Papers

Generally, quantum heat engines driven by Gibbs reservoirs achieve their maximum work and efficiency only in quasi-static processes, a constraint that hampers practical applications due to the resulting vanishing power output. To address this fundamental limitation, we propose a finite-time quantum Otto information engine (OIE) driven by a Maxwell's demon paired with a single Gibbs reservoir. We demonstrate that the demon's measurement and feedback control can preserve quantum coherence to extract coherent work, while harnessing quantum internal friction as a work source. Consequently, the OIE can produce work by only modulating the eigenstates of the Hamiltonian, and surpass the quasi-static limits of its conventional counterpart in the work output and the efficiency, which accounts for the energetic cost of the demon. Notably, the OIE can achieve near-perfect efficiency alongside positive work extraction in the rapid-driving regime.

We investigate the coupling dependence of ballistic energy transport and the emergent spin dynamics in an integrable Hermitian three-state chain that connects a clock interaction to a highly degenerate flag limit. By constructing a regular $R$-matrix to establish a globally conserved energy current, we analytically evaluate its full variance to obtain the exact, strictly positive leading high-temperature coefficient of the thermal Drude weight and the ballistic growth rate of the energy-correlation second moment. In the strong-coupling limit, the degeneracy is lifted by virtual transitions of a delocalized third-color spectator state, which generates an effective spin-$1/2$ XXZ Hamiltonian with anisotropy $\Delta = -1/2$ and fundamentally selects the all-active two-color sector as the true ground state. For periodic boundaries, this virtual spectator motion introduces a positive length-changing XXZ supercharge squared that, for $L\ge4$, strictly annihilates all states within a finite, length-independent energy interval above the ground state. Consequently, we rigorously prove that the full periodic effective theory perfectly replicates the exact low-energy XXZ spectrum, including all state multiplicities, as well as its macroscopic bulk free-energy density.

Quantum steering is an important type of quantum correlation with potential applications in one-sided device-independent (1SDI) quantum information protocols. In this contribution, we explore the time-dependent dynamics of Gaussian quantum steering in coupled lossy optical waveguides using the covariance matrix formalism. Optical dissipation is explicitly incorporated to account for realistic propagation losses in coupled waveguides. We systematically investigate the influence of the optical loss rate, purity, nonclassicality, and squeezing of the input Gaussian states on the generation and evolution of steering. The results demonstrate that increasing nonclassicality and squeezing enhances Gaussian steering, while optical loss and reduced purity progressively suppress it. However, a considerable amount of steering can persist over finite propagation intervals in the presence of optical loss. We further examine that steering is symmetric for input states with identical nonclassicality, while unequal nonclassicalities lead to directional steering asymmetry, offering a way to control the steering direction through input-state engineering. These results demonstrate that coupled optical waveguides can support controllable Gaussian quantum steering under practical loss conditions and offer a promising integrated-photonic platform for asymmetric quantum-information protocols, including 1SDI quantum key distribution (QKD) and quantum communication.

We propose a quantum reservoir computing framework based on a hybrid cavity magnomechanical system in the linearized Gaussian regime. The reservoir combines microwave-cavity, magnon, and mechanical degrees of freedom, and is extended by an auxiliary cavity acting as an input port, with time-dependent signals encoded in its detuning. The covariance matrix of the quadrature fluctuations provides the features for a trained linear readout. Using linear-memory, nonlinearmemory, and parity-check benchmarks, we find strong temporal memory together with more limited nonlinear processing, whose balance is controlled by the reservoir evolution time, and we show that intermode correlations substantially enhance the information accessible to the readout. The same architecture reconstructs a time-dependent signal encoded in the auxiliary-cavity detuning, with an accuracy governed by the interplay between the internal couplings and the encoding strength, and robust against Gaussian detuning noise. Accounting for finite measurement statistics reveals a trade-off between encoding strength and the precision of the covariance estimation, so that the optimal encoding depends on the available measurement budget. These results establish hybrid cavity magnomechanical systems as a promising platform for continuous-variable quantum reservoir computing with potential applications in signal probing.

