Quantum Physics
Papers
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Sunday 19 July
Leakage out of the computational subspace is a major error mechanism in superconducting quantum processors. Detecting leakage without disturbing the encoded quantum information can provide a heralded error signal that error-correction decoders exploit. However, standard dispersive readout collapses all qubit eigenstates indiscriminately. Here, we demonstrate heralded leakage detection on a fixed-frequency transmon by applying a Rabi drive on the computational transition during dispersive readout. The drive makes the computational states indistinguishable to the probe on the resonator while leaving the second and higher excited states distinguishable from the computational states. We achieve a leakage-detection fidelity of 97.1(3)% within the 80-ns detection window, with a false-flag rate of 2.3(3)% from the computational subspace. Conditioned on the no-leakage outcome, the post-detection state retains an average fidelity of 92.9(5)% across the six cardinal states for an equal mixture of computational and leakage population. The scheme requires no circuit elements beyond those used for standard dispersive readout, making it applicable to various types of superconducting qubits without hardware modification.
Quantum Physics
Multi-level Random-Telegraph Noise Mitigation using a Single Spectator Qubit
Preserving quantum coherence in the presence of environmental noise is one of the principal challenges for quantum technologies. Noise mitigation using spectator qubits (SQs) has recently emerged as a promising approach, enabling indirect probing of the noise without disturbing the data qubit (DQ). However, existing analyses that probe ultimate performance have been restricted to two-state random telegraph process noise, which does not capture more complex noise processes that may arise in the environment. Therefore, we here develop a SQ-based noise mitigation for DQs subject to general multi-level fluctuator noise. We first derive the coherence dynamics of the DQ under such noise, then develop a mitigation scheme in which information about the noise is inferred from sequential SQ measurements and used for phase correction. A memory-efficient heuristic adaptive protocol is proposed to dynamically select the SQ measurement time and angle based on the current noise estimate. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the proposed strategy significantly suppresses decoherence under multi-level noise, achieving performance comparable to that in the two-level case despite the increased complexity of the noise process.
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Quantum Physics
QBism Logic
QBism interprets quantum theory as a normative discipline for an agent's probability assignments and their revision across possible experience. This paper develops a logical formalization of that picture. A well-formed core datum consists of an admissible prior space, a finite family of actual measurements, Born kernels, and update kernels. For each such datum, we introduce a guarded dynamic language for histories and posterior states and prove a global reduction theorem. We next consider effectively semialgebraic data over an effectively presented real closed field. For data in this class, we translate the fragment without dynamic operators into first-order formulas in the corresponding language of ordered rings, thereby reducing validity to first-order reasoning over real closed fields. Together, the reduction and first-order translation yield a sound and complete recursive calculus and a decision procedure for validity. Finally, assuming a symmetric informationally complete (SIC) reference measurement, we show that quantum theory in finite dimensions realizes the framework through SIC coordinates, POVMs, and quantum instruments. We also prove that the corresponding SIC image satisfies the standard qplex geometry conditions, namely the consistency bounds and the lower polar condition, and that under explicit coefficient field hypotheses the resulting quantum datum is effectively semialgebraic.
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Quantum Physics
Blind Transpiler: An open-source library for universally blind and homomorphic quantum computations
Blind quantum computation is a cryptographic primitive that allows a limited-capability client to delegate its complex computation to a remote server without revealing its data and/or computation. This branch of quantum cryptography has been bifurcated into two distinct primitives, quantum homomorphic encryption (concerning the security of only data) and universal blind quantum computation (concerning the security of data and the computing algorithm). These primitives have immense applicability in problems like secure cloud computing, secure quantum variational algorithms, quantum federated learning, and secure multiparty computation. However, no software tools exist for the rapid prototyping of such protocols, hindering the academic interrogation for potential applications. In this paper, we describe the development of the first such library for transpiling circuits written in Qiskit to its blind counterpart, which can then be delegated in a client-server architecture without revealing the client's data and/or computation. The proposed library is designed in modular and reusable component layers, enabling easier scalability to newer BQC primitives and robustness against changes in underlying primitives. We show the implementation of these primitives to a blind variational quantum classifier for the IRIS dataset.
