Papers

We study the problem of learning nearly $(s,\epsilon)$-sparse unitaries, meaning that the Pauli spectrum is concentrated on at most $s$ components with at most $\epsilon$ residual mass in Pauli $\ell_1$-norm. This class generalizes well-studied families, including sparse unitaries, quantum $k$-juntas, $2^k$-Pauli dimensional channels, and compositions of depth $O(\log\log n)$ circuits with near-Clifford circuits. Given query access to an unknown nearly sparse unitary $U$, our goal is to efficiently (both in time and query complexity) construct a quantum channel that is close in diamond distance to $U$. We design a learning algorithm achieving this guarantee using $\tilde{O}(s^6/\epsilon^4)$ forward queries to $U$, and running time polynomial in relevant parameters. A key contribution is an efficient quantum algorithm that, given query access to an arbitrary unknown unitary $U$, estimates all Pauli coefficients (up to a shared global phase) whose magnitude exceeds a given threshold $\theta$, extending existing sparse recovery techniques to general unitaries. We also study the broader class of unitaries with bounded Pauli $\ell_1$-norm. For that class, we prove an exponential query lower bound $\Omega(2^{n/2})$. We introduce a more relaxed accuracy metric which is the diamond distance restricted to a set of input states. Then, we show that, under this metric, unitaries with Pauli $\ell_1$-norm uniformly bounded by $L_1$ are learnable with $\tilde{O}(L_1^8/\epsilon^{16})$.

Complex numbers, intrinsic to the formulation of quantum theory, play a pivotal role in enabling advantages across a broad range of quantum information-processing tasks. Despite their fundamental importance, practical and scalable criteria for detecting quantum imaginarity remain relatively underexplored, particularly methods that enable its identification with reduced experimental overhead. In this work, we propose a realistic and experimentally feasible method to detect quantum imaginarity using moment-based approach. Our framework relies on experimentally accessible moments of the Kirkwood-Dirac quasiprobability distribution, enabling scalable detection in many-body and high-dimensional systems without requiring full state tomography. We then present an illustrative example to support our detection scheme. Finally, we present an interferometric scheme for measuring these moments, paving the way for experimental implementation of our detection protocol.

Integrated photonic circuits offer great promise for quantum technologies. However, due to the rapid propagation of light, many envisioned applications require efficient on-chip quantum memories with a programmable delay, compact footprint, and high fidelity. Implementing this based on standard semiconductor processing technology is an outstanding challenge. Here, we realize such memories using erbium-doped silicon waveguides, fabricated as part of a multi-wafer project by a nanophotonic foundry. We demonstrate light storage with a $44.2(9)\ \text{MHz}$ bandwidth and a programmable delay exceeding $1\ \mu \text{s}$ in a device with a footprint of only $1.5\times 10^{-2}\ \text{mm}^2$, outperforming on-chip delay lines by many orders of magnitude. The phase of the read-out light field is preserved with a visibility of $91.3(30)\ \%$. The efficiency of $1.89(28)\times 10^{-8}$ can be improved in future devices through resonator enhancement and higher dopant concentrations. With this, the demonstrated approach will pave the way towards applications in photonic quantum computing based on scalable silicon processing technology.

To overcome the fast oscillatory behavior of correlation functions for extracting scattering phase shift in real-time quantum simulations encountered in Ref.\cite{Guo:2026qkx}, we propose and test two solutions in the present work. One is to simulate Hermitian systems in imaginary time, the other is to simulate non-Hermitian systems in real time. We demonstrate that both approaches lead to the problem of non-unitary quantum evolution which can be solved by combining two quantum algorithms: block encoding and Hadamard test. The combined quantum algorithm does not require mid-circuit measurements or adjustment of the input parameters of the Hamiltonian, and can be easily implemented on quantum computers. Numerical tests on quantum simulators show that both approaches agree with exact solutions for a sufficiently long time before the signal is lost in statistical fluctuations. The results bode well for using non-Hermitian and imaginary-time simulations to circumvent oscillations inherent in real-time simulation of other quantum systems. In particular, the non-Hermitian approach shows a decisive advantage over the imaginary-time one on the number of required ancillary qubits, and hence is more practical to scale up.

