Stellar Representation Research Articles

Orthonormal bases of extreme quantumness

Spin anticoherent states acquired recently a lot of attention as the most "quantum" states. Some coherent and anticoherent spin states are known as optimal quantum rotosensors. In this work, we introduce a measure of quantumness for orthonormal bases of spin states, determined by the average anticoherence of individual vectors and the Wehrl entropy. In this way, we identify the most coherent and most quantum states, which lead to orthogonal measurements of extreme quantumness. Their symmetries can be revealed using the Majorana stellar representation, which provides an intuitive geometrical representation of a pure state by points on a sphere. Results obtained lead to maximally (minimally) entangled bases in the 2j+1 dimensional symmetric subspace of the 22j dimensional space of states of multipartite systems composed of 2j qubits. Some bases found are iso-coherent as they consist of all states of the same degree of spin-coherence.

Phase characterization of spinor Bose-Einstein condensates: A Majorana stellar representation approach

We study the variational perturbations for the mean-field solution of an interacting spinor system with underlying rotational symmetries. An approach based upon the Majorana stellar representation for mixed states and group theory is introduced to this end. The method reduces significantly the unknown degrees of freedom of the perturbation, allowing us a simplified and direct exploration on emergent physical phenomena. We apply it to characterize the phases of a spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate and to study the behavior of these phases with entropy. The spin-2 phase diagram was also investigated within the Hartree-Fock approximation, where a non-linear deviation of the cyclic-nematic phase boundary with temperature is predicted.

Twist-induced non-Hermitian skin effect in optical waveguide arrays

A non-Hermitian skin effect (NHSE) dramatically localizes bulk modes at open boundaries, leading to fascinating eigenvalue and wavefunction topologies. However, realizing NHSE typically requires non-reciprocal couplings, which many photonic systems cannot provide. Here, we propose an approach using twisted optical waveguide arrays. The twisting introduces geometrical phase in photon coupling process, effectively acting as artificial gauge fields for photons. By constructing a dissipative Aharonov–Bohm chain of twisted lattices, we achieve NHSE by combining these artificial gauge fields with dissipation. We can control the localization strength and direction of skin modes by tuning the twist. Additionally, we characterize the topological edge modes using Majorana's stellar representation and further propose twisted spectral winding with bipolar NHSE in a trapezoidal lattice. Our work offers an alternative avenue to realize eigenvalue topology and control light localization and transport.

Majorana stellar representation of twisted photons

Majorana stellar representation of twisted photons

Stellar representation of extremal Wigner-negative spin states

The Majorana stellar representation is used to characterize spin states that have a maximally negative Wigner quasiprobability distribution on a spherical phase space. These maximally Wigner-negative spin states generally exhibit a partial but not high degree of symmetry within their star configurations. In particular, for spin j > 2, maximal constellations do not correspond to a Platonic solid when available and do not follow an obvious geometric pattern as dimension increases. In addition, they are generally different from spin states that maximize other measures of nonclassicality such as anticoherence or geometric entanglement. Random states display on average a relatively high amount of negativity, but the extremal states and those with similar negativity are statistically rare in Hilbert space. We also prove that all spin coherent states of arbitrary dimension have non-zero Wigner negativity. This offers evidence that all pure spin states also have non-zero Wigner negativity. The results can be applied to qubit ensembles exhibiting permutation invariance.

Majorana's stellar representation of single-particle reduced density matrix for completely symmetric states

The completely symmetric states play an essential role in quantum physics. In this paper, we calculate the reduced density matrix (RDM) for a single particle of the completely symmetric system coupled by $N$ spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ particles, because it helps to investigate the evolution of expectation value for the observable and to calculate the entanglement between the subsystems. Furthermore, we use Majorana's stellar representation (MSR) to represent the results because it provides an intuitive geometric perspective to comprehend the quantum states in the high-dimensional Hilbert space with distributions and trajectories of the Majorana stars on a Bloch sphere. With the operation properties of the generalized many-body anticommutator, we get the general MSR form of a single-qubit RDM. As the application and verification, we calculate the single-qubit RDM for the Dicke states with the results. Similarly, we further solve the RDM of the spin-$\frac{N}{2}$ state in a uniform magnetic field and study the systems with symmetric structures on the Bloch sphere. The results exhibit the relations between the composite systems and the subsystems, and provide a new idea for the numerical solution of multiqubit systems.