Quantum entanglement is a crucial resource in quantum information processing, yet its efficient, scalable and robust classification in multipartite systems remains theoretically challenging. Although supervised machinelearning has been applied to this task, most existing methods still suffer from high measurement costs, computational consumption, and weak noise robustness. In this work, by incorporating multipartite uncertainty relations as prior guidance, we propose a neural network approach to classify distinct Stochastic Local Operations and Classical Communication (SLOCC) multipartite entanglement classes based on states sampled from their local unitary (LU) orbits. Compared with traditional techniques, our method reduces experimental measurement-resource requirements and computational overhead, showing high adaptability to large-scale systems. The classification accuracy of our method reaches 99.5% in 20-qubit systems. The numerical validation is performed on states generated by random LU transformations, which preserve the SLOCC class. Within this setting, the proposed method offers strong effectiveness, scalability, and robustness for multipartite entanglement classification.

On a seven-compound drug-response model, warm-start quantum approximate optimization (QAOA) on IonQ Forte-1 returned valid assignments more often than random bitstrings, but this alone did not show effective optimization. Ideal QAOA raised optimum probability above uniform feasible sampling in only four of twelve reference circuits. Hardware often fell below its own noiseless circuits, while greedy search solved all hardware models within 200 objective evaluations. Expanded simulations showed a gain over feasible sampling in 28 of 35 CAMA-1 panels and none of four 647-V panels. Annealing solved all these panels in every seed. A Grover mixer preserved feasibility and improved optimum probability over feasible sampling in all ten tested models. We analyzed 25 completed tasks containing 5,300 shots from 18 circuits and 14 instances. The encodings use 6-35 qubits and at most 4,900 feasible assignments, which we enumerated to establish exact optima. Noiseless references now cover both the original six circuits and six wider circuits. At 35 qubits, with 4,900 feasible assignments, ideal feasibility was 35.85%, compared with 7 of 200 valid hardware outputs. Its ideal optimum probability was below both sampling controls. The circuits sample assignments in a model built from measured single-agent and pairwise responses.

Recent advances in the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) have strengthened its promise for molecular electronic-structure calculations on near-term noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices. However, barren plateaus (BPs) remain a major obstacle to scaling VQE, as vanishing gradients can severely obstruct optimization at large scale. While most BP studies focus on randomly initialized circuits and global gradient behavior, practical quantum chemistry VQE typically uses chemically motivated initializations and local optimization around HF- or MP2-derived states. Although chemically informed initializations are widely expected to improve VQE trainability, how they mitigate local barren plateaus remains unclear. We therefore study the occurrence of local barren plateaus in molecular UCCSD-VQE, considering both chemically motivated initialization points and iterates along the corresponding optimization trajectories. In the benchmarks considered here, chemically initialized starting points and variational trajectories show polynomial decay of local gradient variance with system size instead of the exponential BP-like decay observed for random controls, indicating that chemical initialization mitigates barren plateaus in the local optimization regions and highlights the trainability advantage of chemically motivated VQE strategies.

Residual-error preservation (REP) provides a sufficient rule for constructing concatenated composite pulses that compensate multiple systematic errors. We show that local REP is not necessary: deviations from REP can cancel across the full sequence. Using first-order error generators, we derive a necessary and sufficient condition for concatenation to retain the robustness of an outer sequence. A simple sufficient condition is that all inner pulses rescale the corresponding elementary error generators by a common real factor, not necessarily unity. We illustrate this principle using pulse-length and off-resonance errors, two systematic error models commonly considered in magnetic resonance. Short CORPSE and SCROFULOUS each compensate one error without preserving the other locally. Combining these inner pulses with suitable equal-rotation-angle outer sequences yields simultaneous first-order compensation of both errors, extending concatenated composite-pulse design beyond local REP.

