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Tzu-Chieh Wei

Publications and source records attributed to Tzu-Chieh Wei.

At least 127 records · Page 7Linked to original sources

Visualizing elusive phase transitions with geometric entanglement

We show that by examining the global geometric entanglement it is possible to identify "elusive" or hard to detect quantum phase transitions. We analyze several one-dimensional quantum spin chains and demonstrate the existence of non-analyticities in the geometric entanglement, in particular across a Kosterlitz-Thouless transition and across a transition for a gapped deformed Affleck-Kennedy-Lieb-Tasaki chain. The observed non-analyticities can be understood and classified in connection to the nature of the transitions, and are in sharp contrast to the analytic behavior of all the two-body reduced density operators and their derived entanglement measures.

cond-mat.str-el↗

Remote Preparation of Single-Photon "Hybrid" Entangled and Vector-Polarization States

Quantum teleportation faces increasingly demanding requirements for transmitting large or even entangled systems. However, knowledge of the state to be transmitted eases its reconstruction, resulting in a protocol known as remote state preparation. A number of experimental demonstrations to date have been restricted to single-qubit systems. We report the remote preparation of two-qubit "hybrid" entangled states, including a family of vector-polarization beams. Our single-photon states are encoded in the photon spin and orbital angular momentum. We reconstruct the states by spin-orbit state tomography and transverse polarization tomography. The high fidelities achieved for the vector-polarization states opens the door to optimal coupling of down-converted photons to other physical systems, such as an atom, as required for scalable quantum networks, or plasmons in photonic nanostructures.

quant-ph↗

Beating the channel capacity limit for linear photonic superdense coding

Dense coding is arguably the protocol that launched the field of quantum communication. Today, however, more than a decade after its initial experimental realization, the channel capacity remains fundamentally limited as conceived for photons using linear elements. Bob can only send to Alice three of four potential messages owing to the impossibility of carrying out the deterministic discrimination of all four Bell states with linear optics, reducing the attainable channel capacity from 2 to log_2 3 \approx 1.585 bits. However, entanglement in an extra degree of freedom enables the complete and deterministic discrimination of all Bell states. Using pairs of photons simultaneously entangled in spin and orbital angular momentum, we demonstrate the quantum advantage of the ancillary entanglement. In particular, we describe a dense-coding experiment with the largest reported channel capacity and, to our knowledge, the first to break the conventional linear-optics threshold. Our encoding is suited for quantum communication without alignment and satellite communication.

quant-ph↗

Entanglement under the renormalization-group transformations on quantum states and in quantum phase transitions

We consider quantum states under the renormalization-group (RG) transformations introduced by Verstraete et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 140601 (2005)] and propose a quantification of entanglement under such RG (via the geometric measure of entanglement). We examine the resulting entanglement under RG for the ground states of "matrix-product-state" (MPS) Hamiltonians constructed by Wolf et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 110403 (2006)] that possess quantum phase transitions. We find that near critical points, the ground-state entanglement exhibits singular behavior. The singular behavior within finite steps of RG obeys a scaling hypothesis and reveals the correlation length exponent. However, under the infinite steps of RG transformation, the singular behavior is rendered different and is universal only when there is an underlying conformal-field-theory description of the critical point.

quant-ph↗

Exchange symmetry and global entanglement and full separability

Ichikawa et al. [Phys. Rev. A 78, 052105 (2008)] showed that exchange symmetry gives rise to simple characterization of whether multipartite pure quantum states being either globally entangled or fully separable. In this Brief Report, we provide a simple alternative approach and some extension to their conclusions.

quant-ph↗

Tunable Luttinger liquid physics in biased bilayer graphene

Electronically gated bilayer graphene behaves as a tunable gap semiconductor under a uniform interlayer bias $V_{g}$. Imposing a spatially varying bias, which changes polarity from $-V_g$ to $+V_g$, leads to one dimensional (1D) chiral modes localized along the domain wall of the bias. Due to the broad transverse spread of their low-energy wavefunctions, we find that the dominant interaction between these 1D electrons is the forward scattering part of the Coulomb repulsion. Incorporating these interactions and the gate voltage dependence of the dispersion and wavefunctions, we find that these 1D modes behave as a strongly interacting Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid with three distinct mode velocities and a bias dependent Luttinger parameter, and discuss its experimental signatures.