For Hamiltonian systems, level statistics provide a faithful diagnostic of quantum chaos. By analogy, the statistics of the Lindbladian spectrum are often used in open quantum systems, and the Grobe-Haake-Sommers conjecture proposes that systems with chaotic classical counterparts should exhibit level repulsion in the Lindbladian spectrum. Here we point out an important flaw in this analogy: Hamiltonian and Lindbladian spectra behave differently and have distinct physical interpretations, and one should therefore not expect the latter to provide a reliable diagnostic. For Lindbladians, the late-time dynamics are not determined by the bulk of the eigenvalues but only by those eigenvalues – and their corresponding eigenvectors – with small real parts. Combined with the strong non-normality typical of Lindbladians, this allows situations in which the level statistics can be tuned almost arbitrarily without affecting the dynamics on either short or long time scales. We explicitly demonstrate this phenomenon and provide examples in which Ginibre level repulsion arises while the system dynamics at no time show signatures of chaos. We further relate this mechanism to the emergence of a non-Hermitian skin effect in Liouville space, linking boundary-induced eigenvector localization to the observed spectral instability. Our results show that level statistics cannot universally serve as a reliable diagnostic of quantum chaos in open quantum systems and highlight the need for alternative diagnostics that remain robust in strongly non-normal regimes.

The time-of-arrival problem asks for the probability distribution for when a quantum particle reaches a specified location. It has been the subject of decades of debate, exemplifying the lack of a self-adjoint time observable in quantum theory. In the Page-Wootters framework, time is a relational quantity, emerging from correlations between a system and a clock induced by a global Hamiltonian constraint. We construct a time-of-arrival distribution by inverting the Page-Wootters approach, asking what time a clock reads given that the particle arrives at some fixed position. The result coincides with a common approach to the time-of-arrival problem, suggesting a potential relational interpretation of the latter. In addition to providing a relational description of the time-of-arrival problem, this gives an application of the Page-Wootters formalism to a concrete physical problem, and reveals some complications with its canonical interpretation as a theory of conditional probabilities.

We introduce conclusive identification task for classical channels: a receiver identifies transmitted inputs without error when possible, and responds inconclusively when outputs are ambiguous. For a symmetric not-fully-corrupted channel $N : X \to X$, the single-shot conclusive identification index $\mathrm{ci}_\circ(N)$ counts the maximum number of conclusively identifiable inputs. We show $\mathrm{ci}_\circ(N)$ exhibits a striking superactivation phenomenon: a channel with $\mathrm{ci}_\circ(N) = 0$ achieves $\mathrm{ci}_\circ(N \otimes \mathrm{id}^c_\beta) = |X|$ when assisted by a perfect classical channel of dimension $\beta < |X|$. The minimum classical assistance required equals the chromatic number $\chi(\mathtt{S}_N)$ of the channel's support graph $\mathtt{S}_N$. We provide channel families where the superactivation gap $\mathrm{ci}_\circ(N \otimes \mathrm{id}^c_\beta) - \mathrm{ci}_\circ(\mathrm{id}^c_\beta)$ can be made arbitrarily large. A noiseless quantum channel of dimension equal to the orthogonal rank $\xi(\mathtt{S}_N)$ suffices, yielding a strict quantum advantage whenever $\xi(\mathtt{S}_N) < \chi(\mathtt{S}_N)$. This advantage is demonstrated through three explicit constructions motivated by combinatorial and algebraic state-independent, and state-dependent proofs of Kochen-Specker contextuality. Via the co-normal product of graphs, we analyze the scaling of the quantum advantage ratio $\chi_f(\mathtt{S}_N)/\xi(\mathtt{S}_N)$, and present a channel for which quantum assistance is exponentially more efficient than classical. Our results establish $\mathtt{S}_N$, rather than the confusability graph $\mathtt{G}_N$, as the natural combinatorial object for conclusive identification, revealing that channels deemed useless under Shannon's zero-error framework can exhibit rich superactivation and quantum advantage, with deep connections to quantum contextuality.

