Papers

We present hybrid quantum-classical pipelines for solving the Duffing equation that leverage Carleman linearization and the Variational Quantum Linear Solver (VQLS). First, we demonstrate that Carleman linearization accurately approximates the weakly nonlinear Duffing equation, with errors diminishing as the truncation order increases. Next, across IBM and Xanadu platforms, we deploy VQLS with symmetry-grouped Hadamard Test evaluations under both global and local cost formulations, compare distinct Hermitianization within a common cost framework, and benchmark hardware-efficient ansatz architectures under a fixed Hermitianization. Across block-banded test cases, each method achieves near-unity fidelity and vanishing relative residuals. These results show that topology-agnostic ansatz, optimized Hermitianization, and efficient cost formulation enable VQLS to recover quantum states proportional to classical solutions for Carleman-structured systems, providing a portable recipe for quantum-in-the-loop simulation of nonlinear dynamics.

Applying single-qubit Clifford unitaries to a Pauli stabilizer code produces a Clifford-deformed variant whose stabilizers remain Pauli operators, but with locally rotated Pauli axes. Such deformations provide a simple way to tailor a fixed code to anisotropic noise, and have enabled unusually high thresholds under strongly biased dephasing. In this work, we discuss zero-rate quantum low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, for which there exist Clifford-deformed variants where the number of biased logical operators scales slower than the distance, or there exists a basis of logical operators whose overlap satisfies certain scaling conditions; in this case, the code-capacity threshold for the Clifford-deformed variant under i.i.d. pure dephasing noise approaches 50%. This property provably explains previously known code examples with 50% biased noise thresholds, such as XY surface code, XZZX surface code, color code, as well as some 3D Clifford-deformed codes. As a concrete new example, we study Clifford deformations of the tile codes of Ref. [1]. Similar to the phase diagram of 50% thresholds for random Clifford deformations of the surface code in Ref. [2], we find a similar phase diagram for the tile codes. We also construct several translationally invariant deformations of the tile code with 50% thresholds, and present numerical evidence for improved performance at finite bias and under circuit-level noise. In the circuit-level setting, performance is governed by the residual bias after a full syndrome-extraction cycle, linking our simulations to phenomenological models commonly used to study Clifford-deformed codes. We estimate this residual bias for different qubit platforms by modeling microscopic implementations of tile-code syndrome extraction.

We develop an error-corrected quantum computation scheme based on concatenating the five-qubit Laflamme code onto the four-qubit Iceberg code. The approach skates a thin line: it is explicitly not fault tolerant, risking higher logical error rates, and it relies on selective filtering to prepare encoded states for error correction, risking significant overhead. Yet, at realistic simulated noise rates, the scheme is reliable and resource efficient. It forges a practical path toward scalable quantum computation.

We introduce energy-space quantum walks as a minimal framework to investigate equilibration, thermalization, and irreversibility from an effective-dynamics perspective. By mapping the configuration space of a walk onto a ladder of energy eigenlevels, we reinterpret thermalization as transport in energy space, independently of microscopic system–bath details. At the classical level, the resulting birth–death–lazy dynamics leads to equilibration of the energy distribution and, under suitable conditions, to a Gibbs stationary state. We then embed this dynamics into a unitary, collision-assisted model in which coherence is controlled by a single parameter. A central result is a structural decoupling between population dynamics and coherence generation: while the populations evolve according to the classical process and relax to the Gibbs distribution, the full quantum state exhibits a persistent coherence-induced deviation from the thermal manifold. This establishes a minimal scenario of thermalization without state convergence, where equilibration occurs at the level of populations but not at the level of the full density operator. We quantify this effect using the thermal distance to the Gibbs state and derive perturbative bounds that relate the long-time deviation to classical transport properties. Our results show that coherence acts as a controllable and quantitatively bounded source of nonthermal behavior, providing a clear separation between classical equilibration and genuinely quantum corrections.