Toponomic quantum computation

Holonomic quantum computation makes use of non-abelian geometric phases, associated to the evolution of a subspace of quantum states, to encode logical gates. We identify a special class of subspaces, for which a sequence of rotations results in a non-abelian holonomy of a topological nature, so that it is invariant under any SO(3)-perturbation. Making use of a Majorana-like stellar representation for subspaces, we give explicit examples of topological-holonomic (or toponomic) NOT and CNOT gates.

Majorana’s stellar representation for the quantum geometric tensor of symmetric states

Majorana’s stellar representation provides an intuitive picture in which quantum states in high-dimensional Hilbert space can be observed using the trajectory of Majorana stars. We consider the Majorana’s stellar representation of the quantum geometric tensor for a spin state up to spin-3/2. The real and imaginary parts of the quantum geometric tensor, corresponding to the quantum metric tensor and Berry curvature, are therefore obtained in terms of the Majorana stars. Moreover, we work out the expressions of quantum geometric tensor for arbitrary spin in some important cases. Our results will benefit the comprehension of the quantum geometric tensor and provide interesting relations between the quantum geometric tensor and Majorana’s stars.

Poetic Explorations in Bill F. Ndi’s <em>Worth Their Weight in Thorns</em>: (De)Constructing Hegemonic National Integration and Debating Francophonecentric National Governance.

This paper explores “hegemonic national integration” and “Francophonecentric national governance” in The Cameroons (TC) poetic scape. The former refers to La République du Cameroun (LRC)-British Southern Cameroons (BSC) or Southern Cameroons (SC) interconnectedness dominated by Francophones. The latter is governance that promotes a Francophone cultural superiority that refuses to see the Cameroonian world through Southern Cameroonians’ eyes. Cameroonians live in a time of enormous fragmenting “Francophonizing” and “Anglophonizing” processes. To flesh this argument out, this paper borrows critical perspectives from Benhabib’s “democratic iterations” and “deliberative democracy” and Rosenau’s “six-governance typology’ as requisites for good governance. It contends that “hegemonic national integration” and “Francophonecentric national governance” are pervasive features of Bill Ndi’s poetry. Indeed, SC literature of the anti-Francophoncentrism kind such as Nkengasong’s Across the Mongolo, Besong’s Disgrace, Nyamnjoh’s Souls Forgotten, etc., has not been recognized. For demonstrative purposes, focus will be on Ndi’s Worth their Weight in Thorns, a glaring example of such works. TC in which the poems are set is ruled by a power-drunk elite and characterized by socioeconomic and politico-cultural marginalization which is symptomatic of “hegemonic national (dis)integration” and “Francophonecentric national governance”. In TC, national integration and governance have become a kind of postcolonial re-racialization because the disparities between the wealthy/powerful Francophones and the poor/powerless Southern Cameroonians possess something akin to the racial character being witnessed in the USA. Consequently, reading Ndi’s collection from this perspective reveals the ongoing rivalry between the dominant LRC and the dominated SC as a stellar representation of a master-servant relationship.

Illuminating the bulk-boundary correspondence of a non-Hermitian stub lattice with Majorana stars

Topological characterization of non-Hermitian band structures demands more than a straightforward generalization of the Hermitian cases. Even for one-dimensional tight-binding models with nonreciprocal hopping, the appearance of point gaps and the skin effect leads to the breakdown of the usual bulk-boundary correspondence. Luckily, the correspondence can be resurrected by introducing a winding number for the generalized Brillouin zone for systems with even number of bands and chiral symmetry. Here, we analyze the topological phases of a nonreciprocal hopping model on the stub lattice, where one of the three bands remains flat. Due to the lack of chiral symmetry, the biorthogonal Zak phase is no longer quantized, invalidating the winding number as a topological index. Instead, we show that a $Z_2$ invariant can be defined from Majorana's stellar representation of the eigenstates on the Bloch sphere. The parity of the total azimuthal winding of the entire Majorana constellation correctly predicts the appearance of edge states between the bulk gaps. We further show that the system is not a square-root topological insulator, despite the fact that its parent Hamiltonian can be block diagonalized and related to a sawtooth lattice model. The analysis presented here may be generalized to understand other non-Hermitian systems with multiple bands.

Non-Hermitian flat bands in rhombic microring resonator arrays.