The Grothendieck constant $K_{G}$ is a fundamental quantity in functional analysis, with important connections to quantum information, combinatorial optimization, and the geometry of Banach spaces. Despite decades of study, the value of $K_{G}$ is unknown. The best known lower bound on $K_{G}$ was obtained independently by Davie and Reeds in the 1980s. In this paper we show that their bound is not optimal. We prove that $K_{G} \ge K_{DR} + 10^{-12}$, where $K_{DR}$ denotes the Davie-Reeds lower bound. Our argument is based on a perturbative analysis of the Davie-Reeds operator. We show that every near-extremizer for the Davie-Reeds problem has $\Omega(1)$ weight on its degree-3 Hermite coefficients, and therefore introducing a small cubic perturbation increases the integrality gap of the operator.

We present a theoretical framework for recovering the amplitude and carrier phase of a single received RF field with a Rydberg-atom receiver, without injecting an RF local oscillator (LO) into the atoms. The key enabling mechanism is a static DC bias applied to the vapor cell: by Stark-mixing a near-degenerate Rydberg pair, the bias activates an otherwise absent upper optical pathway and closes a phase-sensitive loop within a receiver driven only by the standard probe/coupling pair and the received RF field. For a spatially uniform bias, we derive an effective four-level rotating-frame Hamiltonian of Floquet form and show that the periodic steady state obeys an exact harmonic phase law, so that the $n$th probe harmonic carries the factor $e^{in\Phi_S}$. This yields direct estimators for the signal phase and amplitude from a demodulated probe harmonic, with amplitude recovery obtained by inverting an injective harmonic response map. In the high-SNR regime, we derive explicit RMSE laws and use them to identify distinct phase-optimal and amplitude-optimal bias-controlled mixing angles, together with a weighted joint-design criterion and a balanced compromise angle that equalizes the fractional phase and amplitude penalties. We then extend the analysis to nonuniform DC bias through quasistatic spatial averaging and show that bias inhomogeneity reduces coherent gain for phase readout while also reshaping the amplitude-response slope. Numerical examples validate the phase law, illustrate response-map inversion and mixing-angle trade-offs, and quantify the penalties induced by bias nonuniformity. The results establish a minimal route to coherent Rydberg reception of a single RF signal without an auxiliary RF LO in the atoms.

Interactive verification protocols for quantum computations allow to build trust between a client and a service provider, ensuring the former that the instructed computation was carried out faithfully. They come in two variants, one without quantum communication that requires large overhead on the server side to coherently implement quantum-resistant cryptographic primitives, and one with quantum communication but with repetition as the only overhead on the service provider's side. Given the limited number of available qubits on current machines, only quantum communication-based protocols have yielded proof of concepts. In this work, we show that the repetition overhead of protocols with quantum communication can be further mitigated if one examines the task of operating a quantum machine from the service provider's point of view. Indeed, we show that the test rounds data, whose collection is necessary to provide security, can indeed be recycled to perform continuous monitoring of noise model parameters for the service provider. This exemplifies the versatility of these protocols, whose template can serve multiple purposes and increases the interest in considering their early integration into development roadmaps of quantum machines.

A strong converse bound for the classical identification capacity of a quantum channel is an upper bound on the asymptotic identification rate of classical messages sent through the channel, such that, above this rate, the probability of an identification error necessarily converges to one. Converse bounds for identification are notoriously difficult to obtain for fully quantum channels. The only previously known converse bound, due to Atif, Pradhan and Winter [Int.~J.~Quantum Inf.~22(5):2440013, 2024], has the unsatisfactory feature of remaining strictly positive even for a completely noisy channel, for which identification is clearly impossible. We derive strong (and hence also weak) converse bounds, for the qubit depolarizing channel with noise parameter $p$, that vanish as $p\to 1$, thereby yielding the correct behavior in the completely noisy limit. Moreover, in the setting of simultaneous classical identification under the constraint of complete product measurements, our converse bound matches the corresponding achievability bound, and establishes that in this case the identification capacity equals the classical capacity of the channel.