We present an architecture-algorithm co-design study of the Optimistic Quantum Fourier Transform (OQFT) under a surface-code fault-tolerant execution model for reconfigurable neutral-atom hardware. Analyzing the OQFT structure, particularly its reliance on phase-gradient resources and small-scale blocks, highlights architectural requirements for resource mobility and parallel execution. Guided by that, we introduce a hot-zone architecture that decouples data storage from processing and dynamically routes mobile resource packages (magic-state factories, bridge qubits, and phase-gradient registers) to stationary data regions. To expose dominant costs, we route rotation insertions via catalytic phase-gradient addition and heuristically micro-schedule ripple-carry adders to patch-level moves. Under this model, leading Gidney~\cite{Gidney2018halvingcostof} and Cuccaro~\cite{cuccaro2004} adders have similar space-time volume but require different levels of parallelism. At the algorithm level, the five-layer OQFT shows a tunable parallelism/latency trade-off: two hot zones match serial-QFT latency, four hot zones roughly halve runtime, and additional hot zones asymptotically approach constant-time execution at substantial resource cost. Across 256-2048-bit instances, the requirements for half-time performance converge to about 500 additional logical ancillae and a peak parallelism of 128 logical qubits. We also identify broader algorithm-architecture bottlenecks, including endianness mismatches between phase-gradient and data registers, addressed via cyclic phase-gradient swaps and alternating QFT reflections. Scoped to surface codes and cultivation-only magic-state factories, our analysis identifies reaction-limited operation and parallelism demand as primary drivers of resource estimation and establishes a generalizable foundation for primitive-based architectural studies.

Quantum simulation is widely regarded as one of the most promising routes to genuine quantum advantage, yet most existing approaches to quantum chemistry are formulated in terms of closed-system, unitary dynamics and ground-state preparation within the Born–Oppenheimer approximation. In this review, we discuss a broader perspective motivated by the observation that naturally occurring quantum systems are rarely isolated and often reach physically relevant states only through relaxation, decoherence, and thermalization. We first examine what is and is not known about exponential quantum advantage in chemistry, emphasizing that coherent Hamiltonian simulation provides the clearest formal case for speed-up, while many open questions remain for realistic problems. We then discuss how dissipation might ideally be integrated into quantum chemistry on a fault-tolerant quantum computer, using recent proposals for chemically motivated dynamical simulation as a guiding vision. More generally, we highlight the practical appeal of this approach to enhancing the robustness of quantum algorithms.

We prove the Rényi quantum null energy condition for every integer Rényi order $n\geq2$. In local Poincaré-invariant quantum field theory, this states that the sandwiched Rényi divergence (SRD) of an excited state relative to the vacuum is convex along a future-directed null deformation. We assume that the deformation is realized by the canonical translations of a half-sided modular inclusion and that the divergence is finite for the initial, undeformed algebra. The proof establishes convexity of the SRD along the induced positive contraction semigroup on Haagerup $L^n(M)$, for every non-zero positive initial element. We also establish a Rényi ant formula at every even integer order and, under an additional regularity assumption, at odd integer orders. The Rényi ant formula identifies the negative first null derivative of SRD with a multiple of the infimum of the canonical null-translation energy over vector purifications of an escort state constructed from the excited state and the vacuum.

The present work is motivated by the statement that the Ising minimal model $\mathcal{M}(4,3)$ is equivalent, at the level of observables, to the $SU(2)_2$ Chern–Simons theory. At first glance, however, these two theories appear to differ substantially. For instance, the number of irreducible highest-weight representations does not match the number of Ising anyons. For tensor products of low degree, these discrepancies are examined in this work. While representation structure differs, it does not affect the observables underlying topological quantum computation algorithms.