We investigate the flat bands in a quasi-one-dimensional rhombic array composed of evanescently coupled microring resonators (MRRs) with non-Hermitian coupling. By changing the relative position of non-Hermitian coupling in each cell, we construct topologically trivial and nontrivial flat bands, where both the real and imaginary parts of energy bands become flat and coalesce into a single band. We show the nontrivial systems are able to support topological boundary modes isolated from the flat bulk bands although there is no band gap. The elusive topology of flat bands can be geometrically visualized by plotting the trajectories of their eigenvectors on Bloch sphere based on Majorana's stellar representation (MSR). Furthermore, we perform a full wave simulation and show the characteristics of flat bands, associated compact localized modes, and boundary modes are reflected from absorption spectra and field intensity profiles. The study may find potential applications in lasers, narrowband filters, and efficient light harvesting.

Classical simulation of Gaussian quantum circuits with non-Gaussian input states

We consider Gaussian quantum circuits supplemented with non-Gaussian input states and derive sufficient conditions for efficient classical strong simulation of these circuits. In particular, we generalise the stellar representation of continuous-variable quantum states to the multimode setting and relate the stellar rank of the input non-Gaussian states, a recently introduced measure of non-Gaussianity, to the cost of evaluating classically the output probability densities of these circuits. Our results have consequences for the strong simulability of a large class of near-term continuous-variable quantum circuits.

Long-time semiclassical evolution of spinlike systems from Majorana sampling

We propose an approach to the analysis of the semiclassical evolution of spinlike systems. We show that an appropriate discretization of distributions in classical phase space (in this case the two-dimensional sphere ${\mathcal{S}}_{2}$) allows us to describe long-time dynamics (including the Schr\"odinger cat times) in terms of classical trajectories, both in stable and nonstable regimes and for a variety of initial states. The discretization method is based on the Majorana stellar representation of spin states and takes into account dynamical properties of the initial distribution in the corresponding classically generated potential on ${\mathcal{S}}_{2}$.

Majorana stellar representation for mixed-spin (s, 1/2) systems* *Project supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant Nos. 2017YFA0304202 and 2017YFA0205700), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11875231), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China (Grant No. 2018FZA3005).

By describing the evolution of a quantum state with the trajectories of the Majorana stars on a Bloch sphere, Majorana’s stellar representation provides an intuitive geometric perspective to comprehend the quantum system with high-dimensional Hilbert space. However, the representation of a two-spin coupling system on a Bloch sphere has not been solved satisfactorily yet. Here, a practical method is presented to resolve the problem for the mixed-spin (s, 1/2) system and describe the entanglement of the system. The system can be decomposed into two spins: spin-(s + 1/2) and spin-(s – 1/2) at the coupling bases, which can be regarded as independent spins. Besides, any pure state may be written as a superposition of two orthonormal states with one spin-(s + 1/2) state and the other spin-(s – 1/2) state. Thus, the whole initial state can be regarded as a state of a pseudo spin-1/2. In this way, the mixed spin decomposes into three spins. Therefore, the state can be represented by (2s + 1) + (2s – 1) + 1 = 4s + 1 sets of stars on a Bloch sphere. Finally, some examples are given to show symmetric patterns on the Bloch sphere and unveil the properties of the high-spin system by analyzing the trajectories of the Majorana stars on the Bloch sphere.

The non-Hermitian geometrical property of 1D Lieb lattice under Majorana’s stellar representation

The topological properties of non-Hermitian Hamiltonian is a hot topic, and the theoretical studies along this research line are usually based on the two-level non-Hermitian Hamiltonian (or, equivalently, a spin-1/2 non-Hermitian Hamiltonian). We are motivated to study the geometrical phases of a three-level Lieb lattice model (or, equivalently, a spin-1 non-Hermitian Hamiltonian) with the flat band in the context of a polariton condensate. The topological invariants are calculated by both winding numbers in the Brillouin zone and the geometrical phase of Majorana stars on the Bloch sphere. Besides, we provide an intuitive way to study the topological phase transformation with the higher spin, and the flat band offers a platform to define the topological phase transition on the Bloch sphere. According to the trajectories of the Majorana stars, we calculate the geometrical phases of the Majorana stars. We study the Lieb lattice with a complex hopping and find their phases have a jump when the parameters change from the trivial phase to the topological phase. The correlation phase of Majorana stars will rise along with the increase of the imaginary parts of the hopping energy. Besides, we also study the Lieb lattice with different intracell hopping and calculate the geometrical phases of the model using non-Bloch factor under the Majorana’s stellar representation. In this case, the correlation phases will always be zero because of the normalized coefficient is always a purely real number and the phase transition is vividly shown with the geometrical phases of the Majorana stars calculated by the mean values of the total phases of both right and the joint left eigenstates.

