In recent years, cat-state encoding and high-dimensional entanglement have attracted much attention. However, previous works are limited to generation of entangled states of cat-state qubits (two-dimensional entanglement with cat-state encoding), while how to prepare entangled states of cat-state qutrits or qudits (high-dimensional entanglement with cat-state encoding) has not been investigated. We here propose to generate a maximally-entangled state of multiple cat-state qutrits (three-dimensional entanglement by cat-state encoding) in circuit QED. The entangled state is prepared with multiple microwave cavities coupled to a superconducting flux ququart (a four-level quantum system). This proposal operates essentially by the cavity-qutrit dispersive interaction. The circuit hardware resource is minimized because only a coupler ququart is employed. The higher intermediate level of the ququart is occupied only for a short time, thereby decoherence from this level is greatly suppressed during the state preparation. Remarkably, the state preparation time does not depend on the number of the qutrits, thus it does not increase with the number of the qutrits. As an example, our numerical simulations demonstrate that, with the present circuit QED technology, the high-fidelity preparation is feasible for a maximally-entangled state of two cat-state qutrits. Furthermore, we numerically analyze the effect of the inter-cavity crosstalk on the scalability of this proposal. This proposal is universal and can be extended to accomplish the same task with multiple microwave or optical cavities coupled to a natural or artificial four-level atom.

The spectral form factor (SFF) can probe the eigenvalue statistic at different energy scales as its time variable varies. In closed quantum chaotic systems, the SFF exhibits a universal dip-ramp-plateau behavior, which reflects the spectrum rigidity of the Hamiltonian. In this work, we explore the general properties of SFF in open quantum systems. We find that in open systems the SFF first decays exponentially, followed by a linear increase at some intermediate time scale, and finally decreases to a saturated plateau value. We derive general relations between (i) the early-time decay exponent and Lindblad operators; (ii) the long-time plateau value and the number of steady states. We also explain the effective field theory perspective of general behaviors. We verify our theoretical predictions by numerically simulating the Sachdev−Ye−Kitaev (SYK) model, random matrix theory (RMT), and the Bose−Hubbard model.

The curved surface has emerged as new research platform for understanding and manipulating novel electromagnetic behaviors in complex media. In this paper, we explore the anisotropic polaritons on the spherical surface based on Maxwell’s fish-eye metric through stereographic projection. Additionally, this phenomenon can be extended to spindle surface by conformal mapping. Our calculations and simulations demonstrate the elliptic and hyperbolic polaritons, excited by an electric dipole on the sphere, will self-focus or focus on the poles on the sphere affected by anisotropic permittivity. Furthermore, we reveal the optical singularity nature of the curved hyperbolic polaritons from the perspective of transformation optics by obtaining the equivalent optical refractive index profiles and the particle potential energy. Based on natural anisotropic materials and metamaterials, the curved polaritons have potential applications in curved surface focusing and chaos regulation. This work not only bridges the transformation optics and anisotropic polaritons at curved surface, but also provides a new route to surface optical field manipulation.

We propose a scheme to realize antibunched multiple-photon bundles based on phonon blockade in a quadratically coupled optomechanical system. Through adjusting the detunings to match the conditions of phonon blockade in the photon sidebands, we establish super-Rabi oscillation between zero-photon state and multiple-photon states with adjustable super-Rabi frequencies under appropriate single-phonon resonant conditions. Taking the system dissipation into account, we numerically calculate the standard and generalized second-order functions of the cavity mode as well as the quantum trajectories of the state populations with Monte Carlo simulation to confirm that the emitted photons form antibunched multiple-photon bundles. Interestingly, the desirable n-photon states are reconstructed after a direct phonon emission based on phonon blockade, and thus the single-phonon emission heralds the cascade emission of n-photon bundles. Our proposal shows that the optomechanical system can simultaneously behave as antibunched multiple-photon emitter and single-phonon gun. Such a nonclassical source could have potential applications in quantum information science.