Preparing arbitrary logical states is a central primitive for universal fault-tolerant quantum computation and the cost of encoded-state preparation contributes directly to the overall resource overhead. This makes the synthesis of efficient general-state encoding circuits an important problem, particularly with respect to two-qubit gate count and circuit depth. Yet the synthesis of such encoders has been studied less extensively than general Clifford circuit synthesis or the preparation of specific logical Pauli-eigenstates. In this work, we develop methods for synthesizing efficient encoders for arbitrary stabilizer codes. We formulate encoder synthesis as a search over stabilizer tableaus and introduce greedy and rollout-based algorithms that exploit the freedom among stabilizer-equivalent realizations of the same encoding isometry. For code families with a modular structure, such as generalized concatenated and holographic codes, we show how large encoders can be assembled from optimized local constituent encoders, and we use SMT-based exact synthesis to obtain optimal local circuits for small instances. We further evaluate the proposed methods on a broad set of stabilizer codes, including holographic and quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes, and compare them against recent encoder-synthesis methods and existing constructions from the literature, obtaining improvements of up to 43% in two-qubit gate count and up to 70% in depth. Our results support the optimization of encoded-state preparation in several fault-tolerant quantum-computing schemes, and all methods are openly available as part of the Munich Quantum Toolkit.

This letter proposes a novel hybrid key distribution architecture that jointly exploits quantum key distribution (QKD) and Kirchhoff-law-Johnson-noise (KLJN) statistical-physical key exchange. In the proposed system, an optical BB84-type QKD link operates in coordination with a parallel wired KLJN link, which is used for secure basis handling and, in selected protocols, additional raw key generation. Three novel KLJN-assisted QKD protocols are introduced to eliminate public basis disclosure messages and bit sifting, extract basis-derived key bits, or generate raw key bits under ideal KLJN assumptions. Analytical expressions for the normalized key rate and absolute throughput are derived by accounting for optical channel penalties, KLJN bandwidth constraints, and synchronization bottlenecks. Numerical results show that the proposed hybrid architecture can improve key generation efficiency and throughput in short-haul infrastructures, including metropolitan area networks (MANs) and data center interconnects.

We present a new mechanism for long-range entanglement (LRE) in strongly symmetric many-body mixed states that does not rely on symmetry anomalies or long-range correlations. Our primary example is the maximally mixed state in the translation-invariant subspace on a one-dimensional ring. This state is LRE because translationally symmetric short-range entangled states span a subspace whose dimension grows only polynomially with system size, whereas the full translation-invariant subspace grows exponentially. We further discuss certain unconventional properties of this state, including logarithmically growing conditional mutual information, strong-to-weak spontaneous symmetry-breaking, and Rényi-index-dependent operator-space entanglement. We also construct a geometrically non-local Lindbladian to stabilize this state as the steady state. Our results identify dimensional mismatch as a novel route to LRE that is intrinsic to many-body mixed states.

We show by a counting argument that even though translation symmetry admits symmetric short-range entangled (SRE) eigenstates, there are not enough such SRE eigenstates to span the zero momentum sector. This means that the fixed point strong-to-weak spontaneous symmetry breaking state of translation symmetry is long-range entangled: it cannot be written as a mixture of SRE states. This is a subtle form of long-range entanglement in mixed states that cannot be detected by long-range connected correlation functions.

We investigate realizations of (1+1)-dimensional fusion category symmetries on tensor-product Hilbert spaces, allowing for mixing with quantum cellular automata (QCAs). It was argued recently that any such realizable symmetry must be weakly integral. We develop a systematic analysis of QCA-refined realizations of fusion categories and prove two statements. First, we show that, under certain physical assumptions on defects, any QCA-refined realization has QCA and symmetry-operator indices determined by the categorical data, up to the freedom of redefining the symmetry operators. Second, we construct a lattice model that provides a QCA-refined realization for any weakly integral fusion category symmetry on a tensor product Hilbert space. We also compute indices of the QCAs in our lattice model and show agreement with the first result. As an application of the general construction, we give an explicit QCA-refined realization of general Tambara-Yamagami categorical symmetries.

The performance of quantum resource manipulation protocols, including key examples such as distillation of quantum entanglement, is measured in terms of the rate at which desired target states can be produced from a given noisy state. However, to achieve optimal rates, known protocols require precise tailoring to the quantum state in question, demanding a perfect knowledge of the input and allowing no errors in its preparation. Here we show that distillation of quantum resources in the framework of resource non-generating operations can be performed universally: optimal rates of distillation can be achieved with no knowledge of the input state whatsoever, certifying the robustness of quantum resource distillation. The findings apply in particular to the purification of quantum entanglement under non-entangling maps, where the optimal rates are governed by the regularised relative entropy of entanglement. Our result relies on an extension of the generalised quantum Stein's lemma in quantum hypothesis testing to a composite setting where the null hypothesis is no longer a fixed quantum state, but is rather composed of i.i.d. copies of an unknown state. The solution of this asymptotic problem is made possible through new developments in one-shot quantum information and a refinement of the blurring technique from [Lami, arXiv:2408.06410].