We investigate collective chirped stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) in a pair of identical three-level atoms using a symmetric six-state model. Numerical simulations reveal a pronounced oscillatory dependence of the population transfer to the doubly excited Rydberg state on the peak Rabi frequency, indicating dynamics beyond the conventional single-dark-state description of STIRAP. To identify the underlying mechanism, we develop a dressed-manifold description based on gauge-invariant projections onto nearly degenerate instantaneous dressed manifolds. The analysis demonstrates that the wavefunction remains predominantly confined to a two-dimensional dark manifold while becoming transiently coupled to a neighboring bright manifold during the pulse-overlap interval. We further show that in the dressed-manifold representation, the Rydberg-Rydberg interaction modifies the collective resonance structure while preserving the dark-bright manifold dynamics responsible for the oscillatory transfer; an appropriately chosen frequency chirp compensates the interaction-induced detuning and restores efficient population transfer. This dressed-manifold picture provides a consistent interpretation of oscillatory collective transfer and establishes a framework for controlling adiabatic dynamics in interacting multilevel systems by linearly chirped STIRAP, opening a route toward manifold-based control of Rydberg-mediated quantum gates, correlated-state preparation, and other coherent operations in interacting atomic systems.

We prove that the quantum code distance is NP-hard to approximate within an additive error of $c N$, for some constant $c >0$, where $N$ is the number of qubits. Our reductions are deterministic. This improves the previous square-root additive gap to $\Omega(N)$ and resolves the explicitly stated linear-gap question of Kapshikar and Kundu. Our result holds for CSS codes with identical $X$- and $Z$-check spaces, and with a constant rate and constant relative distance. For every fixed $\lambda>1$, there is a constant $c>0$ such that hardness still holds even when every nonidentity stabilizer has weight greater than $\lambda$ times the quantum distance. We also improve the hardness gap of graph state distance on $N$ vertices of Grigorescu, Jha, and Samperton from cube-root to $\Omega(N)$, resolving their explicitly stated open question. Both hardness results are asymptotically optimal since both distances are at most $N$. Our graph state distance hardness result holds for balanced bipartite graphs with a binary adjacency matrix that is its own inverse (mod 2). Our main technique for both hardness bounds above is classical: we show how to convert any code $C$ of length $m$ into a self-dual code $A(C)$ of length $N=\Theta(m)$ while exactly doubling the original coset metric. The conversion is deterministic and efficient. We call it the metric self-dual completion of $C$. It comes with a linear embedding $\tau: \mathbb F_2^m \hookrightarrow \mathbb F_2^N$. The embedding doubles all Hamming distances between vectors in $\mathbb F_2^m$ and all pairwise distances between corresponding cosets. The embedding also guarantees that all codewords of $A(C)$ of weight at most $2m$ are exactly $\tau(C)$.

Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers have emerged as a highly sensitive platform for spatially resolved temperature measurements. When the $\lvert0\rangle\to\lvert+1\rangle$ and $\lvert0\rangle\to\lvert-1\rangle$ transitions are nearly degenerate and the Rabi frequency is comparable to the transition splitting, the spin dynamics encountered during pulsed protocols for temperature measurement can significantly alter the intended accumulation of temperature-dependent phase. We investigate these triplet ($\lvert0\rangle$, $\lvert\pm1\rangle$) spin dynamics and their effect on pulsed thermometry protocols under these conditions. We find that the conventional thermal-echo timing produces negligible temperature-sensitive signal amplitudes at the common-mode detuning. However, we find that the nominal spin-echo timing produces resolvable oscillations at the common-mode detuning, leading to a strong temperature-sensitive carrier signal. This departure from the expected protocol behavior is qualitatively captured by an ensemble model of the triplet dynamics, which supports significant dark-state leakage as a plausible mechanism for the temperature-sensitive response. This mixing-enabled thermal echo uses a four-phase quadrature readout that resolves the signed oscillation frequency and is validated using independent sweeps of the microwave carrier frequency and fluid temperature. We further assess the ability of a four-refocusing-pulse (LDD4B) low-field dynamical-decoupling sequence to extend the NV coherence and find that while the echo retains a sensitivity to common-mode detuning, the effective phase-accumulation interval corresponds to approximately half the total evolution time. These findings could support the use of pulsed NV thermometry in biological or mobile applications where applying magnetic bias fields is impractical and microwave power may be limited.