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Quantum Physics
GHZ-Equivalent State Distribution in Quantum Networks: Reducing Decoherence and Quantum Resource Consumption
This study proposes a novel scheme for distributing GHZ-equivalent states across repeater-based quantum networks, with particular focus on the analysis and mitigation of decoherence effects during transmission. The proposed scheme enables remote users to share graph states, which can be leveraged to implement various quantum communication protocols, such as quantum key distribution and quantum secret sharing. Compared with existing approaches, the proposed distributed scheme requires only O(N) qubits without introducing redundant entanglement structures. Together with the linear-scaling merging procedure in both controlled gate count and qubit usage, the proposed framework supports more efficient large-scale graph state distribution. To evaluate its feasibility and correctness, this study utilizes the quantum network simulation tool, NetSquid, to implement the proposed scheme. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach is both effective and practical for executing quantum communication protocols within quantum networks.
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Quantum Physics
Against Many Worlds
Any viable interpretation of quantum theory needs to account for the Born rule, from which the theory gets its probabilistic empirical predictions. In this paper, we give an overview of possible approaches to this problem in the context of the Many Worlds interpretation. We argue that, for structural reasons, none of them can possibly succeed. More precisely, we argue that the Many Worlds interpretation must obtain the Born rule by proceeding either axiomatically, deductively, or inductively, and that all three of these approaches run into general, fundamental obstructions.
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Quantum Physics
quchip: A Differentiable Toolkit for Modeling Quantum Devices
Predictive modeling of a superconducting quantum chip requires more than a Hamiltonian: the model must connect device physics, control-line transformations, chosen frames and approximations, dissipation, and measured observables. We present quchip, an open-source Python toolkit that represents these parts explicitly and assembles backend-independent simulations for QuTiP or dynamiqs; with dynamiqs, device and control parameters remain differentiable through the solve. We demonstrate the resulting experimental loop on a five-device model fitted to dressed observables. Simulated phase sweeps identify the complex crosstalk between two control lines, and inversion of the inferred response suppresses the effective leakage by more than two orders of magnitude. Over sixteen simultaneous $\pi$ pulses, the corrected pulse-end populations remain within $0.3$ percentage points of the crosstalk-free response. Adiabatically eliminating the bus and readout resonators reduces the Hilbert-space dimension from 576 to 16, after which gradients through simulated tomography recover the four injected crosstalk parameters with a maximum complex error of $1.5\times10^{-5}$. A single explicit model can therefore support prediction, correction, and inverse parameter recovery.
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Quantum Physics
Rigorous characterization of continuous-variable quantum states via optical parametric amplifiers
Characterizing non-Gaussian quantum states is of paramount importance for continuous-variable quantum information processing, yet conventional homodyne-measurement-based state tomography remains limited by optical loss, detector efficiency, and measurement bandwidth. Here, we introduce an integrated framework for loss-tolerant characterization and certification using high-gain phase-sensitive optical parametric amplification and power measurements. Our computationally efficient semidefinite programming approach enables faithful reconstruction of parity-symmetric quantum states from amplified quadrature measurements while substantially relaxing detector-efficiency requirements and increasing the measurement bandwidth. We further develop a certification framework that directly quantifies non-Gaussianity via stellar-rank witnesses and Wigner negativity, using the same quadrature-power measurements. We demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed framework through both simulated and experimental data for representative quantum states, including single-photon, Schrodinger cat, and Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) states. By unifying loss-tolerant measurements, state tomography, and nonclassical-state certification within a single experimentally accessible framework, our approach provides a practical pathway toward verifying increasingly complex states and can be readily implemented with current quantum photonic technologies.