We show that the low-energy states of non-Abelian topological orders possess extensive magic which is long-ranged, and cannot be eliminated by a constant-depth local unitary circuit. This refines conventional notions of complexity beyond the linear circuit depth which is required to prepare any topological phase, and provides a new resource-theoretic characterization of topological orders. A central technical result is a no-go theorem establishing that stabilizer states–even up to constant-depth local unitarie–cannot approximate low-energy states of non-Abelian string-net models which satisfy the entanglement bootstrap axioms. Moreover, we show that stabilizer-realizable Abelian string-net phases have mutual braiding phases quantized by the on-site qudit dimension, and that any violation of this condition necessarily implies extensive long-range magic. Extending to higher spatial dimensions, we argue that any state obeying an entanglement area law and hosting excitations with nontrivial fusion spaces must exhibit extensive long-range magic. This applies, in particular, to ground-states and low-energy states of higher-dimensional quantum double models.

The possibility of laser cooling and the presence of closely spaced rovibrational doublets make polyatomic molecules an attractive platform for the $\mathcal{P}$, $\mathcal{T}$-violation searches. We study the spectrum of the lowest rovibrational state of the AcOCH$_3+$ symmetric top molecule. The electronic structure full-electron computation was performed within a relativistic coupled cluster method with double and perturbative triple excitations. The rovibrational wavefunctions are obtained using a coupled channel technique, taking into account all rovibrational effects and anharmonicities of the potential. As a result, the vibrational frequencies, as well as the values of the electric dipole moments for the rovibrational states, were computed.

Independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) states are ubiquitous in quantum information theory. However, in a practical setting, the i.i.d. assumption is too stringent, and possibly not realistic. A physically more compelling class of 'almost i.i.d.' sources was recently proposed by [Mazzola/Sutter/Renner, arXiv:2603.15792]. In this paper, we introduce two alternative definitions of almost i.i.d. states, based on the normalised quantum Wasserstein distance and on the idea of looking at the average $k$-body marginal. We explore some basic properties of these notions and prove a strict hierarchical relation among them, with Mazzola et al.'s notion being the strictest, the one based on $k$-body marginals the loosest, and the one based on the quantum Wasserstein distance in between. Strict separation is established by means of explicit examples.

Characterizing large quantum systems with minimal assumptions is a central challenge in quantum information science. Self-testing provides the strongest form of certification by identifying the underlying quantum state solely from observed measurement statistics. However, existing self-testing methods for generic $n$-partite states face a scalability barrier, requiring exponentially many samples in the system size. In this work, we overcome this barrier by introducing a protocol that robustly self-tests almost all $n$-qubit states with only polynomial sample complexity. The key ingredient is an efficient scheme for device-independently evaluating multipartite Pauli measurements, which can be implemented using only a linear number of ancillary Bell pairs together with standard projective and Bell measurements, well within the reach of current quantum technology. Beyond self-testing states, our scheme provides a general framework for implementing a wide range of learning and certification protocols in the device-independent setting, thereby opening a scalable route to device-independent quantum information processing in large-scale quantum networks.

Classifying interactions is key in the physical sciences, and bonding mechanisms in matter-antimatter systems remain particularly enigmatic. Here we focus on a paradigmatic example of positronium hydride (PsH) dimer composed of two protons, two positrons, and four electrons, whose bonding nature has been previously described as either ionic, covalent, or van der Waals-like. Accurate quantum Monte Carlo calculations show that the two positrons occupy a delocalized molecular orbital that envelopes the two hydrogen anions and responds as a collective dipole to an applied electric field. This positronic bonding stems from quantum correlations that resemble a single covalent bond formed between negatively charged pseudo-nuclei, but with a bond strength commensurate with the traditional van der Waals interaction. Our findings suggest that the ability to form delocalized proto-bonds is a more general property of quantum systems, and could be present in a broader class of particles, antiparticles, and quasi-particles interacting with matter.