cond-mat.str-el↗

Accessing nanotube bands via crossed electric and magnetic fields

We investigate the properties of conduction electrons in single-walled armchair carbon nanotubes in the presence of mutually orthogonal electric and magnetic fields transverse to the tube's axis. We find that the fields give rise to an asymmetric dispersion in the right- and left-moving electrons along the tube as well as a band-dependent interaction. We predict that such a nanotube system would exhibit spin-band-charge separation and a band-dependant tunneling density of states. We show that in the quantum dot limit, the fields serve to completely tune the quantum states of electrons added to the nanotube. For each of the predicted effects, we provide examples and estimates that are relevant to experiment.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Maximally entangled three-qubit states via geometric measure of entanglement

Bipartite maximally entangled states have the property that the largest Schmidt coefficient reaches its lower bound. However, for multipartite states the standard Schmidt decomposition generally does not exist. We use a generalized Schmidt decomposition and the geometric measure of entanglement to characterize three-qubit pure states and derive a single-parameter family of maximally entangled three-qubit states. The paradigmatic Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) and W states emerge as extreme members in this family of maximally entangled states. This family of states possess different trends of entanglement behavior: in going from GHZ to W states the geometric measure and the relative entropy of entanglement and the bipartite entanglement all increase monotonically whereas the three-tangle and bi-partition negativity both decrease monotonically.

quant-ph↗

Critical velocity of a clean one-dimensional superconductor

We revisit the problem of the critical velocity of a clean one-dimensional superconductor. {\changed At the level of mean-field theory}, we find that the zero-temperature value of the critical velocity--the uniform velocity of the superfluid condensate at which the superconducting state becomes unstable--is a factor of $\sqrt{2}$ smaller than the Landau critical velocity. This is in contrast to a prior finding, which held that the critical velocity is equal to the Landau critical velocity. The smaller value of the critical velocity, which our analysis yields, is the result of a pre-emptive Clogston-Chandrasekhar--like discontinuous phase transition, and is an analog of the threshold value of the uniform exchange-field of a superconductor, previously investigated by Sarma and by Maki and Tsuneto. We also consider the impact of nonzero temperature, study critical currents, and examine metastability and its limits in the temperature versus flow-velocity phase diagram. In addition, we comment on the effects of electron scattering by impurities.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

Interacting boson problems are QMA-hard

Computing the ground-state energy of interacting electron (fermion) problems has recently been shown to be hard for QMA, a quantum analogue of the complexity class NP. Fermionic problems are usually hard, a phenomenon widely attributed to the so-called sign problem occurring in Quantum Monte Carlo simulations. The corresponding bosonic problems are, according to conventional wisdom, tractable. Here, we discuss the complexity of interacting boson problems and show that they are also QMA-hard. In addition, we show that the bosonic version of the so-called N-representability problem is QMA-complete, as hard as its fermionic version. As a consequence, these problems are unlikely to have efficient quantum algorithms.

quant-ph↗

Quantum entanglement: geometric quantification and applications to multi-partite states and quantum phase transitions

The degree to which a pure quantum state is entangled can be characterized by the distance or angle to the nearest unentangled state. This geometric measure of entanglement is explored for bi-partite and multi-partite pure and mixed states. It is determined analytically for arbitrary two-qubit mixed states, generalized Werner, and isotropic states, and is also applied to certain multi-partite mixed states, including two distinct multi-partite bound entangled states. Moreover, the ground-state entanglement of the XY model in a transverse field is calculated and shown to exhibit singular behavior near the quantum critical line. Along the way, connections are pointed out between the geometric measure of entanglement, the Hartree approximation, entanglement witnesses, correlation functions, and the relative entropy of entanglement.

quant-ph↗

Transverse field-induced effects in carbon nanotubes

We investigate the properties of conduction electrons in single-walled armchair carbon nanotubes (SWNT) in the presence of both transverse electric and magnetic fields. We find that these fields provide a controlled means of tuning low-energy band structure properties such as inducing gaps in the spectrum, breaking various symmetries and altering the Fermi velocities. We show that the fields can strongly affect electron-electron interaction, yielding tunable Luttinger liquid physics, the possibility of spin-charge-band separation, and a competition between spin-density-wave and charge-density-wave order. For short tubes, the fields can alter boundary conditions and associated single-particle level spacings as well as quantum dot behavior.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Probing individual topological tunnelling events of a quantum field via their macroscopic consequences