Entangled photon pairs are a ubiquitous resource in quantum technologies, used in quantum key distribution and quantum networking as well as fundamental tests of non-locality. For scalable quantum networks, pairs that are indistinguishable in all unentangled degrees of freedom are essential, as they enable high-fidelity entanglement swapping across network nodes. To date the most-studied sources of "swappable" entangled photon pairs have been based on spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) in non-linear crystals. However, the probabilistic nature and unavoidable trade-off between brightness and unwanted multi-photon emission limits their performance in lossy channels. Here, we demonstrate a high-fidelity source of "swappable" entangled photon pairs using a semiconductor quantum dot (QD) coupled to a tunable microcavity. By actively modulating the QD emission between orthogonal polarisation states, delaying one path in a low-loss Herriott cell, and recombining the two on a balanced beam splitter, we generate entangled photon pairs with a fidelity of $96.1\pm0.5$ %. We identify and mitigate fidelity-limiting factors, achieving a maximum fidelity of $98.1\pm0.5$ % through time-resolved post-selection. The scheme suppresses residual multi-photon events concentrated near the excitation pulse and has only a modest impact on the rate. Furthermore, the photons are mutually indistinguishable, enabling efficient entanglement swapping. Our results establish semiconductor QDs as a viable platform for quantum network-compatible swappable entangled photon pair generation, with feasible entanglement generation rates exceeding 0.5 Gpairs/s.

Quantum sensing technologies offer transformative potential for ultra-sensitive biomedical sensing, yet their clinical translation remains constrained by classical noise limits and a reliance on macroscopic ensembles. We propose a unifying generational framework to organize the evolving landscape of quantum biosensors based on their utilization of quantum resources. First-generation devices utilize discrete energy levels for signal transduction but follow classical scaling laws. Second-generation sensors exploit quantum coherence, extending precision with the coherence time up to the standard quantum limit, while third-generation architectures employ entanglement and spin squeezing to approach Heisenberg-limited precision. We define an emerging fourth generation characterized by the end-to-end integration of quantum sensing with quantum learning and variational circuits, enabling adaptive inference directly within the quantum domain. By introducing a bandwidth-matching analysis pairing the neural signal hierarchy with platform response bandwidths, classifying deployed clinical devices by precision-scaling class and sensor-tissue proximity, and outlining a staged physical-milestone roadmap toward learning-integrated sensor networks, we identify key technological bottlenecks and chart the transition from measuring physical observables to extracting structured biological information with quantum-enhanced intelligence.

The $1+1$ dimensional $Z_2$ gauge theory is the simplest model that allows for quantum computation or quantum simulation to probe the fundamental aspects of a gauge theory coupled with dynamical fermions. To reliably benchmark such a system, it is crucial to understand the non-unitary quantum dynamics arising from the underlying non-Hermitian evolution and to model the effects of quantum measurements. In this work, we study post-selected filtering dynamics of physical observables for a $\mathbb {Z} _2$ gauge theory. Tensor network calculations are performed to dynamically probe entanglement entropy at larger lattice sizes. We report that projective measurement of local and diagonal observables (electric and mass energy densities) in the computational basis demonstrates the absence of any measurement-induced phase transition like phenomenon, as indicated by the system-size independence of the late-time saturation value of the bipartite entanglement entropy.

We study the stabiliser formalism for qudits of arbitrary dimension $d$. In the free case, we show that the basic theorem of the stabiliser formalism remains valid: if the stabiliser subgroup $H$ is free as a $Z/dZ$-module and contains no non-trivial scalars, then the protected space $V^H$ is naturally identified with the state space of a smaller number of qudits of the same dimension, and the quotient $N(H)/H$ is identified with the Pauli group on a smaller number of qudits. We then remove the freeness assumption and describe the resulting structure in general. In this case, the protected space is identified with a tensor product of qudit spaces of possibly smaller dimensions, and the quotient $N(H)/H$ is described by a corresponding product of qudit Pauli groups, possibly of smaller dimensions, over a common center. We also characterise the shifted free case, which is exactly the situation in which $N(H)/H$ is again an ordinary qudit Pauli group. Our approach is algebraic and uniform, and applies in particular to the qudit Kitaev model and to its shifted and twisted variants.

T-count minimization is an NP-hard problem that arises in fault-tolerant quantum compilation. In the parity-matrix representation, which captures the non-Clifford part of a quantum circuit, algebraic optimizers such as TODD can achieve state-of-the-art results. However, heuristics fixed in advance determine which transformation is applied, limiting the exploration of alternative trajectories that may lead to better solutions. We show how LLM-guided evolutionary search can help explore these degrees of freedom, which VarTODD exposes through a policy that determines how to allocate the available evaluation budget and how to guide the search. Execution diagnostics guide LLM-generated revisions to both numerical search parameters and program logic, with the possibility of exploiting earlier results by starting from intermediate matrices saved during previous runs. This formulation turns heuristic design into an automated search problem and, across all evaluated instances, matches or improves on the lowest listed reference T-count for every evaluated instance; for example, on the GF(2^n) multiplier benchmarks, it yields a mean relative reduction of 7.0%.

