arXiv subjects

Zeyang Liao

Publications and source records attributed to Zeyang Liao.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Beating the Bad-Cavity Limit via Auxiliary-Emitter Linewidth Squeezing

Strong coupling in cavity QED is conventionally achieved at the expense of either high cavity quality factors or ultrasmall mode volumes, a trade-off that fundamentally constrains practical implementations. Here, we circumvent this limitation by introducing two nonidentical auxiliary emitters with opposite detunings into a bad cavity. This hybrid system supports a subradiant mode that significantly squeeze the effective cavity linewidth, creating an ultra-narrow transmission window at the cavity frequency. As a result, a target emitter placed in this engineered environment exhibits prolonged vacuum Rabi oscillations and resolved spontaneous emission splitting, which are clear signatures of strong coupling, even though the bare cavity remains in the weak-coupling regime. Our scheme thus transforms a bad cavity into an effective platform for strong-coupling physics, with potential applications in quantum computation and quantum sensing.

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arXiv2026

Super-Heisenberg-limited Sensing via Collective Subradiance in Waveguide Quantum Electrodynamics

We explore the quantum-metrological potential of subwavelength-spaced emitter arrays coupled to a one-dimensional nanophotonic waveguide. In this system, strong dipole--dipole interactions profoundly modify the collective optical response, leading to the emergence of ultranarrow subradiant resonances. Through an eigenmode analysis of the effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian, we derive the decay rate of the most subradiant state, which, within the present model and geometry, exhibits an $N^{-3}$ scaling with even--odd oscillatory behavior in the deep-subwavelength regime. This scaling is directly observable in the single-photon scattering spectrum, enabling the detection of minute changes in atomic separation with a figure of merit that scales as $ N^3 $. The quantum Fisher information (QFI) scales as $N^6$ and can be closely approached by measuring spectral shifts near the steepest slope of the most subradiant resonance. These enhancements remain robust under realistic positional disorder, confirming that dipole--dipole-engineered subradiance provides a viable resource for quantum metrology. Our work bridges collective waveguide-QED physics and high-precision sensing, opening a route toward scalable quantum sensors on integrated nanophotonic platforms.

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arXiv2026

Theory of the Collective Many-body Subradiance in Waveguide Quantum Electrodynamics

We present an analytical theory for the most subradiant modes in a finite one-dimensional emitter array coupled to either an ideal or a nonideal waveguide. Using an effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian together with a Bragg-edge open-boundary ansatz, we derive compact expressions for the full complex collective eigenvalues, including both the linewidths and the collective energy shifts. The linewidths of the most subradiant states exhibit the characteristic $N^{-3}$ scaling in both cases, while in the deep-subwavelength regime they display even--odd oscillations due to boundary interference. In contrast, the collective energy shift approaches a separation-dependent asymptotic value with a leading finite-size correction scaling as $N^{-2}$. These results highlight the distinct physical origins of the imaginary and real parts of the subradiant eigenvalue: Bragg-edge destructive interference controls the linewidth, whereas near-field dipole--dipole interactions dominate the collective shift. Our theory provides a transparent framework beyond the ideal-waveguide limit and opens potential applications in subradiant spectroscopy and waveguide-QED-based sensing.

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arXiv2026

An efficient framework for quantum dynamics driven by nonclassical light

Understanding quantum system dynamics driven by nonclassical light pulses is challenging, particularly for general light states with large photon numbers. Here we introduce an efficient framework that makes this task tractable. By introducing a pulse-shaped P-representation, the exact quantum evolution is decomposed into a mixture of many independent quasi-classical branches, each governed by a standard master equation with a classical pulse which can be solved efficiently. As an illustration, for a two-level system interacting with an exponential pulse, we first find out the exact analytical solutions to the Bloch equations in each quasi-classical branch, and then by taking proper P-function average over all branches, the full system dynamics driven by nonclassical light pulses is analytically obtained. For the one-photon and two-photon cases, our method well reproduces the previous exact results either analytically or numerically. Crucially, our approach scales efficiently to more complex light states (Fock, thermal, squeezed vacuum states) with large photon numbers ($N\sim 100$). We further provide a clear physical interpretation how the system dynamics is influenced through the high-order optical coherence of the nonclassical pulses. This work provides a unified and computationally efficient route and a useful starting point to explore more complex quantum dynamics driven by nonclassical light in quantum optics and quantum information processing.