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Saturday 18 July
Quantum Physics
Encoding Choices and Fault-Tolerant Resource Estimates for Digital Quantum Hamiltonian Descent
Quantum Hamiltonian descent (QHD) formulates continuous optimization as time-dependent quantum dynamics, where a kinetic term drives exploration and a potential term encodes the objective function. Digital implementations of QHD require encoding the search space into qubits, and this choice can shift the dominant cost among logical qubits, circuit depth, non-Clifford rotations, and potential synthesis. In this work, we present an encoding-aware resource analysis comparing one-hot and binary amplitude encodings for QHD. We derive gate-count scalings, construct and validate circuits against classical \Sch-equation solvers, and estimate Clifford+$R_z$ and fault-tolerant Clifford+$T$ resources on benchmark optimization problems. Binary encoding reduces the data register from $O(dN)$ to $O(d\log N)$ qubits and gives comparable asymptotic scaling for both kinetic and potential evolutions. Across all benchmark problems studied, binary encoding also uses fewer $R_z$ rotations than one-hot encoding, making it the preferred option for fault-tolerant implementations where arbitrary rotations dominate the cost. Kinetic approximations based on low-momentum spectra and approximate QFTs can further reduce the binary kinetic cost to polylogarithmic scaling. However, for targets such as Ackley, potential synthesis can dominate the total cost and reduce the benefit of kinetic approximations. These results suggest that exploiting the analytic structure of the target function to compile the potential evolution in QHD more efficiently is needed for further resource reductions.
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Quantum Physics
How many degrees of freedom describe a quantum N-particle state?
In Newtonian spacetime, the canonical description of a classical $N$-particle system requires $3N$ degrees of freedom. Not all of these are physical, however, since the conservation of the net momentum implies that only $3(N-1)$ accelerations are independent. Hence, three constraints can be used to eliminate the unphysical centre-of-mass variables, at the level of the Lagrangian, leaving only the subset of observable displacements and momenta, which are relational. Imposing the constraints does not change the dynamics of these variables, at the classical level, and is analogous to a gauge-fixing procedure, which removes redundancy in the description of the system. In classical physics, therefore, the number of physical degrees of freedom equals the number of independent relational degrees of freedom. Here, we show that this is not the case in quantum mechanics. While an operator-analogue of the classical net momentum exists, it cannot be used to impose constraints that restrict the degrees of freedom in the theory, without a loss of physical information. This means that all $3N$ canonical degrees of freedom are physical, even though only $3(N-1)$ of them are relational. We explore the physical consequences of the non-relational variables and show that they give rise to generalised uncertainty relations (GURs), for the relational quantities that define the quantum reference frame (QRF). Hence, it is shown that the non-relational degrees of freedom refer to the frame itself and that the non-Heisenberg terms in the GURs define its Galilean-invariant spreads, in both real space and momentum space. The implications of this result for recent work on relational models, including the “perspective neutral” framework for QRFs, are discussed. Its implications for the wider relational program, and, in particular, the relevance of the latter to quantum gravity research, are also critically assessed
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Quantum Physics
Entanglement Quantification via Symmetric Extensions: A Resource Theory Hierarchy
We introduce a hierarchy of entanglement measures Ek based on k-symmetric PPT extensions. Each Ek, defined via a minimal eigenvalue shift and computed by semidefinite programming, is faithful, convex, and monotone under free operations. The hierarchy strictly refines PPT-robustness at k = 1, detects bound entanglement at k = 2, and converges exactly to the separability measure as k -> infinity. Numerical experiments on Horodecki, Werner, UPB, and random states demonstrate practical scalability. Our framework unifies computational efficiency with operational fidelity in a single tunable family – a combination previously believed to be fundamentally incompatible in entanglement quantification. It supplies, for the first time, a systematically improvable resource-theoretic yardstick that accounts for all entangled states, including the bound entangled ones that have long resisted quantitative treatment.
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Quantum Physics
Operational Relation Between One-Time and Two-Time Work Protocols and Measurement-Resolution-Induced Transitions in Quantum Work Statistics
We establish a direct operational connection between the one-time measurement (OTM) and two-time measurement (TTM) protocols for quantum work statistics, showing that OTM work values, including coherence signatures, can be reconstructed from standard TTM data through classical post-processing without any modification of the experimental setup. This reveals that coherence information commonly attributed to OTM schemes is already latent within TTM data and becomes explicit upon a natural post-processing step. For a driven two-level system subject to finite-resolution energy measurements, this reconstruction unveils a resolution-driven statistical transition in the work distribution: whereas projective and weak measurements yield smooth distributions, intermediate resolutions produce non-analytic structures whose character is determined by the dynamics and a critical meter resolution. We show that the non-analyticity of the OTM work distribution takes the form of square-root divergent peaks at specific work values, and that the separation between these singular points is an experimentally accessible quantity that vanishes at the critical resolution with a universal exponent. The same dynamical quantities that govern the transition also encode the relative entropy of coherence of the driven state, enabling coherence quantification from energy measurements alone. We demonstrate experimental accessibility in a nitrogen-vacancy center platform with parameters drawn from current experiments, where both sides of the transition and the coherence signatures are within reach of existing technology.