We present a systematic derivation of the Heisenberg evolution of a trilinear bosonic Hamiltonian system in presence of a strong drive beyond the standard approximation of a classical, undepleted driving field. We employ a perturbative expansion of the Hamiltonian propagator in orders of the input field amplitudes, as opposed to the standard Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff (BCH) expansion of the propagator in orders of time. Our method automatically provides time-closed expressions; and converges considerably faster than BCH, especially in the regime of high parametric gain because the small parameter it uses is natural to the problem. We obtain the well-known quantum solution for optical parametric amplification of down-conversion simply as the first order of the expansion, and present the rigorous procedure to derive higher order corrections one by one. To demonstrate the utility of higher corrections, we discuss the 2nd order correction to the pump field as an ideal detector of time-energy entanglement in parametric down-conversion. We also use the 3rd order correction to calculate the limits on the achievable squeezing with parametric amplification and on the fidelity of quantum state-transfer from one optical mode to another with sum/difference frequency generation, due to the quantum properties of the strong driving field.

Recent studies have shown that Trotter errors are highly initial-state dependent and that standard upper bounds often substantially overestimate them. However, the mechanism underlying anomalously small Trotter errors and a systematic route to identifying error-resilient states remain unclear. Using interaction-picture perturbation theory, we derive an analytical expression for the leading-order Trotter error in the eigenbasis of the Hamiltonian. Our analysis shows that initial states supported on spectrally commensurate energy ladders exhibit strongly suppressed error growth together with persistent Loschmidt revivals. We refer to such states as Trotter scars. To identify such states, we further introduce a model-agnostic variational framework. Its loss function can be built from Trotterized dynamics alone, which allows the search to reach system sizes beyond exact diagonalization. The optimized states at small sizes moreover follow regular patterns that extend to larger sizes. We demonstrate our theory in three spin models, where the optimized states exhibit the predicted persistent Loschmidt revivals and strongly suppressed error growth. We further conducted experiments on a $17$-qubit superconducting quantum processor and successfully realized the Trotter-scar states and demonstrated the Trotter error suppression in quantum simulations.

This study investigates the spatial confinement of topological $\pi$-modes in one-dimensional chiral-symmetric systems. In conventional periodic and quasiperiodic structures, edge-mode wave functions inevitably penetrate the bulk. To suppress this, inverse design of a potential sequence is performed using a generative model under a global topological constraint. The generated sequence reveals a characteristic structure consisting of a topological boundary layer and a macroscopic S-dense domain, leading to enhanced confinement ($\xi=0.85$) while preserving topology. Based on the physical principle extracted from this result, a minimal heterostructure composed of only two S-blocks is manually constructed, which further reduces the localization length to $\xi=0.75$. These results provide a compact design principle for strongly localized topological states.

In this paper, we construct several new quantum Floquet codes on compact, orientable, as well as non-orientable surfaces. In order to obtain such codes, we identify these surfaces with hyperbolic polygons and examine hyperbolic semi-regular tessellations on such surfaces. The method of construction presented here generalizes similar constructions concerning hyperbolic Floquet codes on connected and compact surfaces with genus $g \geq 2$. A performance analysis and an investigation of the asymptotic behavior of these codes are also presented.

In this work, we study the problems of certifying and learning quantum $k$-local Hamiltonians, for a constant $k$. Our main contributions are as follows: - Certification of Hamiltonians. We show that certifying a local Hamiltonian in normalized Frobenius norm via access to its time-evolution operator can be achieved with only $O(1/\varepsilon)$ evolution time. This is optimal, as it matches the Heisenberg-scaling lower bound of $\Omega(1/\varepsilon)$. To our knowledge, this is the first optimal algorithm for testing a Hamiltonian property. A key ingredient in our analysis is the Bonami Hypercontractivity Lemma from Fourier analysis. - Learning Gibbs states. We design an algorithm for learning Gibbs states of local Hamiltonians in trace norm that is sample-efficient in all relevant parameters. In contrast, previous approaches learned the underlying Hamiltonian (which implies learning the Gibbs state), and thus inevitably suffered from exponential sample complexity scaling in the inverse temperature. - Certification of Gibbs states. We give an algorithm for certifying Gibbs states of local Hamiltonians in trace norm that is both sample and time-efficient in all relevant parameters, thereby solving a question posed by Anshu (Harvard Data Science Review, 2022).

