General Initial State Research Articles

One- and two-axis squeezing of atomic ensembles in optical cavities

The strong light–matter coupling attainable in optical cavities enables the generation of highly squeezed states of atomic ensembles. It was shown by Sørensen and Mølmer (2002 Phys. Rev. A 66 022314) how an effective one-axis twisting Hamiltonian can be realized in a cavity setup. Here, we extend this work and show how an effective two-axis twisting Hamiltonian can be realized in a similar cavity setup. We compare the two schemes in order to characterize their advantages. In the absence of decoherence, the two-axis Hamiltonian leads to more squeezing than the one-axis Hamiltonian. If limited by decoherence from spontaneous emission and cavity decay, we find roughly the same level of squeezing for the two schemes scaling as where C is the single atom cooperativity and N is the total number of atoms. When compared to an ideal squeezing operation, we find that for specific initial states, a dissipative version of the one-axis scheme attains higher fidelity than the unitary one-axis scheme or the two-axis scheme. However, the unitary one-axis and two-axis schemes perform better for general initial states.

Spin diffusion from an inhomogeneous quench in an integrable system

Generalized hydrodynamics predicts universal ballistic transport in integrable lattice systems when prepared in generic inhomogeneous initial states. However, the ballistic contribution to transport can vanish in systems with additional discrete symmetries. Here we perform large scale numerical simulations of spin dynamics in the anisotropic Heisenberg XXZ spin 1/2 chain starting from an inhomogeneous mixed initial state which is symmetric with respect to a combination of spin reversal and spatial reflection. In the isotropic and easy-axis regimes we find non-ballistic spin transport which we analyse in detail in terms of scaling exponents of the transported magnetization and scaling profiles of the spin density. While in the easy-axis regime we find accurate evidence of normal diffusion, the spin transport in the isotropic case is clearly super-diffusive, with the scaling exponent very close to 2/3, but with universal scaling dynamics which obeys the diffusion equation in nonlinearly scaled time.

Necessity of eigenstate thermalisation for equilibration towards unique expectation values when starting from generic initial states

We investigate dynamical equilibration of expectation values in closed quantum systems for realistic non-equilibrium initial states. Thereby we find that the corresponding long-time expectation values depend on the initial expectation values if eigenstate thermalisation is violated. An analytical expression for the deviation from the expected ensemble value is derived for small displacements from equilibrium. Additional numerics for magnetisation and energy equilibration in an asymmetric anisotropic spin-(1/2)-ladder demonstrate that the analytical predictions persist beyond the limits of the theory. The results suggest eigenstate thermalisation as a physically necessary condition for initial-state–independent equilibration.

Variation of entanglement entropy and mutual information in fermion-fermion scattering

We study the behavior of entanglement between different degrees of freedom of scattering fermions, based on an exemplary QED scattering process $e^+e^-\longrightarrow\mu^+\mu^-$. The variation of entanglement entropy between two fermions from an initial state to the final state was computed, with respect to different entanglement between the ingoing particles. This variation of entanglement entropy is found to be proportional to an area quantity, the total cross section. We also study the spin-momentum and helicity-momentum entanglements within one particle in the aforementioned scattering process. The calculations of the relevant variations of mutual information in the same inertial frame reveals that, for a maximally entangled initial state, the scattering between the particles does not affect the degree of both of these entanglements of one particle in the final state. It is also found that the increasing degree of entanglement between two ingoing particles would restrict the generation of entanglement between spin (helicity) and momentum of one outgoing particle. And the entanglement between spin and momentum within one particle in the final state is shown to always be stronger than that for helicity-momentum for a general initial entanglement state, implying significantly distinct properties of entanglement for the helicity and spin perceived by an inertial observer.

Remarks on thermalization in 2D CFT

We revisit certain aspects of thermalization in 2D CFT. In particular, we consider similarities and differences between the time dependence of correlation functions in various states in rational and non-rational CFTs. We also consider the distinction between global and local thermalization and explain how states obtained by acting with a diffeomorphism on the ground state can appear locally thermal, and we review why the time-dependent expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor is generally a poor diagnostic of global thermalization. Since all 2D CFTs have an infinite set of commuting conserved charges, generic initial states might be expected to give rise to a generalized Gibbs ensemble rather than a pure thermal ensemble at late times. We construct the holographic dual of the generalized Gibbs ensemble and show that, to leading order, it is still described by a BTZ black hole. The extra conserved charges, while rendering $c < 1$ theories essentially integrable, therefore seem to have little effect on large-$c$ conformal field theories.

