Robust creation of entanglement between remote memory qubits

In this Letter we propose a robust quantum repeater architecture building on the original Duan-Lukin-Cirac-Zoller (DLCZ) protocol [L.-M. Duan, M. D. Lukin, J. I. Cirac, and P. Zoller, Nature (London) 414, 413 (2001)10.1038/35106500]. The architecture is based on two-photon Hong-Ou-Mandel-type interference which relaxes the long-distance stability requirements by about 7 orders of magnitude, from subwavelength for the single photon interference required by DLCZ to the coherence length of the photons. Our proposal provides an exciting possibility for robust and realistic long-distance quantum communication.     

Strong coupling of quantum dots in microcavities

We show that strong coupling (SC) of light and matter as it is realized with quantum dots in microcavities differs substantially from the paradigm of atoms in optical cavities. The type of pumping used in semiconductors yields new criteria to achieve SC, with situations where the pump hinders, or on the contrary, favors it. We analyze one of the seminal experimental observation of SC of a quantum dot in a pillar microcavity [Reithmaier, Nature (London) 432, 197 (2004)10.1038/nature02969] as an illustration of our main statements.     

Experimental test of nonlocal realistic theories without the rotational symmetry assumption

We analyze the class of nonlocal realistic theories that was originally considered by Leggett [Found. Phys. 33, 1469 (2003)10.1023/A:1026096313729] and tested by us in a recent experiment [Nature (London) 446, 871 (2007)10.1038/nature05677]. We derive an incompatibility theorem that works for finite numbers of polarizer settings and that does not require the previously assumed rotational symmetry of the two-particle correlation functions. The experimentally measured case involves seven different measurement settings. Using polarization-entangled photon pairs, we exclude this broader class of nonlocal realistic models by experimentally violating a new Leggett-type inequality by 80 standard deviations.     

Fireball ejection from a molten hot spot to air by localized microwaves

A phenomenon of fireball ejection from hot spots in solid materials (silicon, germanium, glass, ceramics, basalt, etc.) to the atmosphere is presented. The hot spot is created in the substrate material by the microwave-drill mechanism [Jerby, Science 298, 587 (2002)10.1126/science.1077062]. The vaporized drop evolved from the hot spot is blown up, and forms a stable fireball buoyant in the air. The experimental observations of fireball ejection from silicate hot spots are referred to the Abrahamson-Dinniss theory [Nature (London) 403, 519 (2000)10.1038/35000525] suggesting a mechanism for ball-lightning initiation in nature. The fireballs observed in our experiments tend to absorb the available microwave power entirely, similarly to the plasmon resonance effect in submicron wavelengths [Nie and Emory, Science 275, 1102 (1997)10.1126/science.275.5303.1102].     

Fingering instabilities in dewetting nanofluids

The growth of fingering patterns in dewetting nanofluids (colloidal solutions of thiol-passivated gold nanoparticles) has been followed in real time using contrast-enhanced video microscopy. The fingering instability on which we focus here arises from evaporatively driven nucleation and growth in a nanoscopically thin precursor solvent film behind the macroscopic contact line. We find that well-developed isotropic fingering structures only form for a narrow range of experimental parameters. Numerical simulations, based on a modification of the Monte Carlo approach introduced by Rabani et al. [Nature (London) 426, 271 (2003)10.1038/nature02087], reproduce the patterns we observe experimentally.     

Quantum repeaters with photon pair sources and multimode memories

We propose a quantum repeater protocol which builds on the well-known Duan-Lukin-Cirac-Zoller (DLCZ) protocol [L. M. Duan, M. D. Lukin, J. I. Cirac, and P. Zoller, Nature (London) 414, 413 (2001)10.1038/35106500], but which uses photon pair sources in combination with memories that allow to store a large number of temporal modes. We suggest to realize such multimode memories based on the principle of photon echo, using solids doped with rare-earth-metal ions. The use of multimode memories promises a speedup in entanglement generation by several orders of magnitude and a significant reduction in stability requirements compared to the DLCZ protocol.     

Symmetric and asymmetric vortex-antivortex molecules in a fourfold superconducting geometry

In submicron superconducting squares in a homogeneous magnetic field, Ginzburg-Landau theory may admit solutions of the vortex-antivortex type, conforming to the symmetry of the sample [L. F. Chibotaru, Nature (London) 408, 833 (2000)10.1038/35048521]. Here we show that these fascinating, but never experimentally observed states, can be enforced by artificial fourfold pinning, with their diagnostic features enhanced by orders of magnitude. The second-order nucleation of vortex-antivortex molecules can be driven by either temperature or an applied magnetic field, with stable asymmetric vortex-antivortex equilibria found on its path.     

Renormalization group theory for the imbalanced Fermi gas

We formulate a Wilsonian renormalization group theory for the imbalanced Fermi gas. The theory is able to recover quantitatively well-established results in both the weak-coupling and the strong-coupling (unitarity) limits. We determine for the latter case the line of second-order phase transitions of the imbalanced Fermi gas and, in particular, the location of the tricritical point. We obtain good agreement with the recent experiments of Y. Shin et al. [Nature (London) 451, 689 (2008)10.1038/nature06473].     

Evidence for nanoparticles in microwave-generated fireballs observed by synchrotron x-ray scattering

The small-angle x-ray scattering method has been applied to study fireballs ejected into the air from molten hot spots in borosilicate glass by localized microwaves [V. Dikhtyar and E. Jerby, Phys. Rev. Lett. 96 045002 (2006)10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.045002]. The fireball's particle size distribution, density, and decay rate in atmospheric pressure were measured. The results show that the fireballs contain particles with a mean size of approximately 50 nm with average number densities on the order of approximately 10(9). Hence, fireballs can be considered as a dusty plasma which consists of an ensemble of charged nanoparticles in the plasma volume. This finding is likened to the ball-lightning phenomenon explained by the formation of an oxidizing particle network liberated by lightning striking the ground [J. Abrahamson and J. Dinniss, Nature (London) 403, 519 (2000)10.1038/35000525].     