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arXiv2024

Tunable ultrahigh reflection with broadband via collective atom-atom interaction in waveguide-QED system

We present a scheme for achieving broadband complete reflection by constructing photonic bandgap via collective atom-atom interaction in a one-dimensional (1D) waveguide quantum electrodynamics (QED) system. Moreover, we propose several strategies to further expand the ultrahigh reflection windows, including increasing the number of atoms with separations near the Bragg distance and inducing gradient frequency modulation among the atoms. The center frequency and bandwidth of the ultrahigh reflection window are dynamically adjustable by applying external electromagnetic field. The results here can enrich the many-body physics of waveguide-QED system and offer a pathway for achieving broadened ultrahigh reflection in a controllable way, which can find important applications in the realms of chip-integrated band filter, quantum storage, optical switching, and wavelength-selective devices.

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arXiv2024

Atomic-scale on-demand photon polarization manipulation with high-efficiency for integrated photonic chips

In order to overcome the challenge of lacking polarization encoding in integrated quantum photonic circuits, we propose a scheme to realize arbitrary polarization manipulation of a single photon by integrating a single quantum emitter in a photonic waveguide. In our scheme, one transition path of the three-level emitter is designed to simultaneously couples with two orthogonal polarization degenerate modes in the waveguide with adjustable coupling strengths, and the other transition path of the three-level emitter is driven by an external coherent field. The proposed polarization converter has several advantages, including arbitrary polarization conversion for any input polarization, tunable working frequency, excellent anti-dissipation ability with high conversion efficiency, and atomic-scale size. Our work provides an effective solution to enable the polarization encoding of photons which can be applied in the integrated quantum photonic circuits, and will boost quantum photonic chip.

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arXiv2024

Quantum search in many-body interacting system with long-range interaction

Continuous-time quantum walks provide an alternative method for quantum search problems. Most of the earlier studies confirmed that quadratic speedup exists in some synthetic Hamiltonians, but whether there is quadratic speedup in real physical systems is elusive. Here, we investigate three physical systems with long-range atom-atom interaction which are possible good candidates for realizing the quantum search, including one-dimensional atom arrays either trapped in an optical lattice or coupled to waveguide near band edge or dispersively coupled to a good cavity. We find that all three systems can provide near-optimal quantum search if there is no dissipation. However, if the dissipation is considered only the latter two systems (i.e., waveguide-QED and cavity-QED systems) can still have high success probabilities because the latter two systems can significantly enhance the atom-atom interaction even if they are far apart and the spectra gap can be much larger which can reduce the search time and the effects of dissipation significantly. Our studies here can provide helpful instructions for realizing quantum search in real physical systems in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum era.

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arXiv2023

Topologically protected subradiant cavity polaritons through linewidth narrowing enabled by dissipationless edge states

Cavity polaritons derived from the strong light-matter interaction at the quantum level provide a basis for efficient manipulation of quantum states via cavity field. Polaritons with narrow linewidth and long lifetime are appealing in applications such as quantum sensing and storage. Here, we propose a prototypical arrangement to implement a whispering-gallery-mode resonator with topological mirror moulded by one-dimensional atom array, which allows to boost the lifetime of cavity polaritons over an order of magnitude. This considerable enhancement attributes to the coupling of polaritonic states to dissipationless edge states protected by the topological bandgap of atom array that suppresses the leakage of cavity modes. When exceeding the width of Rabi splitting, topological bandgap can further reduce the dissipation from polaritonic states to bulk states of atom array, giving arise to subradiant cavity polaritons with extremely sharp linewidth. The resultant Rabi oscillation decays with a rate even below the free-space decay of a single quantum emitter. Inheriting from the topologically protected properties of edge states, the subradiance of cavity polaritons can be preserved in the disordered atom mirror with moderate perturbations involving the atomic frequency, interaction strengths and location. Our work opens up a new paradigm of topology-engineered quantum states with robust quantum coherence for future applications in quantum computing and network.

