Resonant-interaction-induced Rydberg antiblockade and its applications

Different from the conventional Rydberg antiblockade (RAB) regime that either requires weak Rydberg-Rydberg interaction (RRI), or compensates the RRI-induced energy shift by introducing off-resonant interactions, we show that RAB regime can be achieved by resonantly driving the transitions between ground state and Rydberg state under strong RRI. The Rabi frequencies are of small amplitude and time-dependent harmonic oscillation, which plays a critical role for the presented RAB. The proposed unconventional RAB regime is used to construct high-fidelity controlled-Z (CZ) gate and controlled-not (CNOT) gate in one step. Each atom requires single external driving. And the atomic addressability is not required for the presented unconventional RAB, which would simplify experimental complexity and reduce resource consumption.     

Twin-field quantum key distribution based on twisted photon

Quantum key distribution (QKD) is a promising application to establish unconditional secure communications by quantum mechanics. However, its widespread application still faces a great challenge, that is, the fundamental linear key-rate constraint called Pirandola-Laurenza-Ottaviani-Banchi (PLOB) bound. Recently, twin-field QKD (TF-QKD) was proposed (Lucamarini et al., 2018 [4]), it overcomes the constraint mentioned above. However, the original TF-QKD is based on the phase-encoding strategy, which requires active alignment. In this paper, we improve the original TF-QKD with the photon orbital angular momentum (OAM), and propose a novel reference frame independent protocol to overcome the reference frame dependence. No more alignment procedure is needed, and the intrinsic misalignment errors are eliminated by utilizing the rotation-invariance of OAM photons. Besides, the security performance is also improved.     

Topological bulk-edge effects in quantum graph transport

We examine quantum transport in periodic quantum graphs with a vertex coupling non-invariant with respect to time reversal. It is shown that the graph topology may play a decisive role in the conductivity properties illustrating this claim with two examples. In the first, the transport is possible at high energies in the bulk only being suppressed at the sample edges, while in the second one the situation is opposite, the transport is possible at the edge only.     

Tensile properties of microtubules: A study by nonlinear molecular structural mechanics modelling

A nonlinear molecular structural mechanics (MSM) model is proposed in this paper for studying the tensile properties of microtubules (MTs). In the nonlinear MSM models, the interactions between tubulin monomers in MTs are treated as nonlinear axial and torsional springs, whose stiffness coefficients are extracted from all-atom molecular dynamics simulations. The Young's modulus and fracture properties of MTs under tension extracted from the present nonlinear MSM models are found to agree well with the existing simulation and experiment results, which shows the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed nonlinear MSM models. In addition, the nonlinear MSM models are also extended to investigate the tensile properties including Young's modulus and fracture strain of MTs possessing lattice defects. The results obtained from nonlinear MSM models are utilized to develop a predictive equation for quickly predicting the tensile properties of MTs with different lattice defect levels.     

Evolution of Classical and Quantum States in the Groupoid Picture of Quantum Mechanics

The evolution of states of the composition of classical and quantum systems in the groupoid formalism for physical theories introduced recently is discussed. It is shown that the notion of a classical system, in the sense of Birkhoff and von Neumann, is equivalent, in the case of systems with a countable number of outputs, to a totally disconnected groupoid with Abelian von Neumann algebra. The impossibility of evolving a separable state of a composite system made up of a classical and a quantum one into an entangled state by means of a unitary evolution is proven in accordance with Raggio’s theorem, which is extended to include a new family of separable states corresponding to the composition of a system with a totally disconnected space of outcomes and a quantum one.     

限域量子态调控研究

电子、激子和声子等量子态在固体中的行为早已被人们所熟知. 然而,当体系的尺寸只有纳米量级的时候,已有的固体理论常常不能适用,需要新的低维物理理论的建立. 我们系统研究了低维体系限域量子态（包括电子、激子和声子）的行为对环境、应力、压力及光的响应和性质的调控. 较早认识到低维体系之显著的表面-体积比对量子态性质调控之有效性,系统地揭示了低维体系的一系列由表面和应力决定的新颖性质,证明了低维体系的表面和应力效应同量子限域效应同等重要. 本文概况了如下五个方面的结果：（1）一种使用应力效应调控电子能带结构的方法和（2）一种使用表面效应调控电子能带结构的方法（这两个方法都可将低维体系能带从间接能隙调控至直接能隙能带结构）;（3）一种低维体系表面掺杂方法,该方法将在低维体系掺杂中取代传统方法;（4）量子点表面诱导的光致异构现象;（5）基于表面自催化半导体低维结构的形成机理. 希望我们的研究工作有助于促进低维体系在光电子、纳电子、环境、能源、生物和医学等领域的应用.     

Influence of spin–orbit interaction,Zeeman effect and light polarisation on the electronic and optical properties of pseudo-elliptic quantum rings under magnetic field

ABSTRACT

We theoretically investigated the influences of the magnetic field and light polarisation on the electronic and optical properties of a GaAs/GaAlAs pseudo-elliptic quantum ring, modelled by an outer ellipsis and an inner circle, in the presence of the Rashba and Dresselhaus spin–orbit interactions and Zeeman effect. We show that Aharonov-Bohm oscillations of the energy spectrum are not affected by the presence of the Zeeman effect alone but, in the presence of Rashba and Dresselhaus spin–orbit couplings, the periodicity of certain levels becomes hardly definite. The Zeeman effect generally enhances/diminishes the separation levels produced by Rashba/Dresselhaus interactions (SOI) and when both types of SOI are considered, the effect depends on their relative strength. The magnetic field can trigger spin-flip for each type of spin–orbit interaction and Zeeman effect or their combination through anticrossings in the energy spectra. Our results reveal that the absorption spectra are very sensitive to the magnetic field and light polarisation. For all polarisations considered, the magnetic field increment leads to the redshift or blueshift of some particular peaks (an effect of this ring geometry) and a better separation of the peaks. The x-polarised light determines spectra with many small, but separated peaks while the circular polarised light leads to spectra with large peaks of high amplitude.     

Free energy of the solvable chiral Potts model

Very recently, it has been shown that there are chiralN-state Potts models in statistical mechanics that satisfy the star-triangle relation. Here it is shown that the relation implies that the free energy (and its derivatives) satisfies certain functional relations. These can be used to obtain the free energy: in particular, we expand about the critical case and find that the exponent is 1–2/N.     

Measurement and analysis of excitation functions for alpha-induced reactions in copper

Excitation functions for the production of⁶⁸Ga,⁶⁷Ga,⁶⁶Ga,⁶⁵Ga +⁶⁵Zn and⁶¹Cu fromα-induced reactions in natural copper have been measured in the energy range ≈ 10–40 MeV using the stacked foil technique. A stack of nine copper foils was irradiated by a 40 MeVα-beam. Theγ-rays emitted from the irradiated samples were recorded. Excitation functions have also been calculated theoretically using a statistical model with and without the inclusion of pre-equilibrium emission of particles. Pre-equilibrium component simulated by exciton model shows that the inclusion of pre-equilibrium emission gives better agreement between experimental and theoretical excitation functions. Pre-equilibrium fraction depends on the incident energy and the target mass number.