Quantum multimode treatment of light scattering by an atom in a waveguide

We present a full multimode treatment of the interaction of the quantized radiation field with a single two-level atom in a one-dimensional waveguide configuration. Starting with an incident pulse consisting of an arbitrary (finite) number of photons in a general initial state, we derive the equations of motion and a closed-form expression for the shape of the pulse after its interaction with the atom. We then specialize our results to the two-photon case where a number of analytical results can be derived, for both unidirectional and bidirectional systems. We study the effects of different pulse shapes, the manifestations of the entangled, so-called bound state of the two photons, single- and two-photon detection probabilities, and provide simple approximate results for the strong-coupling (or adiabatic, or long-pulse) regime. We also discuss the requirements for a true unidirectional setup, and the application of such a setup to photon sorting proposed by Witthaut, Lukin, and S\o{}rensen [Europhys. Lett. 97, 50007 (2012)].

Nonlinear single Compton scattering of an electron wave packet

Nonlinear single Compton scattering has been thoroughly investigated in the literature under the assumption that initially the electron has a definite momentum. Here, we study a more general initial state, and consider the electron as a wave-packet. In particular, we investigate the energy spectrum of the emitted radiation and show that in typical experimental situations some features of the spectra shown in previous works are almost completely washed out. Moreover, we show that at comparable relative uncertainties, the one in the momentum of the incoming electron has a larger impact on the photon spectra at a fixed observation direction than the one on the laser frequency.

Off-resonance regimes in nonlinear quantum Rabi models

We study the nonlinear quantum Rabi model—both in the two-photon and the intensity-dependent coupling scheme—by utilizing the perturbation method in the off- and near-resonance regimes characterized by the field and the atomic transition frequencies. We consider the weak-coupling condition, the perturbation parameter being the ratio between the coupling constant and the atomic frequency. For both models we determine the first- and second-order corrections to energy eigenvalues and eigenstates, disclosing the doublet structure characterizing the energy spectrum. Then we apply our findings to both the coupling schemes in order to calculate the time evolution of a general initial state and the atomic population inversion for an initial state composed by a mixture of excited and unexcited atoms. [Phys. Rev. A 93 (2016) 043814]

Inflation in Non-de Sitter Background with Coherent States

We use the excited coherent states built over the initial non-de Sitter modes, to study the modification of spectra of primordial scalar fluctuation. Non-de Sitter modes are actually the asymptotic solution of the inflaton field equation [J. High Energy Phys. 09 (2014) 020]. We build excited coherent states over the non-de Sitter modes and despite the lack of interactions in the Lagrangian, we find a non-zero one-point function. It is shown that the primordial non-Gaussianity resulting from excited-de Sitter modes depend both of time and background space-time. It is very tiny of order (≤ 10−24), at the Planck initial fixed time that confirmed by resent observations for single field inflation but it grows in the present epoch. Moreover, our results at the leading order are similar to what obtained with general initial states and in the dS limit leads to standard results [J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 1202 (2012) 005]. We will show that the non-dS modes and its resulting spectrum are more usable for far past time limit.

Internal one degree of freedom is sufficient to induce exact decoherence

Current quantum orthodoxy claims that the statistical collapse of the wave function arises from the interaction of the measuring instrument with its environment through the phenomenon known as environment-induced decoherence. Here it is shown that there exists a measurement scheme that is exactly decohering without the aid of an environment. The scheme relies on the assumption that the meter is decomposable into probe and pointer, with the probe taken to be inaccessible for observation. Under the assumption that the probe and the pointer initial states are momentum limited, it is shown that coherences die out within a finite measurement time and the pointer states are exactly orthogonal after a sufficiently longer time of measurement. Furthermore, it is shown that the measurement scheme reproduces the main result of the environment-induced decoherence theory that coherences decay asymptotically in time for a general initial state of the probe.

Holographic thermalization with initial long range correlation

We studied the evolution of Wightman correlator in a thermalizing state modeled by AdS_3-Vaidya background. We gave a prescription for calculating Wightman correlator in coordinate space without using any approximation. For equal-time correlator $\langle O(v,x)O(v,0)\rangle$, we obtained an enhancement factor $v^2$ due to long range correlation present in the initial state. This was missed by previous studies based on geodesic approximation. We found that the long range correlation in initial state does not lead to significant modification to thermalization time as compared to known results with generic initial state. We also studied spatially integrated Wightman correlator and showed evidence on the distinction between long distance and small momentum physics for an out-of-equilibrium state. We also calculated radiation spectrum of particle weakly coupled to $O$ and found lower frequency mode approaches thermal spectrum faster than high frequency mode.