Quantum Reservoir Computing (QRC) uses fixed quantum dynamics as a high-dimensional feature map. Still, standard pipelines flatten reservoir measurements and train a linear readout, ignoring the natural tensor structure across time steps, qubits, and observables. We propose a multilinear readout for quantum reservoir computing (ML-QRC), a tensor-structured neural readout compressed through mode-wise projections. Relative to a dense hidden-width-64 neural readout, this reduces the feature-to-hidden parameter count from $64TnF$ to $d(T+n+F)+64d^3$, giving a $12.1\times$ feature-block compression at $T=50$, $n=6$, $d=8$, and $F=n+\binom{n}{2}$. Across Mackey-Glass forecasting and TFIM phase classification, ML-QRC remains statistically competitive with Ridge on Mackey-Glass and obtains the numerically highest full-data TFIM accuracy among tested methods, while using $12.0\times$ fewer parameters than the full dense MLP. Its clearest benefit is improved low-data stability relative to neural MLP readouts on Mackey-Glass; this advantage does not transfer to TFIM, where Ridge performs best at 50% data. Overall, ML-QRC is best viewed as a tensor-structured neural readout that compresses dense MLP readouts while preserving QRC tensor structure, rather than as a replacement for simple linear/Ridge readouts in the tested regime.

Modularization promises to break down the design and implementation complexity of large scale quantum processors into smaller manageable subtasks. In this approach, quantum channels, realized for instance through physical rerouting of qubits or quantum teleportation, connect multiple modules. Each of those modules hosts a subset of qubits, e.g. multiple logical qubits, and provides quantum operations on them. In this work, we implement for the first time all logical operations required for modular fault-tolerant universal quantum computing with a non-Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) code, the perfect $[[5, 1, 3]]$ code, on a trapped-ion quantum computer. This code is the smallest quantum error-correcting (QEC) code capable of correcting any single-qubit error, making it a compact alternative to larger CSS codes. We demonstrate logical state teleportation and a full suite of fault-tolerant operations required for universal logical control, including logical state preparation, QEC with real-time feedback, logical measurements, magic-state preparation, logical entangling operations, and magic-state injection. Moreover, we characterize the logical spectator error picked up by idling logical qubits during quantum operations on distinct qubit registers and demonstrate a logical Pauli quantum process tomography that minimizes required sampling resources for logical tomography.

Graph theory is a powerful tool in quantum computing, with applications ranging from quantum circuit synthesis and optimization to entanglement mapping. Recent work has shown how one can use edge-colored graphs to model photonic experiments that generate GHZ and W states. However, the latter work also proved that verifying that a graph models a Dicke state experiment is coNP-complete. In this work, we provide families of graphs that generate $|D_{k}^a\rangle \otimes |0\rangle^{\otimes b }$, where $b = |a-2k|$ is the number of spectator modes. The graph setup consists of a doubled complete subgraph on $a$ vertices and a collection of auxiliary vertices. We prove that every coincidence carries exactly $k$ excitations, every weight-$k$ computational basis state on bitstrings of length $a$ is realized, and each of those bitstrings is realized exactly $(n/2)!$ times, where $n = a+b$. Since verifying the Dicke FORALL condition is coNP-complete in general, constructing explicit families that provably generate Dicke states is of interest.