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Quantum Physics
Bound, Scattering, and Resonance States of the Symmetric Woods–Saxon Potential in Dunkl Quantum Mechanic
We present the first unified analytical description of the bound, scattering, and Gamow (metastable) resonance states of the one-dimensional symmetric Woods–Saxon potential within the framework of Dunkl quantum mechanics, establishing a single analytical framework that consistently describes all physically relevant spectral regimes. The Dunkl deformation introduces a reflection-sector-dependent inverse-square interaction that precludes a direct analytical treatment of the corresponding Schrödinger equation. By employing a Pekeris-type approximation, the problem is transformed into a hypergeometric differential equation, enabling the derivation of analytical wave functions, bound-state quantization conditions, scattering amplitudes, and Gamow resonance solutions within a unified formalism. The results reveal that the Dunkl deformation fundamentally modifies the system's spectral properties by generating a reflection-sector-dependent splitting of the bound-state spectrum, along with quantitative changes in the reflection and transmission probabilities. The narrow transmission peaks are shown to originate from long-lived Gamow resonance states, whose complex energies, decay widths, and lifetimes are determined through analytic continuation into the complex-energy plane. In the limit of vanishing Dunkl deformation, the conventional Woods–Saxon results are fully recovered, confirming the consistency of the proposed formalism. The proposed analytical framework provides a versatile approach for investigating finite-range potentials in Dunkl quantum mechanics and opens the way to systematic studies of reflection-deformed quantum systems beyond the Woods–Saxon interaction.
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Quantum Physics
A Reponse to the Sheldon Goldstein Objection to a Series of Covariant Relativistic Bohmian Models
In this work we try to answer a very important objection to the Covariant Bohmian Models type Nikolić and Hernández-Zapata that was formulated by the american physicist Sheldon Goldstein (private communication, 2010) about the imposibility to interpret the configuration space-time density found by the authors of these models like a probability density. The problem is that it is very dificult to show that the N space-time configuration density has a finite integral. That is very important in order to normalize the density to produce a PDF (probability density function). All the steps in the demonstrations seemed complete but this objection must be resolved imperatively before to continue using this kind of models with full confidence. Since the aim of Bohmian Mechanics (also known as the De Broglie-Bohm Mechanics) is to provide a precise and objective formulation of Quantum Mechanics free from vagueness and obscurity (Bell point of view at least), addressing this issue is crucial. In this article, we set out to tackle this by employing a specific type of function that we call an "Arrangement Function".
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Quantum Physics
Precision dynamics of resonantly enhanced optical parametric amplifiers
Optical parametric amplification is a crucial technology for the production of continuous-wave squeezed vacuum, which is now applied to gravitational-wave interferometry and other highly sensitive measurements of optical phase. The amplifiers employed in gravitational-wave detection are resonantly enhanced with optical cavities, which introduces nontrivial dynamics to their operation and requires a frequency-domain model of the relations between optical fields. In this work, input-output relations between optical fields entering, circulating in, and exiting a model amplifier are solved directly to produce frequency-domain relations that fully incorporate the cavity dynamics. We also provide low-order zero-pole-gain expansions for these relations to facilitate their analysis from a feedback control perspective. In the limit of small cavity decay rates, our relations are shown to reduce to relations previously derived under a Hamiltonian formalism. Expressions for amplifier figures of merit and for squeezed quadrature variances are also analyzed. Along the way, we examine how information about the amplifier performance can be extracted from the frequency dependence of the input-output relations, providing characterization methods that are complementary to methods that examine the static amplifier behavior.
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Quantum Physics
Bargmann invariants and local unitary equivalence
In this paper, we study the local unitary equivalence of quantum states on $\mathbb{C}^n\otimes\mathbb{C}^n$, which is an important notion in quantum information theory. For the case $n=2$, the local unitary orbits of two-qubit states are completely determined by their local unitary Bargmann invariants. We show that the local unitary Bargmann invariants do not form a complete set of invariants of local unitary orbits for $n\geqslant 3$, which negatively answers a problem proposed by L. Zhang and B. Xie.