The classical simulation of quantum algorithms is a crucial tool for circuit development, testing, and validation. Although acceleration using GPUs significantly reduces simulation time, most high-performance simulators rely on vendor-specific frameworks that target data-center hardware. To broaden access to quantum simulation, this work proposes a vendor-agnostic approach targeting the integrated GPUs commonly found in consumer-grade laptops. A primary challenge in state-vector simulation is its inherently poor spatial locality, which creates a memory bandwidth bottleneck. Consequently, baseline implementations experience a severe degradation in relative GPU speedup as the number of simulated qubits increases. To address this limitation, we introduce a state partitioning optimization that reorganizes the quantum state vector to maximize the last-level cache locality and minimize costly main memory fetches. We evaluate this strategy using a Quantum Phase Estimation algorithm across diverse architectures from Intel, AMD, and Apple. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed optimization successfully mitigates performance degradation at larger qubit scales. In particular, for a 28-qubit simulation, the optimization reversed a performance deficit on an Intel Core i5, improving the GPU speedup over the CPU from 0.95x to 1.89x, and increased the Apple M1 Pro speedup from 3.71x to 5.88x. Overall, this approach yields consistent execution time improvements, demonstrating the viability of integrated GPUs for efficient quantum circuit simulation.

How much energy does a quantum computer consume? Are they more efficient than their classical counterparts? In this work, we make a step towards answering these questions. We define the energy efficiency of a quantum computer as the ratio of the number of algorithms it can perform during a given time over the energy consumed by the hardware during this time. We analyze the most representative physical platforms currently envisioned to be used as building blocks of quantum computers: superconducting qubits, silicon spin qubits, trapped ions, neutral atoms and photonic qubits. Including insights from experts in all these technologies and taking into account algorithm compilation constraints, we discuss the advantages and inconveniences of each platform from an energy standpoint. Beyond providing concrete values of the energy consumption of current quantum computers, we lay the foundation of a framework to benchmark the energy efficiency of any future quantum computing architecture.

Nondestructive detection of single-electron motion is crucial for quantum information processing with electrons trapped in Paul traps. The standard approach in Penning traps is to detect the image current induced on the trap electrodes by the electron's oscillatory motion. However, applying this approach in Paul traps for single electrons is currently hindered by motional frequency fluctuations arising from trap anharmonicities and instabilities in the rf trapping field. In this work, we propose a robust detection scheme exploiting the transient dynamics of parametric driving to overcome these limitations. Distinct from traditional steady-state approaches, our method focuses on the transient regime to break the temporal constraints imposed by steady-state assumptions, thereby enabling fast readout. We show that a controlled ramp of the parametric drive effectively locks the frequency of the electron motion in the transient regime, rendering the signal highly resilient to realistic experimental noise and inherent micromotion. This work paves the way for the experimental realization of nondestructive detection of single-electron motion in Paul traps.

Quantifying quantum resources for simulating the fundamental forces of Nature is sensitive to the mapping of gauge fields onto finite quantum computational architectures. When locally truncating lattice gauge theories in the irreducible representation basis, it has been proposed to further deform the theory via quantum groups. The purpose of this deformation is (1) to provide an infinite tower of finite-dimensional ($d = k+1$) groups systematically approximating the infinite-dimensional gauge links and (2) to restore the physical unitarity of a plaquette operator diagonalization procedure analytically derived from the field continuum by recontracting vertex pairs. For the SU(2)$_k$ Yang-Mills pure-gauge theory, we provide a constructive strategy of gauge-variant completions to extend this unitarity to the entire computational Hilbert space, leading to well-defined time evolution unitaries as targets for optimized circuit synthesis. Leveraging basic circuit decompositions and symmetries of the diagonalized plaquette operator, we report resource upper-bounds on the generalized-controlled-X two-qudit gates for arbitrary local truncation $d$, reducing estimates and scaling relative to the non-deformed theory by three polynomial powers from $O(d^8)$ to $O(d^5)$. Examining the stronger q-deformed gauge constraint, which softens the total flux at vertices, we show that the physical Hilbert space dimension of the deformed plaquette operator scales equivalently to its non-deformed counterpart with a constant factor $0.2563(5)$. Thus, despite affecting interactions at all scales as exemplified by the observed flux hierarchy inversion symmetry, q-deformation continues to pass scrutiny as a reliable truncation offering advantages in quantum circuit synthesis.