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arXiv2023

Quantum super-resolution for imaging two pointlike entangled photon sources

We investigate the resolution for imaging two pointlike entangled sources by using the method of the moments and the spatial-mode demultiplexing (SPADE), where the pointlike entangled sources can be generated by injecting single-mode sources with arbitrary quantum statistics distribution into an optical parametric amplifier (OPA). We demonstrate that the separation estimation sensitivity is mainly determined by the photon distribution in each detected modes and it can be enhanced by either increasing the squeezed parameter of the OPA or eliminating the relative phase difference of the entangle sources. Furthermore, in the limiting case of infinitely small source separation, the usage of entangled sources can have better resolution than those using incoherent and coherent sources. The results here can find important applications for the quantum super-resolution imaging and quantum metrology.

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arXiv2023

Optical scattering imaging with sub-nanometer precision based on position-ultra-sensitive giant Lamb shift

The Lamb shift of a quantum emitter very close to a plasmonic nanostructure, mainly induced by the higher-order plasmonic dark modes, can be three or more orders of magnitude larger than that in the free space and it is ultra-sensitive to the emitter position and polarization. We show that this giant Lamb shift can be sensitively observed from the scattering spectrum dip shift of coupled system when the plasmonic nanoparticle or tip scans through the emitter. Based on these observations, we propose an optical localization and polarization microscopy scheme with sub-nanometer precision for a quantum emitter via detecting the scattering spectrum instead of fluorescence. Our method is free of fluorescence quenching problem and it is relatively easier to be implemented in the plasmon-emitter coupling system. Moreover, the sample in our method does not need to be placed inside a plasmonic picocavity to enhance the radiative fluorescence rate and it also works even if the quantum emitter is slightly below a dielectric surface which can bring about broader applications in various fields, such as physics, chemistry, medicine, life science and materials science.

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arXiv2023

Deterministic generation of arbitrary n-photon states in an integrated photonic system

Quantum light sources play a vital role in various aspects of quantum information science, but on-demand high-efficient generation of arbitrary multiphoton states which can be easily integrated is still challenging. Here, we propose a chip-integrable scheme to deterministically generate a group of n photons with very high fidelity based on the long-range collective interaction between the emitters mediated by the waveguide modes. The n photons are shown to be emitted in a bundle while two successive n-photon bundles tend to be antibunched which can behave as an n-photon gun. Our results here can find important applications in the areas such as photonic-chip-based quantum information processing and quantum metrology.

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arXiv2023

Dressed bound states at chiral exceptional points

Atom-photon dressed states are a basic concept of quantum optics. Here, we demonstrate that the non-Hermiticity of open cavity can be harnessed to form the dressed bound states (DBS) and identify two types of DBS, the vacancy-like DBS and Friedrich-Wintgen DBS, in a microring resonator operating at a chiral exceptional point. With the analytical DBS conditions, we show that the vacancy-like DBS occurs when an atom couples to the standing wave mode that is a node of photonic wave function, and thus is immune to the cavity dissipation and characterized by the null spectral density at cavity resonance. While the Friedrich-Wintgen DBS can be accessed by continuously tuning the system parameters, such as the atom-photon detuning, and evidenced by a vanishing Rabi peak in emission spectrum, an unusual feature in the strong-coupling anticrossing. We also demonstrate the quantum-optics applications of the proposed DBS. Our work exhibits the quantum states control through non-Hermiticity of open quantum system and presents a clear physical picture on DBS at chiral exceptional points, which holds great potential in building high-performance quantum devices for sensing, photon storage, and nonclassical light generation.

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arXiv2022

Quantum multiparameter estimation with multi-mode photon catalysis entangled squeezed state

We propose a method to generate the multi-mode entangled catalysis squeezed vacuum states (MECSVS) by embedding the cross-Kerr nonlinear medium into the Mach-Zehnder interferometer. This method realizes the exchange of quantum states between different modes based on Fredkin gate. In addition, we study the MECSVS as the probe state of multi-arm optical interferometer to realize multi-phase simultaneous estimation. The results show that the quantum Cramer-Rao bound (QCRB) of phase estimation can be improved by increasing the number of catalytic photons or decreasing the transmissivity of the optical beam splitter using for photon catalysis. In addition, we also show that even if there is photon loss, the QCRB of our photon catalysis scheme is lower than that of the ideal entangled squeezed vacuum states (ESVS), which shows that by performing the photon catalytic operation is more robust against photon loss than that without the catalytic operation. The results here can find important applications in quantum metrology for multiparatmeter estimation.