We establish a topological sum rule, $\nu_U = \frac{1}{2\pi}\sum_n\gamma_n = m\nu_H$, connecting the geometric phases accumulated by a two-qubit system over a complete basis of initial states to the winding number $\nu_H$ classifying its Hamiltonian. Implementations of the same gate from different topological classes must distribute these phases differently, making their distinction measurable through the Wootters concurrence. As a corollary, nontrivial topology is a necessary condition for entanglement: only Hamiltonians with access to $\nu_H \neq 0$ can generate it.

Slow light is a regime of reduced group velocity, resulting in increased photon density in optical pulses and enhanced nonlinear effects. Here, we propose the realization of slow light in the regime of strong light-matter interaction between waveguide photons and semiconductor excitons. We design a dielectric superlattice structure with a nearly-flat band characterized by low group velocity and group velocity dispersion, both required for enhancing nonlinear effects with ultrashort pulses. Furthermore, by applying this general framework to a perovskite-based structure, we demonstrate an enhancement of the single-particle phase shift by a factor of more than 20, representing a significant step toward the few-photon quantum regime. Our results provide a blueprint for accessible strong interactions in solid-state integrated optics.

High-order perfect absorption of coherent input has recently attracted significant attention due to its broadband absorption capacity. However, the realization of a high-order perfect absorber relies on the exceptional point (EP) to coalesce the scattering zeros. Here, we present a general scattering framework and achieve the high-order perfect absorber in the absence of EP. We consider the asynchronous coherent input, where a spatial delay introduces a momentum-dependent phase factor beyond the amplitude and phase control in synchronous coherent input. This new degree of freedom enables active control of the momentum dependent output, effectively reshaping the absorption line shape necessary for the high-order perfect absorber. Remarkably, despite the absence of EP, the proposed high-order perfect absorber exhibits significant response to the perturbations in the delay length. Our findings provide insights for the delay induced momentum-sensitive interference phenomenon and offer a new route for wave control.

Nonequilibrium energy transport serves as one of fundamental problems in quantum thermodynamics and quantum technologies. Driven quantum master equation in the dressed picture provides an efficient way of investigating nonequilibrium energy flow in general driven-dissipative quantum systems, where the systems are simultaneously driven by the finite thermodynamic bias and coherent driving field. The validity and general applicability of driven quantum master equation is confirmed by comparing with Floquet master equation, by analyzing energy currents in generic spin and boson models. The additional driving phase reserved in system-reservoir interactions, will apparently modify microscopic energy exchange processes. The steady-state energy currents are dramatically enhanced, in particular near the resonant regimes. In contrast, the traditional dressed master equation yields distinct behaviors of the energy currents. We hope that the driven quantum master equation may provide an efficient utility for the control of quantum transport and thermodynamic performances in driven-dissipative nanodevices.

We consider a Hamiltonian $\hat H$ with a (partially) continuous spectrum and examine the zero-overlap condition which involves the projection onto exact continuum eigenstates of a set of pseudostates obtained from the diagonalization of $\hat H$ in a finite basis of square-integrable functions. For each projected pseudostate the condition implies the occurrence of zeros at all energies that correspond to the pseudo-continuum matrix eigenvalues, except for the eigenenergy associated with that pseudostate. This feature was observed for the Coulomb continuum represented in a Laguerre basis [M. McGovern et al., Phys. Rev. A 79, 042707 (2009)] and later explained using special properties of the Laguerre functions [I. B. Abdurakhmanov et al., J. Phys. B 44, 075204 (2011)]. We establish that a sufficient condition for the zero-overlap condition to occur is that the image space of the operator $\hat Q \hat H \hat P$, where $\hat P$ is the projection operator onto the subspace spanned by the basis and $\hat Q = \hat 1 - \hat P$ its complement, has dimension one. We show that the condition is met for the one-dimensional free-particle problem by a basis of harmonic oscillator eigenstates and by a minimal set of simple momentum-space wave functions, and for the Coulomb problem by a Laguerre basis, thus offering an alternative proof for the latter case. The zero-overlap condition ensures that in, e.g., an ionizing collision or laser-atom interaction process, transition probabilities obtained from the projection of a time-propagated pseudostate-expanded system wave function onto eigenstates of $ \hat H $ are asymptotically stable.