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Quantum Physics
Beyond Orbital Rotations: Correlation-Rank Limits and Clifford-Accessible Measurement, from Algebra and Global Optimization
One should not assume that reconstructing an electronic observable with a smaller set of measurement settings will cut the number of repetitions in proportion. Each setting is simply a basis change and qubit readout, but the savings are not guaranteed to be commensurate. Take two electrons of opposite spin in two spatial orbitals: the orbital degree of freedom of each electron acts as a logical qubit and rotations are independent in the spin sectors. From the observable's one- and two-qubit coefficients we derive an exact floor for the setting count and a decomposition to meet it in no more than three settings. With fewer settings, the minimum error in the two-qubit correlation coefficients is set by the singular values left out. A case in point is an exchange with equal nonzero couplings on the three Pauli axes. This demands three orbital settings yet only one joint measurement. We offer a Clifford circuit for four physical qubits to effect the necessary mapping of Pauli products under conjugation. In the case of a one-parameter family of logical singlet-triplet mixtures, the orbital-to-Clifford shot cost ratio is three at maximum mixing and trends toward 3/2 near the logical singlet. Where spin sectors may be mixed, isotropic exchange needs one orbital setting. For spin-conserving Hamiltonians with $N$ spatial orbitals encoded via Jordan-Wigner, the $X$-rank, the binary rank of the $X$ parts of its strings, of any commuting Pauli string family is no more than $2(N-1)$. Searches with the Robust Adaptive Nature-inspired Global Explorer (RANGE) reach this limit for CH$_4$, with the rank of the Hamiltonian support vouching for the maximality of the search values. And for all nonidentity Pauli strings on $n$ qubits, semidefinite witnesses from the Lovász theta number give a lower bound on the Clifford setting count that agrees with the integer cover and counting bounds at $2^n+1$.
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Quantum Physics
Certified Bounds on the Measurement Cost of Molecular Hamiltonians
Quantum estimates of molecular energy require repeated state preparation and measurement. We bound the minimum repetition count for given measurements and processing rules from above with a practical schedule and from below with independently verified inequalities. For an H$_4$ chain at H-H distances of 0.90 and 1.80 Åwith 2 per cent uniform noise in the ground state, entangling Clifford measurements, which map Pauli products onto one another, cut leading-order repetitions by at least 65.9 and 61.0 per cent, respectively, relative to any schedule using only single-qubit Pauli measurements and Hamiltonian terms. With 69 unaltered measurement settings, each a basis change followed by qubit readout, processing further observables saves at least 12.04 and 6.70 per cent. For four lanthanide and actinide Hamiltonians with depolarized Hartree-Fock covariances, reducing the sum of absolute Hamiltonian coefficients does not proportionally reduce sampling. The bounds cover linear unbiased estimates from independent batches at small error.
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Quantum Physics
Experimental Nanoscale Thermodynamics
Modern fabrication techniques have allowed artificial systems to be constructed on a nanometre length scale. The ideas underlying thermodynamics, a field invented to describe large macroscopic systems, need to be modified to describe much smaller systems. There are implications for our understanding of entropy, cooling, the arrow of time, heat flow, engines, erasure, and mutual information. The theoretical concepts have been implemented and tested in a wide range of experiments, many of which are at low temperatures. Nanoscale thermodynamics is not only a descriptive tool of nanoscale systems, but a design principle that helps us to build new architectures, processors and learning machines.