To elucidate the meaning of holographic entropy inequalities (beyond subadditivity) which characterize the entanglement structure of geometric states in holography, arXiv:2309.06296 proposed the "tripartite form" for these inequalities, consisting of tripartite information and conditional tripartite information terms with unit coefficients. While this provides a compact and useful packaging of the inequalities, it is not a priori guaranteed that all inequalities can be recast in this form. Here we conjecture that they can, and present substantial evidence, by proving that the two known infinite families of holographic entropy inequalities found in arXiv:2309.15145 can indeed be written in the tripartite form. This is significant because such recasting is particularly nontrivial for these families. Apart from providing the explicit tripartite form expressions for every member of these two infinite families, we detail how we arrived at them, in the process deriving several useful identities which may serve as stepping stones to formulate further repackaging of the corresponding information quantities. We also illustrate the power of the tripartite form by proving a number of structural properties satisfied by any holographic entropy inequality.

We develop a unified algebraic approach to spin-boson transformations based on the formalism of $f$-deformed oscillators. In the single-mode case, we show that the Holstein-Primakoff and Dyson-Maleev transformations, together with the interpolating $\alpha$-family, arise as different factorizations of the same algebraically determined object. The standard spin-boson mappings can thus be interpreted as realizations of a common structure, which makes it possible to clearly separate the exact algebraic content on the physical subspace from effects associated with non-Hermiticity, the choice of metric, and extensions beyond the physical subspace. In the two-mode case, the same approach yields both deformed versions of the Jordan-Schwinger transformation and new exact two-mode realizations. Our results provide a unified description of known spin-boson transformations and naturally lead to new bosonic representations.

We investigate gravitationally generated entanglement in two quantum harmonic oscillators induced by quadratic (Stelle) gravity, including corrections up to $1.5$ post-Newtonian order. Starting from the quadratic action, we derive the effective two-body Hamiltonian for two harmonically trapped masses, incorporating the contributions of the massive spin-$2$ ghost ($m_2$) and massive spin-$0$ ($m_0$) degrees of freedom of the gravitational field. For two quantised oscillators prepared in their ground state, we compute the von Neumann and Rényi entropies of the reduced state and identify a frequency at which the gravitationally-induced entanglement vanishes due to cancellation between relativistic momentum squeezing and quantum-delocalisation-induced position squeezing. We further analyze the cancellation frequency and derive the approximate constraint $m_0 < \sqrt[3]{4}\, m_2$ for the spin-$2$ and spin-$0$ modes. This relation follows from demanding a stable harmonic oscillator description. Finally, we study gravitationally-induced concurrence in a non-Gaussian setup and show how quadratic gravity modifies the entanglement generated between two spatial superpositions. The concurrence can approach $\mathcal{O}(1)$ for certain choices of mass, spatial superposition, particle distance, and spin-$2$ and spin-$0$ modes. The concurrence will deviate from Newtonian gravity at certain particle separations, depending on the energy of the spin-$2$ and spin-$0$ modes. For example, spin modes as low as $0.0197$ eV become distinguishable from Newtonian gravity at a distance $d \sim 40 \mu$m. This allows us to constrain the spin-$2$ and spin-$0$ masses in experiments.

Quantum linear system solvers form one of the central algorithmic primitives in quantum computing, with applications ranging from differential equations and optimization to machine learning. Their cost is commonly measured through query complexity, which counts the number of oracle calls needed to access the input matrix. In the sparse-access model, this complexity is governed by three parameters: the condition number $\kappa$, the sparsity $s$ of the input matrix, and the target precision $\varepsilon$. The dependence on $\kappa$ and $\varepsilon$ is already well understood through the lower bound $\Omega(\kappa\log(1/\varepsilon))$, which matches the best known scaling in these parameters. Once the sparsity $s$ is included, however, the expected lower bound has long been conjectured to be $\Omega(\kappa\sqrt{s}\log(1/\varepsilon))$. Recent work by Mori et al. [Quantum Sci. Tech. 11 035063 (2026)] made an important step towards this goal by establishing the lower bound $\Omega(\kappa\sqrt{s})$ for constant error $\varepsilon$. In this work, we complete the picture and prove the full joint lower bound $\Omega(\kappa\sqrt{s}\log(1/\varepsilon))$ in the sparse-access model, thereby establishing the anticipated dependence on all three parameters simultaneously.