We investigate the rotational phase diagram of a quasi-two-dimensional, weakly-interacting Bose-Einstein condensate confined in power-law and in hard-wall trapping potentials. For weak interactions, the system undergoes discontinuous transitions between multiply-quantized vortex states as the rotation frequency of the trap increases. In contrast, stronger interactions induce continuous phase transitions toward mixed states involving both singly and multiply-quantized vortex states. A central result is the qualitative (and experimentally observable) difference between power-law and hard-wall confinement: In hard-wall traps, the leading instability always involves states with nonzero density at the trap center, whereas in power-law traps the density vanishes as the rotation frequency increases. The two different types of confinement give rise to scaling properties in the derived phase diagrams.

Spin squeezing serves as both a fundamental witness of quantum entanglement and a critical resource for quantum-enhanced metrology. While generating substantial spin squeezing in finite-range interacting systems remains challenging, such capability is important for advancing quantum technologies. In this work, we develop an optimal control strategy for achieving enhanced spin squeezing in a two-dimensional XX model with dipolar interactions. Leveraging rotor-spin-wave theory for periodic boundary conditions, we circumvent computational bottlenecks to explore control strategies at unprecedented scales. Remarkably, optimizing a single collective transverse field is sufficient to achieve substantial squeezing enhancement, exceeding the two-axis-twisting benchmark. The optimized control field achieves this breakthrough by dynamically suppressing inter-subspace mixing induced by the finite-range interactions, thereby confining the system evolution predominantly within the maximal spin subspace. We further extend rotor-spin-wave theory to open boundary conditions and incorporate dephasing noise, providing a scalable framework for realistic systems. Under these conditions, the optimized protocol remains effective, highlighting its robustness and suitability for experimental implementation.

Chaotic behavior of quantum systems can be characterized by the adherence of the expectation values of given probes to moments of the Haar distribution. In this work, we analyze the behavior of several probes of chaos using a technique known as Isospectral Twirling [1]. This consists in fixing the spectrum of the Hamiltonian and picking its eigenvectors at random. Here, we study the transition from stabilizer bases to random bases according to the Haar measure by T-doped random quantum circuits. We then compute the average value of the probes over ensembles of random spectra from Random Matrix Theory, the Gaussian Diagonal Ensemble and the Gaussian Unitary Ensemble, associated with non-chaotic and chaotic behavior respectively. We also study the behavior of such probes over the Toric Code Hamiltonian.

Quantum key distribution is often regarded as an unconditionally secure method to exchange a secret key by harnessing fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics. Despite the robustness of key exchange, classical post-processing reveals vulnerabilities that an eavesdropper could target. In particular, many reconciliation protocols correct errors by comparing the parities of subsets between both parties. These communications occur over insecure channels, leaking information that an eavesdropper could exploit. Currently there is no holistic threat model that addresses how parity-leakage during reconciliation might be actively manipulated. In this paper we introduce a new form of attack, namely the Manipulate-and-Observe attack in which the adversary (1) partially intercepts a fraction $\rho$ of the qubits during key exchange, injecting the maximally tolerated amount of errors up to the 11 percent error threshold whilst remaining undetected and (2) probes the maximum amount of parity-leakage during reconciliation, and exploits it using a vectorised, parallel brute force filter to shrink the search space from 2n down to as few as a single candidate, for an n-bit reconciled key. We perform simulations of the attack, deploying it on the most widely used protocol, BB84, andthe benchmark reconciliation protocol, Cascade. Our simulation results demonstrate that the attack can significantly reduce the security below the theoretical bound and, in the worst case, fully recover the reconciled key material. The principles of the attack could threaten other parity-based reconciliation schemes, like Low Density Parity Check, which underscores the need for urgent consideration of the combined security of key exchange and post-processing.