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Quantum Physics
Universal Parent Hamiltonians for Adiabatic Warm Starts
Computing the ground state properties of quantum systems is an important potential application of quantum computing. The success probability of quantum phase estimation approaches to ground state problems is proportional to the overlap of the input state with the ground state. Local ansatz state approaches suffer from the orthogonality catastrophe, whereas adiabatic state preparation (ASP) can prepare good approximations with a cost growing with the inverse square of the minimum spectral gap along the adiabatic path. When the initial and target Hamiltonians lie in quantum phases separated by a first order phase transition, the minimum spectral gap along the adiabatic path becomes exponentially small as a function of system size. We pursue a solution to this problem based on choosing an initial Hamiltonian for adiabatic state preparation whose ground state lies in the same quantum phase as the target ground state. We develop a protocol for universal adiabatic warm starts with universal parent Hamiltonians (UPHAWS) that can initialize ASP in any state whose preparation circuit is known. We use the Feynman–Kitaev clock Hamiltonian as a universal parent Hamiltonian, for preparation circuits with and without mid circuit measurement. We benchmark the framework on a $\mathbb{Z}_2$-symmetric matrix product state (MPS) family interpolating to a target GHZ Hamiltonian, and on the linear $H_6$ chain under symmetric bond stretching. For the $H_6$ system a bond-dimension-$4$ matrix product state warm-start increases the minimum gap on the adiabatic path by a factor of two relative to the Hartree-Fock initialization. To perform these classical benchmark simulations we develop a momentum-space truncation of the adiabatic Hamiltonian that may be of independent interest.
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Quantum Physics
Attosecond delay metrology beyond the photon coherence time with spectrally resolved Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometry
Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interferometry enables delay estimation at the quantum precision limit but is traditionally constrained to path differences within the coherence time of the interfering photons. Here, we demonstrate single-measurement path-delay sensing at the measurement Cramer-Rao bound using spectrally resolved HOM interference, thereby removing the conventional dynamic-range limitation imposed by the photon coherence window, with no scanning required for calibration. By extracting delay information from the spectral interference fringes of spectrally entangled photon pairs, we retain near-optimal sensitivity over an operational range exceeding the photon coherence time by over two orders of magnitude. Using one million detected photon pairs, we achieve a time-delay precision of 20 attosecond (6 nm), while real-time operation (at 1 Hz) yields 330 attosecond (100 nm) precision. Because the estimator relies on fringe periodicity rather than absolute coincidence rates, the method is intrinsically robust to photon losses and variations in interference visibility, eliminating the need for recalibration. As a practical demonstration, we measure the thickness of a 300 um transmissive target with nanometer-scale precision. These results mark a significant step towards deploying quantum-limited measurements in real-world sensing applications using HOM interferometry.
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Quantum Physics
Geometric Qubits in Programmable Atomic Trimers
Motivated by programmable tweezer arrays, we develop an exactly solvable shape-space theory for near-equilateral atomic trimers. The Higgs oscillator on Kendall's shape sphere gives a nonresonant spectral lattice whose fixed-angular-momentum relative-stationary minimizers are supported on two adjacent admissible sites. These symmetry-selected doublets are separated from higher relative-stationary branches by a finite branch gap. With phase-coherent shape-mode driving and Rydberg-mediated conditional phases, they furnish a candidate route to geometric qubits and entangling operations.
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Quantum Physics
Removing inhomogeneous broadening in cross-relaxation spectra via hole burning
Quantum relaxometry based on nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond is an easy-to-use technique that detects magnetic noise by measuring the longitudinal relaxation of NV centers. It is favored in chemical and biological applications due to the robustness against imperfect spin control. By tuning the energy level, NV relaxometry can detect magnetic noise generated by other spins and obtain magnetic resonance spectra through cross relaxation. However, the inhomogeneous broadening of NV centers greatly limits the spectral resolution of cross-relaxation spectra. Here we demonstrate a hole-burning technique to remove the inhomogeneous broadening. We utilize a weak pump field to deplete specific NV centers during the relaxation measurement, which contribute a reverse signal in the cross-relaxation spectra with a much narrower linewidth. Our method retains the convenience and sensitivity of NV relaxometry, opening up new avenues for high-resolution magnetic resonance spectroscopy in complex scenarios.