High-fidelity control of superconducting quantum processors requires accurate characterization of electromagnetic coupling strengths among the device's constituent elements. Accurately extracting these couplings across large-scale architectures, presently featuring hundreds of qubits, poses a challenging multi-scale modeling problem. This requires resolving scales from the nanometer-scale geometry of Josephson junctions and their leads to the centimeter-scale size of the enclosing metallic packages. We present four numerical coupling extraction methods based on the avoided level crossing, the energy participation ratio, the induced electromotive force, and the impedance matrix. These methods are tailored to work with commercially available 3D electromagnetic solvers. We benchmark these techniques on a $10\times10$ array of transmon qubits, extracting their couplings to standing package modes. Our results show that these methods yield consistent coupling strengths with a maximum relative difference of less than 5%.

Quantum Gibbs sampling algorithms generalize classical Markov chain Monte Carlo (cMCMC) methods, and prepare thermal states on quantum computers by implementing local dissipative evolution for a mixing time $t_{\rm mix}$. Since quantum measurements disrupt the prepared state, the rate of extracting unbiased information from the system depends on the recovery of the underlying thermal correlations. The corresponding ”Gibbs resampling” time $t_{\rm res}$ is distinct both from $t_{\rm mix}$ and from the autocorrelation time relevant to cMCMC sampling. We study this problem in effective classical models that emulate disruptive quantum measurements of local observables on extensive subsystems. When such subsystems are chosen randomly, in models with non-local order parameters we uncover a ”resampling transition” as a function of the fraction of sites $p$ that are measured, from $t_{\rm res}\propto \log L$ for small $p$ to $t_{\rm res}\propto {\rm poly} L$ for large $p$, in systems of linear size $L$. We argue that this transition is generically absent in systems with local order parameters, and relate this dichotomy to one between the coarsening of initial states that break 1- and 0-form symmetries under Glauber dynamics. Finally, we devise a structured fast-measurement protocol that evades slow resampling even with non-local order parameters, while leaving only a vanishing fraction of all sites unmeasured.

The many-body bootstrap certifies ground-state properties by minimizing energy over correlators constrained only by positivity, without any variational wavefunction. Its cost, however, grows exponentially with the size of the operators involved, placing the long-range string correlators that diagnose topological phases out of reach. We overcome this by treating string operators as primary objects: bare and endpoint-dressed strings satisfy a closed operator algebra with one another and with local words, yielding a semidefinite program whose cost grows only polynomially with string length. A single computation then yields estimates of string correlators of all lengths. Rigorous two-sided bounds are obtained for each target string once the ground-state energy is pinned within a window. When benchmarked against density-matrix renormalization group computations on the cluster Ising and spin$-1$ Heisenberg chains, the method certifies the nonlocal string order of the cluster and Haldane phases directly from the Hamiltonian. Our rigorous certification of string order parameters reveal that the sharpness of the bounds is set by which operators enter the calculation, not by their length alone. By exploiting algebraic closure of strings and local words, our framework lifts spatially extended observables into polynomially tractable bootstrap variables, opening up a route to wavefunction-free certification of nonlocal order in quantum many-body systems.

Eigenvector overlaps quantify nonorthogonality and govern the response and dynamics of non-Hermitian systems. We extend the universality of non-Hermitian random matrices to the statistics of these overlaps. We obtain analytical expressions for eigenvector overlaps in the spectral bulk and near the origin, covering ten symmetry classes in the limit of large matrix size. Using fermionic replica nonlinear $\sigma$ models, we relate these overlaps to Hermitian level statistics, symmetry class by symmetry class and topological sector by topological sector. Numerical calculations in various physical models support the universality of the normalized overlaps in the regimes studied. Our work establishes a duality between Hermitian level statistics and non-Hermitian eigenvector overlaps.