Effects of dephasing on quantum adiabatic pumping with nonequilibrium initial states

Thouless's quantum adiabatic pumping is of fundamental interest to condensed-matter physics. It originally considered a zero-temperature equilibrium state uniformly occupying all the bands below a Fermi surface. In the light of recent direct simulations of Thouless's concept in cold-atom systems, this work investigates the dynamics of quantum adiabatic pumping subject to dephasing, for rather general initial states with nonuniform populations and possibly interband coherence. Using a theory based on pure-dephasing Lindblad evolution, we find that the pumping is contributed by two parts of different nature, a dephasing-modified geometric part weighted by initial Bloch state populations, and an interband-coherence-induced part compromised by dephasing, both of them being independent of the pumping time scale. The overall pumping reflects an interplay of the band topology, initial state populations, initial state coherence, and dephasing. Theoretical results are carefully checked in a Chern insulator model coupled to a pure-dephasing environment, providing a useful starting point to understand and coherently control quantum adiabatic pumping in general situations.

Hitting Time Asymptotics for Hard-Core Interactions on Grids

We consider the hard-core model with Metropolis transition probabilities on finite grid graphs and investigate the asymptotic behavior of the first hitting time between its two maximum-occupancy configurations in the low-temperature regime. In particular, we show how the order-of-magnitude of this first hitting time depends on the grid sizes and on the boundary conditions by means of a novel combinatorial method. Our analysis also proves the asymptotic exponentiality of the scaled hitting time and yields the mixing time of the process in the low-temperature limit as side-result. In order to derive these results, we extended the model-independent framework in [27] for first hitting times to allow for a more general initial state and target subset.

Looking for non-Gaussianity in all the right places: A new basis for nonseparable bispectra

Non-Gaussianity in the distribution of inflationary perturbations, measurable in statistics of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and large scale structure fluctuations, can be used to probe non-trivial initial quantum states for these perturbations. The bispectrum shapes predicted for generic non-Bunch-Davies initial states are non-factorizable ("non-separable") and are highly oscillatory functions of the three constituent wavenumbers. This can make the computation of CMB bispectra, in particular, computationally intractable. To efficiently compare with CMB data one needs to construct a separable template that has a significant similarity with the actual shape in momentum space. In this paper we consider a variety of inflationary scenarios, with different non-standard initial conditions, and how best to construct viable template matches. In addition to implementing commonly used separable polynomial and Fourier bases, we introduce a basis of localized piecewise spline functions. The spline basis is naturally nearly orthogonal, making it easy to implement and to extend to many modes. We show that, in comparison to existing techniques, the spline basis can provide better fits to the true bispectrum, as measured by the cosine between shapes, for sectors of the theory space of general initial states. As such, it offers a useful approach to investigate non-trivial features generated by fundamental properties of the inflationary Universe.

Spatiotemporal regularity in networks with stochastically varying links

In this work we investigate time varying networks with complex dynamics at the nodes. We consider two scenarios of network change in an interval of time: first, we have the case where each link can change with probability p t , i.e. the network changes occur locally and independently at each node. Secondly we consider the case where the entire connectivity matrix changes with probability p t , i.e. the change is global. We show that network changes, occuring both locally and globally, yield an enhanced range of synchronization. When the connections are changed slowly (i.e. p t is low) the nodes display nearly synchronized intervals interrupted by intermittent unsynchronized chaotic bursts. However when the connections are switched quickly (i.e. p t is large), the intermittent behavior quickly settles down to a steady synchronized state. Furthermore we find that the mean time taken to reach synchronization from generic random initial states is significantly reduced when the underlying links change more rapidly. We also analyse the probabilistic dynamics of the system with changing connectivity and the stable synchronized range thus obtained is in broad agreement with those observed numerically.

Interband coherence induced correction to adiabatic pumping in periodically driven systems

Periodic driving can create topological phases of matter absent in static systems. In terms of the displacement of the position expectation value of a time-evolving wavepacket in a closed system, a type of adiabatic dynamics in periodically driven systems is studied for general initial states possessing coherence between different Floquet bands. Under one symmetry assumption, the displacement of the wavepacket center over one adiabatic cycle is found to be comprised by two components independent of the time scale of the adiabatic cycle: a weighted integral of the Berry curvature summed over all Floquet bands, plus an interband coherence induced correction. The found correction is beyond a naive application of the quantum adiabatic theorem but survives in the adiabatic limit due to interband coherence. Our theoretical results are hence of general interest towards an improved understanding of the quantum adiabatic theorem. Our theory is checked using a periodically driven superlattice model with nontrivial topological phases. In addition to probing topological phase transitions, the adiabatic dynamics studied in this work is now also anticipated to be useful in manifesting coherence and decoherence effects in the representation of Floquet bands.