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Quantum Physics
Shortcuts to adiabaticity in five-level systems using counter-diabatic driving and time-rescaling optimization
Shortcuts to adiabaticity (STA) is a common protocol to realize high-fidelity and robust quantum control in various quantum systems. To date, STA has been widely applied in two- and three-level systems, whereas designing feasible strategies to achieve perfect quantum state engineering in multi-level systems still remains a challenging task. Here, we propose to use counterdiabatic (CD) driving and time-rescaling (TR) methods to construct multi-state stimulated Raman shortcut-to-adiabatic passage protocols for realizing robust and fast population transfer in chainwise-connected five-state systems. The first protocol is implemented by initially reducing the original five-state system to an equivalent two-state counterpart, and then designing the corresponding driving field by combining CD driving and unitary transformation. Further, we introduce the TR method to optimize the first protocol and thus offers an alternative solution. Numerical calculations show that both protocols can achieve complete population transfer and effectively suppress transient populations of all intermediate states. Compared with the first protocol, the optimized second exhibits better performance within a shorter evolution time.
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Quantum Physics · Cross-listed from cond-mat.quant-gas
Two-dimensional solitons in extended GPE models with Lee-Huang-Yang corrections
We investigate the existence and dynamics of two-dimensional solitary waves in a quantum droplet environment described by the extended Gross-Pitaevskii equation featuring logarithmic mean-field and Lee-Huang-Yang interactions. In the modulationally stable regime of the background, we employ suitable multiscale asymptotic methods to derive effective nonlinear integrable models corresponding to the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili and Davey-Stewartson equations. Based on these reduced models, we construct approximate analytical solutions describing line solitons, algebraically localized lump solitons, ring solitons, and exponentially localized dromions embedded on the droplet background. The dynamical robustness of these solutions is monitored through numerical simulations. Line, lump and ring solitons stay closest to the theoretical predictions, although progressively deviate due to the emergence of small-amplitude radiation, while dromions depart from their analytical waveform the most, although they roughly maintain their shape. Our results unveil unprecedented multidimensional soliton solutions in models featuring the competition of mean-field and quantum fluctuations and as such are amenable to current ultracold atom experiments.
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Quantum Physics
Identity-Paired Progressive Depth Training: When Trainability Persists Beyond Expressibility
Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQAs) are a leading paradigm for near-term quantum computing, yet their training suffers from sensitivity to circuit depth, initialization, and landscape pathologies such as barren plateaus. We study progressive depth training (PDT) – a layerwise curriculum that trains a shallow circuit before appending new layers – and identify a fundamental obstacle: fixed entangling gates (CNOTs) in hardware-efficient ansätze cause initialization shock, an energy spike when new layers are added. We propose identity-paired progressive depth training (IP-PDT), which appends forward/inverse block pairs – each consisting of a standard rotation$+$CNOT block followed by its reverse – that compose to the identity at initialization. Because the adjacent CNOT rings cancel, the effective circuit retains only a single entangling layer surrounded by overparameterized local rotations. We prove a simple Reachable Set Saturation Theorem: under this construction the variational manifold expands exactly once (when post-entangler rotations are first introduced) and then saturates; all subsequent depth increases provide pure overparameterization of single-qubit unitaries. Despite this saturation, progressive addition of rotation parameters can continue to improve optimization outcomes – a phenomenon we term trainability beyond expressibility. We formalize IP-PDT as a continuation method on nested manifolds, prove monotone energy guarantees under an acceptance rule, and connect energy error to ground-state fidelity through spectral-gap inequalities. A detailed resource analysis shows that IP-PDT achieves lower total gate cost than both baselines by eliminating most CNOT gates.
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Quantum Physics
Extending the Frontiers of QNLP Beyond English: Grammar-Sensitive Pipeline for Hindi Sentiment Classification Using Compositional Quantum Models
Advancements in Natural Language Processing (NLP), whether on classical or quantum platforms, have predominantly focused on English due to its widespread use and abundant linguistic resources. Although English remains the most studied language in computational linguistics, Hindi, the third most spoken language worldwide after Mandarin, has received comparatively limited attention. Spoken primarily in India, Hindi differs significantly from English in its script, syntactic structure, and linguistic characteristics. Hindi uses the Devanagari script, exhibits rich morphological inflection, and follows a subject-object-verb (SOV) word order, unlike English's subject-verb-object (SVO) structure. Motivated by Hindi's linguistic complexity and its underrepresentation in Quantum Natural Language Processing (QNLP), we propose a grammar-aware QNLP pipeline for Hindi sentiment classification with a focus on sentential negation. We use a manually annotated Hindi sentiment dataset labeled as positive, negative, or neutral, and encode sentences using pregroup grammar types. Sentences are processed with Lambeq to generate quantum circuits using a novel negation-aware compositional grammar. Hybrid Quantum Neural Networks (HQNNs) are trained for both binary and ternary sentiment classification. Our results demonstrate effective sentiment classification and highlight the potential of compositional QNLP for morphologically rich languages.