In this work, we study asymmetric $(1\to2)$ quantum cloning for pure states belonging to orbits generated by the orthogonal group. For every dimension $(d\geq3)$, we determine the full region of achievable pairs of average single-copy fidelities. Using orthogonal covariance and the Brauer algebra, we reduce the optimization over all CPTP maps to a finite-dimensional spectral problem and construct explicit optimal cloning channels. We then apply the general results to four-mode fermionic states in the even-parity sector. Using triality, we identify the fixed-concurrence fermionic families with the orthogonal orbits considered in the first part of the paper. In particular, for pure Gaussian states we show that the symmetric locally optimal cloner is unique. We also compare local and global cloning and find that the channel optimal for the joint two-copy fidelity is different from the one optimal for the single-copy fidelities. Finally, we show that the locally optimal cloner cannot be implemented using only operations which preserve fermionic Gaussian states.

Quantum sensing uses nonclassical states to improve measurement sensitivity, but the same states that provide metrological gain also decohere more rapidly. This limits the usable interrogation time and, in practice, often precludes improvement in ultimate sensitivity - realized useful quantum advantage has consequently remained rare. Here, we restore persistent quantum advantage by embedding Fock-state enhancement within a quantum heterodyne (Qdyne) protocol, decoupling sensitivity from the decoherence-limited interrogation time {\tau}. Measurements are acquired at short {\tau} where the quantum-enhanced gain is optimal, while precision accumulates with the total measurement time. Demonstrated on the motional mode of a trapped 40Ca+ ion, we observe quantum-enhanced precision that persists to measurement times seven orders of magnitude beyond the dephasing limit, scaling as T^{-3/2} with no indication of saturation. Using the n=3 Fock state, we reach a frequency precision of 0.5uHz relative to an 86MHz carrier, achieving a fractional precision ~6x10^{-15}. This represents a quantum-enhanced gain of 7.1(10) dB over the n=0 state, in agreement with Fisher information predictions. This is the first demonstration of Qdyne beyond solid-state spin-defects. Further, by using the quantum harmonic oscillator to perform frequency mixing, we extend operation beyond 1GHz, two orders of magnitude above the ceiling of pulsed dynamical-decoupling implementations. These results recover quantum advantage at the long timescales required to improve ultimate sensitivity, with direct implications for nanoscale NMR and quantum logic spectroscopy.

Cavity quantum electrodynamics is used to study the extent cavity enhancement affects single photon performance of an InAs quantum dot, in terms of emission rate, purity and indistinguishability at different temperatures. Parametric studies show a tradeoff between single photon production rate and purity, as well as between indistinguishability and purity. The results indicate the importance of quantum carrier-photon correlations that yield substantial corrections to mean-field treatments, especially at high light-matter coupling strength, where cavity enhancement is most effective.

When the natural occupation numbers of a fermionic state saturate a generalized Pauli constraint, the state obeys a selection rule: only those configurations of natural orbitals that saturate the constraint themselves contribute. Pinning thus singles out an active space. The selection rule was proved for non-degenerate occupation numbers; for degenerate ones it was conjectured, and proved for one saturated constraint under an assumption checked only for the constraints known at the time. Here, it is proved for every generalized Pauli constraint, with no assumption, and also in the spin-adapted setting. The rule can only fail for the ordering constraints $\lambda_j\ge\lambda_{j+1}$. Several saturated constraints are served by one basis whenever their common zero face contains a non-degenerate point. In practice, occupation numbers are quasipinned rather than pinned, and the rule survives with an explicit error bound.