A cosmological Slavnov-Taylor identity

We develop a method for treating the consistency relations of inflation that includes the full time-evolution of the state. This approach relies only on the symmetries of the inflationary setting, in particular a residual conformal symmetry in the spatial part of the metric, along with general properties which hold for any quantum field theory. As a result, the consistency relations that emerge, which are essentially the Slavnov-Taylor identities associated with this residual conformal symmetry, apply very generally: they are true of the full Green's functions, hold largely independently of the particular inflationary model, and can be used for arbitrary states. We illustrate these techniques by showing the form assumed by the standard consistency relation between the two and three-point functions for the primordial scalar fluctuations when they are in a Bunch-Davies state. But because we have included the full evolution of the state, this approach works for a general initial state as well and does not need to have assumed that inflation began in the Bunch-Davies state. We explain how the Slavnov-Taylor identity is modified for these more general states.

Scale-dependent hemispherical asymmetry from general initial state during inflation

We consider a general initial state for inflation as the mechanism for generating scale-dependent hemispherical asymmetry. An observable scale-dependent non-Gaussianity is generated that leads to observable hemispherical asymmetry from the super-horizon long mode modulation. We show that the amplitude of dipole asymmetry falls off exponentially on small angular scales which can address the absence of dipole asymmetry at these scales. In addition, depending on the nature of non-vaccum initial state, the amplitude of the dipole asymmetry has oscillatory features which can be detected in a careful CMB map analysis. Furthermore, we show that the non-vacuum initial state provides a natural mechanism for enhancing the super horizon long mode perturbation as required to generate the dipole asymmetry.

BosonSampling is far from uniform

BosonSampling, which we proposed three years ago, is a scheme for using linear-optical networks to solve sampling problems that appear to be intractable for a classical computer. \ In a recent manuscript, Gogolin et al.\ claimed that even an ideal BosonSampling device's output would be operationally indistinguishable\textquotedblright\ from a uniform random outcome, at least \textquotedblleft without detailed a priori knowledge; or at any rate, that telling the two apart might itself be a hard problem. We first answer these claims---explaining why the first is based on a definition of a priori knowledge such that, were it adopted, almost no quantum algorithm could be distinguished from a pure random-number source; while the second is neither new nor a practical obstacle to interesting BosonSampling experiments.However, we then go further, and address some interesting research questions inspired by Gogolin et al.'s arguments. We prove that, with high probability over a Haar-random matrix $A$, the BosonSampling distribution induced by $A$ is far from the uniform distribution in total variation distance. More surprisingly, and counter to Gogolin et al., we give an efficient algorithm that distinguishes these two distributions with constant bias. Finally, we offer three bonus results about BosonSampling. First, we report an observation of Fernando Brandao: that one can efficiently sample a distribution that has large entropy and that's indistinguishable from a BosonSampling distribution by any circuit of fixed polynomial size. Second, we show that BosonSampling distributions can be efficiently distinguished from uniform even with photon losses and for general initial states. Third, we offer the simplest known proof that Fermion Sampling is solvable in classical polynomial time, and we reuse techniques from our Boson Sampling analysis to characterize random FermionSampling distributions.

Numerical evolution of squeezed and non-Gaussian states in loop quantum cosmology

In recent years, numerical simulations with Gaussian initial states have demonstrated the existence of a quantum bounce in loop quantum cosmology in various models. A key issue pertaining to the robustness of the bounce and the associated physics is to understand the quantum evolution for more general initial states, which may depart significantly from Gaussianity and may have no well defined peakedness properties. The analysis of such states, including squeezed and highly non-Gaussian states, has been computationally challenging until now. In this paper, we overcome these challenges by using the Chimera scheme for the spatially flat, homogeneous and isotropic model sourced with a massless scalar field. We demonstrate that the quantum bounce in this model occurs even for states that are highly squeezed or are non-Gaussian with multiple peaks and with little resemblance to semi-classical states. The existence of the bounce is found to be robust, being independent of the properties of the states. The evolution of squeezed and non-Gaussian states turns out to be qualitatively similar to that of Gaussian states, and satisfies strong constraints on the growth of the relative fluctuations across the bounce. We also compare the results from the effective dynamics and find that, although it captures the qualitative aspects of the evolution for squeezed and highly non-Gaussian states, it always underestimates the bounce volume. We show that various properties of the evolution, such as the energy density at the bounce, are in excellent agreement with the predictions from an exactly solvable loop quantum cosmological model for arbitrary states.