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Quantum Physics
Reliability Is Not Free in Universal Quantum Work Extraction
Universal work extraction shows that input-state knowledge is unnecessary to attain the asymptotic free-energy rate. We ask whether this first-order universality extends to reliability, the exponential decay rate of extraction failure. In the work-battery fidelity formulation, we prove that no phase-independent Gibbs-preserving protocol can retain the state-aware Gibbs-preserving exponent throughout a coherent qubit time-translation orbit: at every positive target rate, its worst pointwise exponent is bounded by the corresponding state-aware thermal-operation value. The proof first establishes an exact finite-blocklength identity between phase-robust Gibbs-preserving extraction and state-aware thermal extraction. A trigonometric Remez inequality then upgrades this minimax identity to a pointwise theorem by ruling out exponential localization of the worst phase. For an explicit coherent-qubit family, known-phase Gibbs-preserving extraction is error free, whereas every phase-independent protocol has a finite worst-pointwise exponent. Thus input-state knowledge can be irrelevant to the first-order work rate yet indispensable for optimal exponential reliability.
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Quantum Physics
Optimal Quantum Metrology for Probing the Unruh Effect with Uniformly Accelerated Two-Level Atoms
We develop a quantum metrological framework for optimizing the probing of the Unruh effect using uniformly accelerated two-level atomic probes. The acceleration-dependent factor generated during the atom–field interaction is encoded in the atomic state and can be estimated through repeated quantum measurements. For a fixed total probe time, which characterizes the available measurement resource, we optimize the interrogation time of individual probes, the initial atomic state, and the corresponding measurement basis to minimize the estimation uncertainty. We show that the achievable precision is governed by the Fisher information accumulated per unit probe time. Under a fixed total probe time, shorter evolution times of individual probes allow for more sequential measurements, leading to a significant improvement in the estimation precision. The optimal initial state and measurement basis depend on both the acceleration factor and the probe evolution time. In particular, the excited state provides superior sensitivity in the weak-acceleration regime, whereas the ground state becomes advantageous for sufficiently large acceleration and long interaction times. Furthermore, we determine the minimum total probe time required to resolve the acceleration-dependent signal associated with the Unruh effect and demonstrate that this requirement can be substantially reduced by employing atomic systems with larger transition dipole moments. Our results establish an optimized quantum metrological strategy for probing acceleration-induced quantum effects and provide a systematic approach toward the experimental investigation of the Unruh effect.
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Quantum Physics
A projection-free approach toward mapping the structured polarization fields
We present a projection-free method for mapping two-dimensional polarization distributions using Hong-Ou -Mandel (HOM) interference. Conventional polarization characterization techniques, such as Stokes polarimetry, rely on sequential intensity measurements under multiple polarization projections, making their accuracy and sensitivity susceptible to the extinction ratio, calibration errors, and stability of the polarization analysis optics. Our approach overcomes these limitations by exploiting the sensitivity of two-photon bunching to polarization indistinguishability at a balanced beam splitter. Using a HOM interferometer driven by a high-brightness spontaneous parametric down-conversion photon-pair source at 810 nm, we introduced a birefringent vortex waveplate with spatially varying polarization rotations in one interferometer arm and measured the resulting coincidence counts with a high signal-to-noise ratio, enabling projection-free characterization of the sample-induced polarization transformations. This configuration maps spatially dependent polarization variations directly onto coincidence counts, providing a projection-free reconstruction of the polarization distribution. We demonstrate high-fidelity ($\sim$95$\%$) reconstruction of the spatial polarization pattern with an angular resolution of approximately $\sim0.4^\circ$. The use an estimator that saturates the Cramer-Rao bound, computed from the Fisher information, can improve resolution further at the cost of longer acquisition. The proposed quantum-optical technique offers a simple, scalable, and high-precision framework for characterizing structured polarization fields in birefringent materials.