Boson sampling has been theoretically proposed and experimentally demonstrated to show quantum computational advantages. However, it still lacks the deep understanding of the practical applications of boson sampling. Here we propose that boson sampling can be used to efficiently simulate the work distribution of multiple identical bosons. We link the work distribution to boson sampling and numerically calculate the transition amplitude matrix between the single-boson eigenstates in a one-dimensional quantum piston system, and then map the matrix to a linear optical network of boson sampling. The work distribution can be efficiently simulated by the output probabilities of boson sampling using the method of the grouped probability estimation. The scheme requires at most a polynomial number of the samples and the optical elements. Our work opens up a new path towards the calculation of complex quantum work distribution using only photons and linear optics.

Atom interferometer has been proven to be a powerful tool for precision metrology. Here we propose a cavity-aided nonlinear atom interferometer, based on the quasi-periodic spin mixing dynamics of an atomic spin-1 Bose−Einstein condensate trapped in an optical cavity. We unravel that the phase sensitivity can be greatly enhanced with the cavity-mediated nonlinear interaction. The influence of encoding phase, splitting time and recombining time on phase sensitivity are carefully studied. In addition, we demonstrate a dynamical phase transition in the system. Around the criticality, a small cavity light field variation can arouse a strong response of the atomic condensate, which can serve as a new resource for enhanced sensing. This work provides a robust protocol for cavity-enhanced metrology.

Vortex beam with fractional orbital angular momentum (FOAM) is the excellent candidate for improving the capacity of free-space optical (FSO) communication system due to its infinite modes. Therefore, the recognition of FOAM modes with higher resolution is always of great concern. In this work, through an improved EfficientNetV2 based convolutional neural network (CNN), we experimentally achieve the implementation of the recognition of FOAM modes with a resolution as high as 0.001. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time this high resolution has been achieved. Under the strong atmospheric turbulence (AT) (C_n^2={10}^{-15}{\mathrm{m}}^{-2/3}), the recognition accuracy of FOAM modes at 0.1 and 0.01 resolution with our model is up to 99.12% and 92.24% for a long transmission distance of 2000 m. Even for the resolution at 0.001, the recognition accuracy can still remain at 78.77%. This work provides an effective method for the recognition of FOAM modes, which may largely improve the channel capacity of the free-space optical communication.

Decreasing of layer thickness causes the decrease of polarization until it disappears due to the existence of depolarization field. Therefore, the search for strong piezoelectric materials is highly desirable for multifunctional ultra-thin piezoelectric devices. Herein, we propose a common strategy for achieving strong piezoelectric materials through the electronic asymmetry induced by the intrinsically asymmetric atomic character of different chalcogen atoms. Accordingly, in the tetrahedral lattice structures, for example, M₄X₃Y₃ (M = Pd/Ni, X/Y = S, Se or Te, X ≠ Y) monolayers are proved to display excellent out-of-plane piezoelectricity. Ni₄Se₃Te₃ possesses the largest piezoelectric coefficient d₃₃ of 61.57 pm/V, which is much larger than that of most 2D materials. Enhancing the electronic asymmetry further increases the out-of-plane piezoelectricity of Janus M₄X₃Y₃ materials. Correspondingly, the out-of-plane piezoelectricity is positively correlated with the ratio of electronegativity difference (R_ed) and the electric dipole moment (P). This work provides alternative materials for energy harvesting nano-devices or self-energized wearable devices, and supplies a valuable guideline for predicting 2D materials with strong out-of-plane piezoelectricity.

We examine the electronic and transport properties of a new phase PdSe monolayer with a puckered structure calculated by first-principles and Boltzmann transport equation. The spin−orbit coupling is found to play a negligible effect on the electronic properties of PdSe monolayer. The lattice thermal conductivity of PdSe monolayer exhibits remarkable anisotropic characteristic due to anisotropic phonon group velocity along different directions and its intrinsic structure anisotropy. The compromised electronic mobility despite a relatively low thermal conduction results in a moderate ZT value but significantly anisotropic thermoelectric performance in single-layer PdSe. The present work suggests that the remarkable thermal transport anisotropy of PdSe monolayer can be used for thermal management, and enhance the scope of possibilities for heat flow manipulation in PdSe based devices. The sizeable puckered cages and wiggling lattice implies it an ideal platform for ionic and molecular engineering for thermoelectronic applications.