We derive closed-form propagators for any $K$-qubit subsystem of a closed $N$-qubit network with a single conserved excitation. A single transition amplitude simultaneously controls excitation flow between subsystems, the positivity and complete positivity of every propagator, the entanglement entropy of every subsystem, and the quantum Fisher information for global parameters. Positivity and complete positivity coincide, determined solely by the direction of excitation flow, independently of subsystem size, coherence, or entanglement structure. A propagator is positive and completely positive if and only if it contracts the subsystem state toward its fixed point. The ensemble of propagators collectively constrains global properties inaccessible to any single subsystem. For single-qubit subsystems, we characterize the ensemble's fixed-point distribution and domain of positivity, finding a band of states that lies inside the positivity domain of every propagator yet is never visited by the physical dynamics. The quantum Fisher information decomposes into state and process contributions over any observation window $[t_1,t_2]$, with the state contribution bounded while the process contribution grows secularly. The total Fisher information is minimal when all future propagators are nonpositive and not completely positive, and near its maximum when they are positive and completely positive.

Shared multipartite entanglement defines a “whatever channel”, i.e., a latent communication substrate that does not determine a priori which end-to-end entangled links are activated, but can be configured to support different entanglement-connectivity graphs through Local Operations and Classical Communication (LOCC). Building on this, we propose a resource-driven framework in which multipartite entanglement is treated as a programmable resource that induces a space of admissible entanglement-graph configurations. Within this framework, connectivity provisioning emerges as a particular instance of a more general resource reconfiguration process. To support this paradigm, we introduce a set of structural design parameters that characterize the operational degrees of freedom of the resource and define the admissible transformations independently of the specific mechanism used to realize them. We then formalize Entanglement Rolling as a measurement-based protocol that operates over the induced configuration space, enabling the systematic reconfiguration of the shared resource across a family of multipartite states. Finally, we analyze the proposed framework under realistic noise conditions. Leveraging the Noisy Stabilizer Formalism (NSF), we derive closed-form noise maps that characterize the effect of noise on the resource transformations and show that the proposed approach maintains reliable performance under relevant noise processes.

The Majorana stellar representation maps a pure spin-$S$ state to $2S$ points on a sphere. This review develops it with entanglement as the organising principle, and two objects recur throughout: the constellation, and the permanent of the Gram matrix of its stars. The degeneracy pattern of the constellation is invariant under stochastic local operations and classical communication, so the integer partitions of $N$ label a finite set of families of symmetric $N$-qubit states. That labelling is a coarse-graining rather than a classification, since from four distinct stars onwards each family carries continuous Möbius moduli. The permanent supplies what the pattern omits. Normalised by it, inter-star chordal distances give the concurrence and the three-tangle in closed form, and the same permanent governs the anomalous contribution to the Berry phase acquired under adiabatic cyclic evolution, so that a single quantity links static correlations to dynamical holonomy. We also fix the computational reach of the geometry. Overlaps of symmetric states are permanents of matrices of rank at most two and are polynomially computable, whereas measures defined by an optimisation over the sphere are not reached by that argument. Interest in stellar representations has resurged, but the literature remains dispersed, and no existing treatment develops the link between constellation geometry, multipartite entanglement, and geometric phases within a single framework. The same two objects organise the applications reviewed here, from extremal states in metrology and permutation-invariant codes to collective spin models and photonic constellations, together with extensions to mixed states and to continuous-variable systems through the stellar rank. Whether the anomalous phase admits a bound in terms of any entanglement monotone remains open.