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arXiv2020

Improving phase estimation using the number-conserving operations

We propose a theoretical scheme to improve the resolution and precision of phase measurement with parity detection in the Mach-Zehnder interferometer by using a nonclassical input state which is generated by applying a number-conserving generalized superposition of products (GSP) operation, (saa^{†}+ta^{†}a)^{m} with s^2+t^2=1, on two-mode squeezed vacuum (TMSV) state. The nonclassical properties of the proposed GSP-TMSV are investigated via average photon number (APN), anti-bunching effect, and degrees of two-mode squeezing. Particularly, our results show that both higher-order m GSP operation and smaller parameter s can increase the total APN, which leads to the improvement of quantum Fisher information. In addition, we also compare the phase measurement precision with and without photon losses between our scheme and the previous photon subtraction/addition schemes. It is found that our scheme, especially for the case of s=0, has the best performance via the enhanced phase resolution and sensitivity when comparing to those previous schemes even in the presence of photon losses. Interestingly, without losses, the standard quantum-noise limit (SQL) can always be surpassed in our our scheme and the Heisenberg limit (HL) can be even achieved when s=0.5,1 with small total APNs. However, in the presence of photon losses, the HL cannot be beaten, but the SQL can still be overcome particularly in the large total APN regimes. Our results here can find important applications in quantum metrology.

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arXiv2020

Multiphoton pulses interacting with multiple emitters in a one-dimensional waveguide

We derive a generalized master equation for multiphoton pulses interacting with multiple emitters in a waveguide-quantum electrodynamics system where the emitter frequency can be modulated and the effects of non-guided modes can also be considered. Based on this theory, we can calculate the real-time dynamics of an array of interacting emitters driven by an incident photon pulse which can be vacuum, a coherent state, a Fock state or their superpositions. Moreover, we also derive generalized input-output relations to calculate the reflectivity and transmissivity of this system. We can also calculate the output photon pulse shapes. Our theory can find important applications in the study of waveguide-based quantum systems.

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arXiv2018

Quantum state preparation by a shaped photon pulse in one-dimensional continuum

We propose a method to deterministically prepare a desired quantum state in a one-dimensional (1D) continuum by a shaped photon pulse. This method is based on time-reverse of the quantum emission process. We show that the desired quantum state such as Dicke or timed-Dicke state can be successfully prepared with very high fidelity even if the dissipation to the environment is nonnegligible and the pulse shaping is not perfect. We also show that large quantum entanglement between emitters can be created by just a single photon pulse. This method is experimentally feasible in 1D waveguide-QED or circuit-QED system.

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arXiv2018

Waveguide quantum electrodynamics in squeezed vacuum

We study the dynamics of a general multi-emitter system coupled to the squeezed vacuum reservoir and derive a master equation for this system based on the Weisskopf-Wigner approximation. In this theory, we include the effect of positions of the squeezing sources which is usually neglected in the previous studies. We apply this theory to a quasi-one-dimensional waveguide case where the squeezing in one dimension is experimentally achievable. We show that while dipole-dipole interaction induced by ordinary vacuum depends on the emitter separation, the two-photon process due to the squeezed vacuum depends on the positions of the emitters with respect to the squeezing sources. The dephasing rate, decay rate and the resonance fluorescence of the waveguide-QED in the squeezed vacuum are controllable by changing the positions of emitters. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the stationary maximum entangled NOON state for identical emitters can be reached with arbitrary initial state when the center-of-mass position of the emitters satisfies certain condition.

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arXiv2018

Quantum Image Processing and Its Application to Edge Detection: Theory and Experiment

Processing of digital images is continuously gaining in volume and relevance, with concomitant demands on data storage, transmission and processing power. Encoding the image information in quantum-mechanical systems instead of classical ones and replacing classical with quantum information processing may alleviate some of these challenges. By encoding and processing the image information in quantum-mechanical systems, we here demonstrate the framework of quantum image processing, where a pure quantum state encodes the image information: we encode the pixel values in the probability amplitudes and the pixel positions in the computational basis states. Our quantum image representation reduces the required number of qubits compared to existing implementations, and we present image processing algorithms that provide exponential speed-up over their classical counterparts. For the commonly used task of detecting the edge of an image, we propose and implement a quantum algorithm that completes the task with only one single-qubit operation, independent of the size of the image. This demonstrates the potential of quantum image processing for highly efficient image and video processing in the big data era.

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