Nuclear reactions induced by a pyroelectric accelerator

This work demonstrates the use of pyroelectric crystals to induce nuclear reactions. A system based on a pair of pyroelectric crystals is used to ionize gas and accelerate the ions to energies of up to 200 keV. The system operates above room temperature by simply heating or cooling the pyroelectric crystals. A D-D fusion reaction was achieved with this technique, and 2.5 MeV neutrons were detected. The measured neutron yield is in good agreement with the calculated yield. This work also verifies the results published by Naranjo, Gimzewski, and Putterman [Nature (London) 434, 1115 (2005)].     

Quantum Kalman filtering and the Heisenberg limit in atomic magnetometry

The shot-noise detection limit in current high-precision magnetometry [Nature (London) 422, 596 (2003)] is a manifestation of quantum fluctuations that scale as 1/sqrt[N] in an ensemble of N atoms. Here, we develop a procedure that combines continuous measurement and quantum Kalman filtering [Rep. Math. Phys. 43, 405 (1999)]] to surpass this conventional limit by exploiting conditional spin squeezing to achieve 1/N field sensitivity. Our analysis demonstrates the importance of optimal estimation for high bandwidth precision magnetometry at the Heisenberg limit and also identifies an approximate estimator based on linear regression.     

Relaxation in a completely integrable many-body quantum system: an ab initio study of the dynamics of the highly excited states of 1D lattice hard-core bosons

In this Letter we pose the question of whether a many-body quantum system with a full set of conserved quantities can relax to an equilibrium state, and, if it can, what the properties of such a state are. We confirm the relaxation hypothesis through an ab initio numerical investigation of the dynamics of hard-core bosons on a one-dimensional lattice. Further, a natural extension of the Gibbs ensemble to integrable systems results in a theory that is able to predict the mean values of physical observables after relaxation. Finally, we show that our generalized equilibrium carries more memory of the initial conditions than the usual thermodynamic one. This effect may have many experimental consequences, some of which have already been observed in the recent experiment on the nonequilibrium dynamics of one-dimensional hard-core bosons in a harmonic potential [T. Kinoshita et al., Nature (London) 440, 900 (2006)10.1038/nature04693].     

Propagation of a Rectangular Pulse in an Anomalous Dispersive Medium

The pulse with a rectangular envelop propagating through the caesium vapour with two gain lines used in the Wang, Kuzmich, and Dogariu [Nature (London) 406 (2000) 277] experiment is studied. It is shown that there exists an obvious distortion for the pulse.     

Surface of strontium titanate

We report the first complete determination, using surface x-ray diffraction, of the surface structure of TiO2-terminated SrTiO3(001), both at room temperature in vacuum, and also hot, under typical conditions used for thin film growth. The cold structure consists of a mixture of a (1x1) relaxation and (2x1) and (2x2) reconstructions. The latter disappear over several minutes upon heating. The structures are best modeled by a TiO2-rich surface similar to that proposed by Erdman et al. [Nature (London) 419, 55 (2002).10.1038/nature01010]. Both reconstructions have been shown by density functional theory to be energetically favorable. The calculated (1x1) surface energy is higher, indicating that it may be a disordered mixture of the reconstructions. Atomic displacements are significant down to three unit cells, which may have important implications on possible surface ferroelectric phenomena in SrTiO3.     

Evolution and symmetry of multipartite entanglement

We discover a simple factorization law describing how multipartite entanglement of a composite quantum system evolves when one of the subsystems undergoes an arbitrary physical process. This multipartite entanglement decay is determined uniquely by a single factor we call the entanglement resilience factor. Since the entanglement resilience factor is a function of the quantum channel alone, we find that multipartite entanglement evolves in exactly the same way as bipartite (two qudits) entanglement. For the two qubits case, our factorization law reduces to the main result of [T. Konrad, Nature Phys. 4, 99 (2008)10.1038/nphys885]. In addition, for a permutation P, we provide an operational definition of P asymmetry of entanglement, and find the conditions when a permuted version of a state can be achieved by local means.     

Optical quantum computation using cluster States

We propose an approach to optical quantum computation in which a deterministic entangling quantum gate may be performed using, on average, a few hundred coherently interacting optical elements (beam splitters, phase shifters, single photon sources, and photodetectors with feedforward). This scheme combines ideas from the optical quantum computing proposal of Knill, Laflamme, and Milburn [Nature (London) 409, 46 (2001)]], and the abstract cluster-state model of quantum computation proposed by Raussendorf and Briegel [Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 5188 (2001)]].     

Long-range chiral recognition due to substrate locking and substrate-adsorbate charge transfer

First-principles calculations are used to rationalize the long-range chiral recognition between adenine and phenylglycine adsorbed on Cu(110) [Chen and Richardson, Nature Mater. 2, 324 (2003)10.1038/nmat878]. The enantiomeric interaction is traced to substrate-mediated Coulomb repulsion and template effects. The mechanism revealed here (i) shows that the Easson and Stedman model for chiral recognition may include long-range electrostatic interactions and (ii) illustrates the catalytic potential of the substrate for molecular self-assembly.     

Propagation of a Rectangular Pulse in an Anomalous Dispersive Medium

The pulse with a rectangular envelop propagating through the caesium vapour with two gain lines used inthe Wang, Kuzmich, and Dogariu [Nature (London) 406 (2000) 277] experiment is studied. It is shown that there existsan obvious distortion for the pulse.