Phase slips are topological fluctuation events that carry the superconducting order-parameter field between distinct current carrying states. Owing to these phase slips low-dimensional superconductors acquire electrical resistance. In quasi-one-dimensional nanowires it is well known that at higher temperatures phase slips occur via the process of thermal barrier-crossing by the order-parameter field. At low temperatures, the general expectation is that phase slips should proceed via quantum tunnelling events, which are known as quantum phase slips (QPS). Here we report strong evidence for individual quantum tunnelling events undergone by the superconducting order-parameter field in homogeneous nanowires.We accomplish this via measurements of the distribution of switching currents-the high-bias currents at which superconductivity gives way to resistive behaviour-whose width exhibits a rather counter-intuitive, monotonic increase with decreasing temperature. We outline a stochastic model of phase slip kinetics which relates the basic phase slip rates to switching rates. Comparison with this model indicates that the phase predominantly slips via thermal activation at high temperatures but at sufficiently low temperatures switching is caused by individual topological tunnelling events of the order-parameter field, i.e., QPS. Importantly, measurements on several wires show that quantum fluctuations tend to dominate over thermal fluctuations at larger temperatures in wires having larger critical currents. This fact provides strong supports the view that the anomalously high switching rates observed at low temperatures are indeed due to QPS, and not consequences of extraneous noise or hidden inhomogeneity of the wire.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

Emergence of $h/e$-period oscillations in the critical temperature of small superconducting rings threaded by magnetic flux

As a function of the magnetic flux threading the object, the Little-Parks oscillation in the critical temperature of a large-radius, thin-walled superconducting ring or hollow cylinder has a period given by $h/2e$, due to the binding of electrons into Cooper pairs. On the other hand, the single-electron Aharonov-Bohm oscillation in the resistance or persistent current for a clean (i.e. ballistic) normal-state system having the same topological structure has a period given by $h/e$. A basic question is whether the Little-Parks oscillation changes its character, as the radius of the superconducting structure becomes smaller, and even comparable to the zero-temperature coherence length. We supplement the argument that the $h/e$ oscillations should also be exhibited via a microscopic analysis of this regime, formulated in terms of the Gor'kov approach of BCS theory. We see that as the radius of the ring becomes smaller, an oscillation of critical temperature in the period of $h/e$ emerges in addition to the usual Little-Parks dependence. We argue that in the clean limit there is a superconductor-normal transition, at nonzero flux, as the ring radius becomes sufficiently small, and that the transition can be either continuous or discontinuous, depending on the radius and the external flux. In the dirty limit, we argue that the transition is rendered continuous, which results in continuous quantum phase transitions tuned by flux and radius.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

Relative entropy of entanglement for certain multipartite mixed states

We prove conjectures on the relative entropy of entanglement (REE) for two families of multipartite qubit states. Thus, analytic expressions of REE for these families of states can be given. The first family of states are composed of mixture of some permutation-invariant multi-qubit states. The results generalized to multi-qudit states are also shown to hold. The second family of states contain Dür's bound entangled states. Along the way, we have discussed the relation of REE to two other measures: robustness of entanglement and geometric measure of entanglement, slightly extending previous results.

quant-ph↗

Local superfluid densities probed via current-induced superconducting phase gradients

We have developed a superconducting phase gradiometer consisting of two parallel DNA-templated nanowires connecting two thin-film leads. We have ramped the cross current flowing perpendicular to the nanowires, and observed oscillations in the lead-to-lead resistance due to cross-current-induced phase differences. By using this gradiometer we have measured the temperature and magnetic field dependence of the superfluid density and observed an amplification of phase gradients caused by elastic vortex displacements. We examine our data in light of Miller-Bardeen theory of dirty superconductors and a microscale version of Campbell's model of field penetration.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

Hyperentangled Bell-state analysis

It is known that it is impossible to unambiguously distinguish the four Bell states encoded in pairs of photon polarizations using only linear optics. However, hyperentanglement, the simultaneous entanglement in more than one degree of freedom, has been shown to assist the complete Bell analysis of the four Bell states (given a fixed state of the other degrees of freedom). Yet introducing other degrees of freedom also enlarges the total number of Bell-like states. We investigate the limits for unambiguously distinguishing these Bell-like states. In particular, when the additional degree of freedom is qubit-like, we find that the optimal one-shot discrimination schemes are to group the 16 states into 7 distinguishable classes, and that an unambiguous discrimination is possible with two identical copies.

quant-ph↗

Enhancing superconductivity: Magnetic impurities and their quenching by magnetic fields

Magnetic fields and magnetic impurities are each known to suppress superconductivity. However, as the field quenches (i.e. polarizes) the impurities, rich consequences, including field-enhanced superconductivity, can emerge when both effects are present. For the case of superconducting wires and thin films, this field-spin interplay is investigated via the Eilenberger-Usadel scheme. Non-monotonic dependence of the critical current on the field (and therefore field-enhanced superconductivity) is found to be possible, even in parameter regimes in which the critical temperature decreases monotonically with increasing field. The present work complements that of Kharitonov and Feigel'man, which predicts non-monotonic behavior of the critical temperature.

cond-mat.supr-con↗