We prove that the maximum eigenvalue of the (both signed and unsigned) Laplacian of level $k$ Kikuchi graph of any graph $G$ with $m$ edges is at most $m+k$. This confirms four recent conjectures of Apte, Parekh, and Sud. As applications, we obtain that tensor products of one and two qubit product states achieve an approximation ratio of $5/8$ for Quantum Max Cut and $5/7$ for the XY Hamiltonian. Moreover, combining our bounds with the algorithms analyzed by Apte, Parekh, and Sud, yields efficient algorithms achieving an approximation ratio of $0.614$ for Quantum Max Cut and $0.674$ for the XY Hamiltonian. Finally, we also make modest progress on Brouwer's conjecture and improve Lew's bound on the sum of the top-$k$ eigenvalues of a Graph Laplacian.

Rydberg atoms provide a powerful platform for exploring strongly interacting quantum systems, both in free space and in structured electromagnetic environments, with growing applications in quantum technology. Accurately modeling their single-atom properties and mutual interactions is essential for interpreting experiments and designing new architectures. We present a unified theoretical framework for Rydberg atoms and their interactions based on multi-channel quantum defect theory (MQDT) and static electromagnetic Green's tensors. MQDT provides a precise description of Rydberg states of divalent atoms such as strontium and ytterbium, while the Green's tensor formalism provides a general and flexible approach for calculating interactions between two Rydberg atoms in arbitrary geometries, including modifications induced by nearby surfaces. We implement this framework in an updated version of the open-source toolkit PairInteraction [Weber et al., J.~Phys.~B~50 (2017)]. The implementation leverages high-performance libraries and achieves speedups of one order of magnitude for pair-potential calculations compared to prior software. We demonstrate the capabilities of the toolkit through example applications to divalent atoms and show excellent agreement with experimental data for an exemplary Stark map of $^{174}$Yb. The modular software architecture enables the community to extend it further.

By implementing the Bogoliubov-de Gennes (BdG) formalism of population-imbalanced atomic Fermi gases with pairing interactions in a thin spherical shell, we characterize the Larkin-Ovchinnikov-Fulde-Ferrell (LOFF) state in such a compact geometry. We first construct a phase diagram showing where uniform solutions of spin-polarized Fermi superfluid from the BdG equation cease to exist due to the vanishing order parameter. Near the boundary, various LOFF states with spatially modulating order parameters and density profiles can survive as convergent solutions to the BdG equation. When both uniform and LOFF solutions are present, we compare their grand potentials to determine the energetically favorable state and find that the LOFF states with multiple nodes in the order parameter become more stable at higher spin polarization. However, the LOFF state only survives close to the phase boundary where the uniform solutions vanish, indicating fragility of the LOFF state on a spherical surface. We also briefly discuss possible implications.

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are hardware security primitives whose inherent physical complexity can be exploited for secure authentication and cryptographic key generation. Silicon photonic devices, owing to their suitability for quantum and artificial intelligence applications alongside standard CMOS fabrication processes, constitute a highly promising substrate for integrated multifunctional PUFs. Despite the advanced security guarantees offered by quantum cryptographic protocols and the central role of silicon photonics in quantum technologies, quantum readout strategies based on single-photon states for photonic PUFs remain largely unexplored. In this work, we experimentally demonstrate a silicon nitride (SiN) programmable photonic Mach Zehnder interferometer mesh that implements a unitary transformation and operates as a PUF, whose secret physical signature arises from uncontrollable waveguide variations during fabrication. Using experimentally derived parameters from the SiN integrated mesh, we further introduce and numerically evaluate a quantum readout protocol that combines single-photon states with PUFs. Maximally mixed quantum states are employed to conceal the underlying unitary transformation from passive eavesdropping. Security against adversaries possessing devices fabricated under similar conditions is assessed, with authentication performance quantified through Monte Carlo analysis of the false acceptance and false rejection rates as a function of the number of detected events and corrected errors. The results indicate exceptional performance with equal error rates as low as 10 to the minus 14, highlighting the potential of quantum secure PUFs for high security authentication applications.