being arbitrarily small. In deriving our results, we establish the continuity relation of the quantum Fisher information evaluated for a phaselike parameter, which lets us link it directly to the geometry of quantum states, and hence naturally to the geometric measure of entanglement.
The year 2015 was the International Year of Light. It marked, however, also the 20th anniversary of the first observation of Bose-Einstein condensation in atomic vapors by Eric Cornell, Carl Wieman and Wolfgang Ketterle. This discovery can be considered as one of the greatest achievements of quantum optics that has triggered an avalanche of further seminal discoveries and achievements. For this reason we devote this essay for focus issue on "Quantum Optics in the International Year of Light" to the recent revolutionary developments in quantum optics at the frontiers of all physics: atomic physics, molecular physics, condensed matter physics, high energy physics and quantum information science. We follow here the lines of the introduction to our book "Ultracold atoms in optical lattices: Simulating quantum many-body systems" [1]. The book, however, was published in 2012, and many things has happened since then -- the present essay is therefore upgraded to include the latest developments.
We suggest a method for engineering a quantum walk, with cold atoms as walkers, which presents topologically non-trivial properties. We derive the phase diagram, and show that we are able to produce a boundary between topologically distinct phases using the finite beam width of the applied lasers. A topologically protected bound state can then be observed, which is pinned to the interface and is robust to perturbations. We show that it is possible to identify this bound state by averaging over spin sensitive measures of the atom's position, based on the spin distribution that these states display. Interestingly, there exists a parameter regime in which our system maps on to the Creutz ladder.
Ultracold bosons in a triangular lattice are a promising candidate for observing quantum spin liquid behavior. Here we investigate, for such system, the role of a harmonic trap giving rise to an inhomogeneous density. We construct a modified spin-wave theory for arbitrary filling, and predict the breakdown of order for certain values of the lattice anisotropy. These regimes, identified with the spin liquid phases, are found to be quite robust upon changes in the filling factor. This result is backed by an exact diagonalization study on a small lattice.
We study families of positive and completely positive maps acting on a bipartite system $\mathbb{C}^M\otimes \mathbb{C}^N$ (with $M\leq N$). The maps have a property that when applied to any state (of a given entanglement class) they result in a separable state, or more generally a state of another certain entanglement class (e.g., Schmidt number $\leq k$). This allows us to derive useful families of sufficient separability criteria. Explicit examples of such criteria have been constructed for arbitrary $M,N$, with a special emphasis on $M=2$. Our results can be viewed as generalizations of the known facts that in the sufficiently close vicinity of the completely depolarized state (the normalized identity matrix), all states are separable (belong to "weakly" entangled classes). Alternatively, some of our results can be viewed as an entanglement classification for a certain family of states, corresponding to mixtures of the completely polarized state with pure state projectors, partially transposed and locally transformed pure state projectors.
One-dimensional Bose gas with contact interaction in optical lattices at zero temperature is investigated by means of the exact diffusion Monte Carlo algorithm. The results obtained from the fundamental continuous model are compared with those obtained from the lattice (discrete) Bose-Hubbard model, using exact diagonalization, and from the quantum sine-Gordon model. We map out the complete phase diagram of the continuous model and determine the regions of applicability of the Bose-Hubbard model. Various physical quantities characterizing the systems are calculated and it is demonstrated that the sine-Gordon model used for shallow lattices is inaccurate.
We show that trace distance measure of coherence is a strong monotone for all qubit and, so called, $X$ states. An expression for the trace distance coherence for all pure states and a semi definite program for arbitrary states is provided. We also explore the relation between $l_1$-norm and relative entropy based measures of coherence, and give a sharp inequality connecting the two. In addition, it is shown that both $l_p$-norm- and Schatten-$p$-norm-based measures violate the (strong) monotonicity for all $p\in(1,\infty)$.
We analyze the role of impurities in the fractional quantum Hall effect using a highly controllable system of ultracold atoms. We investigate the mechanism responsible for the formation of plateaux in the resistivity/conductivity as a function of the applied magnetic field in the lowest Landau level regime. To this aim, we consider an impurity immersed in a small cloud of an ultracold quantum Bose gas subjected to an artificial magnetic field. We consider scenarios corresponding to experimentally realistic systems with gauge fields induced either by rotation or by appropriately designed laser fields. Systems of this kind are adequate to simulate quantum Hall effects in ultracold atom setups. We use exact diagonalization for few atoms and, to emulate transport equations, we analyze the time evolution of the system under a periodic perturbation. We provide a theoretical proposal to detect the up-to-now elusive presence of strongly correlated states related to fractional filling factors in the context of ultracold atoms. We analyze the conditions under which these strongly correlated states are associated with the presence of the resistivity/conductivity plateaux. Our main result is the presence of a plateau in a region, where the transfer between localized and non-localized particles takes place, as a necessary condition to maintain a constant value of the resistivity/conductivity as the magnetic field increases.
We employ \textit{ab initio} methods of quantum chemistry to investigate spin-1/2 fermions interacting via a two-body contact potential in a one-dimensional harmonic trap. The convergence of the total energy with the size of the one-particle basis set is analytically investigated for the two-body problem and the same form of the convergence formula is numerically confirmed to be valid for the many-body case. Benchmark calculations for two to six fermions with the full configuration interaction method equivalent to the exact diagonalization approach, and the coupled cluster method including single, double, triple, and quadruple excitations are presented. The convergence of the correlation energy with the level of excitations included in the coupled cluster model is analyzed. The range of the interaction strength for which single-reference coupled cluster methods work is examined. Next, the coupled cluster method restricted to single, double, and noniterative triple excitations, CCSD(T), is employed to study a two-component Fermi gas composed of 6 to 80 atoms in a one-dimensional harmonic trap. The density profiles of trapped atomic clouds are also reported. Finally, a comparison with experimental results for few-fermion systems is presented. Upcoming possible applications and extensions of the presented approach are discussed.
The properties of a balanced two-component Fermi gas in a one-dimensional harmonic trap are studied by means of the coupled cluster method. For few fermions we recover the results of exact diagonalization, yet with this method we are able to study much larger systems. We compute the energy, the chemical potential, the pairing gap, and the density profile of the trapped clouds, smoothly mapping the crossover between the few-body and many-body limits. The energy is found to converge surprisingly rapidly to the many-body result for every value of the interaction strength. Many more particles are instead needed to give rise to the non-analytic behavior of the pairing gap, and to smoothen the pronounced even-odd oscillations of the chemical potential induced by the shell structure of the trap.