Efficient bidirectional microwave-optical photon conversion is a key capability for scaling superconducting quantum processors into distributed networks. However, achieving the necessary conversion efficiency requires filling a critical knowledge gap in understanding the loss mechanisms of electro-optic materials. Here, we characterize the microwave properties of single-crystal bulk LiNbO3 and AlN over a broad range of powers, down to single-photon levels, and spanning from millikelvin temperatures to above 1 K. We demonstrate that both materials exhibit two-level systems (TLS) behavior, while piezoelectric-related losses are excluded. We show that TLS-induced dissipation is predominantly localized on the surface rather than being an intrinsic bulk property, a result further corroborated by room-temperature 3D XPS and time-of-flight SIMS analyses. These findings provide useful insights to engineer hybrid architectures that integrate bulk electro-optic crystals within superconducting cavities, proving that microwave quality factors compatible with high-efficiency microwave-optical transduction are within reach.

Scaling quantum computation beyond the capacity of a single quantum processing unit requires quantum interconnects between modular processors. Optical photons are natural carriers for distributing entanglement between these processors. Most loss-resilient protocols use photonic Bell-state measurements based on the linear-optics type-II fusion gate. The resulting entanglement rate scales quadratically with each processor's typically low photon-delivery probability. Here we analyze a memory-assisted quantum interconnect using a near-deterministic, robust photon–atom controlled-$Z$ gate via a single atom trapped in a high-finesse cavity. Detecting and measuring a photon from one processor heralds entanglement between that processor and the atom. This entanglement is preserved while the process repeats with the second processor until the second photon is detected and measured. Reading out the atomic qubit finalizes the entanglement between the processors. As the entanglement is mediated by the atom, the photons from both processors do not need to be indistinguishable, removing a major source of infidelity. Furthermore, by removing the simultaneous photon-arrival requirement, the protocol allows the entanglement rate to scale linearly rather than quadratically with photon-arrival probability over a wide parameter range. We derive entanglement rates under realistic parameters, accounting for decay of the atom's entanglement with the first processor and for decoherence caused by unheralded photon interactions. The nanosecond-scale of the gate and read-out operations leads to orders-of-magnitude entanglement-rate gain over linear optics, removing a key bottleneck in modular quantum computing.

In recent years, quantum game theory has gained significant attention as a framework for studying decision-making in multi-agent systems using quantum principles. However, computing equilibrium strategies is challenging because the dimension of the joint Hilbert space grows as the product of the players' local dimensions. In this paper, we consider an extended Gutoski-Watrous (EGW) game in which each player's quantum strategy is represented by a local density matrix. We derive tensor-contraction expressions for the payoff functions and their gradients, thereby avoiding the explicit construction of the full joint density matrix and its computationally expensive multiplication by the payoff operators. Building on the resulting effective Hamiltonians, we propose the Matrix Exponential Fixed-Point Iteration with Annealing (MEFPIA) algorithm to search for equilibrium points in EGW games. We compare MEFPIA with the Matrix Multiplicative Weights Update (MMWU) algorithm in terms of convergence. For the tested instances and parameter settings, both algorithms approach the same strategy profiles and payoffs, while MEFPIA achieves lower relative error in fewer iterations. These results indicate that MEFPIA is a promising numerical method for equilibrium search in multi-agent quantum games. Our findings provide important insights into the quantum game theory's potential for addressing complex decision-making processes, as well as opening up new paths for future research and exploration in multi-agent quantum systems.

The redundancy distribution of the frequency spectrum has been shown in the literature to impact the expressivity and trainability of Quantum Fourier Models (QFMs). In this work, we address the question of how this redundancy spectrum is shaped by the choice of eigenvalues of the data re-uploading Hamiltonians, using a simple mathematical formalism based on generating functions. We derive exact and asymptotic redundancy profiles for several structured eigenvalue choices identical for every layer, including arithmetic progressions and single-qubit Pauli encodings, and show that both approach a Gaussian profile as the number of layers grows. We then show that this Gaussian limit is not specific to these constructions but is a generic feature of QFMs built from integer eigenvalues that are identical in every layer. These results can be tied to the central limit theorem for random walks. These results clarify why generic or unstructured encoding choices give rise to a redundancy bias that favours low frequencies, highlighting the importance of well-thought-out encoding strategies when constructing a QFM.