Engineering phonon transport in low-dimensional materials has great significance not only for fundamental research, but also for thermal management applications of electric devices. However, due to the difficulties of micro and nano processing and characterization techniques, the work on tuning phonon transport at nanoscale are scarce. In this work, by introducing Ar⁺ plasma, we probed the phonon transport in two-dimensional (2D) layered semiconductor PdSe₂ under different defect concentrations. By using thermal bridge method, the thermal conductivity was measured to decrease by 50% after a certain Ar⁺ irradiation, which implied a possible phase transition. Moreover, Raman characterizations were performed to show that the Raman sensitive peaks of PdSe₂ was red-shifted and finally became disappeared with the increase of defect concentration. “Defect engineering” proves be a practical strategy in tuning the phonon thermal transport in low-dimensional materials, thus providing guidance for potential application in designing thermoelectric devices with various emerging materials.

We concentrate on the skin effects and topological properties in the multilayer non-Hermitian Su−Schrieffer−Heeger (SSH) structure, by taking into account the nonreciprocal couplings between the different sublattices in the unit cells. Following the detailed demonstration of the theoretical method, we find that in this system, the skin effects and topological phase transitions induced by nonreciprocal couplings display the apparent parity effect, following the increase of the layer number of this SSH structure. On the one hand, the skin effect is determined by the parity of the layer number of this SSH system, as well as the parity of the band index of the bulk states. On the other hand, for the topological edge modes, such an interesting parity effect can also be observed clearly. Next, when the parameter disorders are taken into account, the zero-energy edge modes in the odd-layer structures tend to be more robust, whereas the other edge modes are easy to be destroyed. In view of these results, it can be ascertained that the findings in this work promote to understand the influences of nonreciprocal couplings on the skin effects and topological properties in the multilayer SSH lattices.

Physical properties such as the conductivity are usually classified according to the symmetry of the underlying system using Neumann’s principle, which gives an upper bound for the number of independent components of the corresponding property tensor. However, for a given Hamiltonian, this global approach usually can not give a definite answer on whether a physical effect such as spin Hall effect (SHE) exists or not. It is found that the parity and types of spin-orbit interactions (SOIs) are good indicators that can further reduce the number of independent components of the spin Hall conductivity for a specific system. In terms of the parity as well as various Rashba-like and Dresselhaus-like SOIs, we propose a local approach to classify SHE in two-dimensional (2D) two-band models, where sufficient conditions for identifying the existence or absence of SHE in all 2D magnetic point groups are presented.

We present a novel method to achieve the decoupling between the transmission and reflection waves of non-Hermitian doped epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) media by inserting a dielectric slit into the structure. Our method also allows for independent control over the amplitude and the phase of both the transmission and reflection waves through few dopants, enabling us to achieve various optical effects, such as perfect absorption, high-gain reflection without transmission, reflectionless high-gain transmission and reflectionless total transmission with different phases. By manipulating the permittivity of dopants with extremely low loss or gain, we can realize these effects in the same configuration. We also extend this principle to multi-port doped ENZ structures and design a highly reconfigurable and reflectionless signal distributor and generator that can split, amplify, decay and phase-shift the input signal in any desired way. Our method overcomes limitations of optical manipulation in doped ENZ caused by the interdependent nature of the transmission and reflection, and has potential applications in novel photonic devices.

High-order nonlinear multiphoton absorption is usually inefficient, but can be enhanced by designing resonant excitations between occupied and unoccupied energy levels. We conducted angle-resolved multi-photon photoemission (mPPE) studies on the SnSe₂(001) surfaces excited by ultrashort laser pulses. By tuning photon energy and light polarization, we demonstrate the presence of a resonant four-photon photoemission (4PPE) process involving the occupied valence band (VB), the unoccupied second conduction band (CB2) and the unoccupied image-potential state (IPs) of SnSe₂. In this 4PPE process, VB electrons of SnSe₂ are resonantly excited into CB2 by adsorbing two photons, followed by the adsorption of another photon to populate the n = 1 IPs before being emitted out to the vacuum by adsorbing one more photon. This results in a double-resonant 4PPE process, which exhibits approximately a 40 times enhancement in photoemission yields compared to cases where one of the resonant pathways, CB2 → IPs, is inhibited by involving a virtual state instead of the IPs in the 4PPE. The double-resonant 4PPE process efficiently excite the bulk VB electrons outside the vacuum, like taking advantage of resonant “ladders” through two real empty electronic states of SnSe₂. Our results highlight the important applications of mPPE in probing the band-structure, particularly the unoccupied states, of recently emerging main group dichalcogenide semiconductors. Furthermore, the discovered resonant mPPE process contributes to the exploration of their promising optoelectronic applications.