Topological characterization of non-Hermitian multiband systems using Majorana's stellar representation

For topological characterization of non-Hermitian multiband systems, Majorana's stellar representation (MSR) is applied to 1D multiband models consisting of asymmetric nearest-neighbor hopping and imaginary on-site potentials. The number of edge states isolated from the continuous bulk bands in the complex energy plane is successfully linked with a topological invariant constructed from MSR. Specifically, the number of isolated edge states can be obtained from a winding number defined for the Majorana stars, which also allows for a geometric visualization of the topology related to the isolated edge modes. A remarkable success of our approach is that our winding number characterization remains valid even in the presence of exceptional points of the continuous bulk bands, where the Hamiltonian becomes non-diagonalizable and hence conventional topological invariants such as the Zak phase and the Chern number cannot be properly defined. Furthermore, cases with the so-called non-Hermitian skin effect are also studied, showing that the bulk-boundary correspondence between our defined winding numbers and isolated edge states can be restored. Of particular interest is a four-band example with an odd number of isolated edge states, where the Zak phase approach necessarily fails upon removing the skin effect, but our MSR-based characterization works equally well. For these reasons, our study is expected to be widely useful in topological studies of non-Hermitian multiband systems, regardless of the skin effect or the presence of the exceptional points in non-Hermitian systems.

Majorana representation for mixed states

We generalize the Majorana stellar representation of spin-$s$ pure states to mixed states, and in general to any hermitian operator, defining a bijective correspondence between three spaces: the spin density-matrices, a projective space of homogeneous polynomials of four variables, and a set of equivalence classes of points (constellations) on spheres of different radii. The representation behaves well under rotations by construction, and also under partial traces where the reduced density matrices inherit their constellation classes from the original state $\rho$. We express several concepts and operations related to density matrices in terms of the corresponding polynomials, such as the anticoherence criterion and the tensor representation of spin-$s$ states described in [1].

Stellar Representation of Non-Gaussian Quantum States.

The so-called stellar formalism allows us to represent the non-Gaussian properties of single-mode quantum states by the distribution of the zeros of their Husimi Q function in phase space. We use this representation in order to derive an infinite hierarchy of single-mode states based on the number of zeros of the Husimi Q function: the stellar hierarchy. We give an operational characterization of the states in this hierarchy with the minimal number of single-photon additions needed to engineer them, and derive equivalence classes under Gaussian unitary operations. We study in detail the topological properties of this hierarchy with respect to the trace norm, and discuss implications for non-Gaussian state engineering, and continuous variable quantum computing.

A Haptic Model for the Quantum Phase of Fermions and Bosons in Hilbert Space Based on Knot Theory

A generalization of the famous Dirac belt trick opens up the way to a haptic model for quantum phases of fermions and bosons in Hilbert space based on knot theory. We introduce a simple paper strip model as an aid for visualization of the quantum phases before and after Hopf-mapping, which can be extended to arbitrary spin states with almost no mathematical formalism. Knot theory arises naturally, leading to the Jones polynomials derived from Artin’s braid group for fermionic knots and for bosonic links. The paper strip model explicitly illuminates the relation between these knots and links within the S U ( 2 ) -representation of spin-jstates in C 2 j + 1 before Hopf-mapping and the number p = 2 j of nodes in the stellar representation in C P 1 after Hopf mapping.

Spin-1 topological monopoles in the parameter space of ultracold atoms

Magnetic monopole, a hypothetical elementary particle with isolated magnetic pole, is crucial for the quantization of electric charge. In recent years, analogues of magnetic monopoles, represented by topological defects in parameter spaces, have been studied in a wide range of physical systems. These works mainly focused on Abelian Dirac monopoles in spin-1/2 or non-Abelian Yang monopoles in spin-3/2 systems. Here we propose to realize three types of spin-1 topological monopoles and study their geometric properties using the parameter space formed by three hyperfine states of ultracold atoms coupled by radio-frequency fields. These spin-1 monopoles, characterized by different monopole charges, possess distinct Berry curvature fields and spin textures, which are directly measurable in experiments. The topological phase transitions between different monopoles are accompanied by the emergence of spin "vortex", and can be intuitively visualized using Majorana's stellar representation. We show how to determine the Berry curvature, hence the geometric phase and monopole charge from dynamical effects. Our scheme provides a simple and highly tunable platform for observing and manipulating spin-1 topological monopoles, paving the way for exploring new topological quantum matter.