We study how to use the surface states in a Bi₂Se₃ topological insulator ultra-thin film that are affected by finite size effects for the purpose of quantum computing. We demonstrate that: (i) surface states under the finite size effect can effectively form a two-level system where their energy levels lie in between the bulk energy gap and a logic qubit can be constructed, (ii) the qubit can be initialized and manipulated using electric pulses of simple forms, (iii) two-qubit entanglement is achieved through a \sqrt{\text{SWAP}} operation when the two qubits are in a parallel setup, and (iv) alternatively, a Floquet state can be exploited to construct a qubit and two Floquet qubits can be entangled through a Controlled-NOT operation. The Floquet qubit offers robustness to background noise since there is always an oscillating electric field applied, and the single qubit operations are controlled by amplitude modulation of the oscillating field, which is convenient experimentally.

The discovery of nickelates superconductor creates exciting opportunities to unconventional superconductivity. However, its synthesis is challenging and only a few groups worldwide can obtain samples with zero-resistance. This problem becomes the major barrier for this field. From plume dynamics perspective, we found the synthesis of superconducting nickelates is a complex process and the challenge is twofold, i.e., how to stabilize an ideal infinite-layer structure Nd_0.8Sr_0.2NiO₂, and then how to make Nd_0.8Sr_0.2NiO₂ superconducting? The competition between perovskite Nd_0.8Sr_0.2NiO₃ and Ruddlesden−Popper defect phase is crucial for obtaining infinite-layer structure. Due to inequivalent angular distributions of condensate during laser ablation, the laser energy density is critical to obtain phase-pure Nd_0.8Sr_0.2NiO₃. However, for obtaining superconductivity, both laser energy density and substrate temperature are very important. We also demonstrate the superconducting Nd_0.8Sr_0.2NiO₂ epitaxial film is very stable in ambient conditions up to 512 days. Our results provide important insights for fabrication of superconducting infinite-layer nickelates towards future device applications.

Two-dimensional (2D) materials exhibit exceptionally strong nonlinear optical responses, benefiting from their reduced dimensionality, relaxed phase-matching requirements, and enhanced light-matter interaction. With additional degrees of freedom in the modulation of the physical properties by stacking 2D layers together, nonlinear optics of 2D heterostructures becomes increasingly fascinating. In this perspective, we provide a brief overview of recent advances in the field of nonlinear optics of 2D heterostructures, with a particular focus on their remarkable capabilities in characterization and modulation. Given the recent advances and the emergence of novel heterostructures, combined with innovative tuning knobs and advanced nonlinear optical techniques, we anticipate deeper insights into the underlying mechanisms and more associated applications in this rapidly evolving field.

Recently, it was found that the vector field can be naturally localized on the thick brane in chameleon gravity. In this work, we extend this study to encompass de Sitter brane scenario. We focus on the localization of q-form fields. The scalar and vector fields can be localized on the de Sitter brane, while the KR field cannot be localized. The condition for localization of the scalar and vector fields is obtained. Furthermore, we investigate the localization characteristics in two examples with given conformal factor b(ϕ). In the first case, the effective potentials and KK modes of the matter fields are obtained asymmetric even though the de Sitter brane has Z₂ symmetry. In the second case, volcano-like effective potentials are generated in the de Sitter brane model.

We present results of a series of experiments aimed at finding the most direct fingerprints of a phenomenon of nuclear chirality. These experiments brought a detailed knowledge of the so called partner bands in ¹³²La, ¹²⁸Cs and ¹²⁶Cs including absolute values of E2 and M1 transition probabilities obtained through the DSA (Doppler Shift Attenuation) method. Considering the indirect character of observables such as energies and transition rates we proposed measurement of the g-factor of a chosen state as a direct, ultimate test of chirality. Our experiment on the bandhead of partner bands in ¹²⁸Cs showed feasibility of this approach. Measured value of the g-factor which suggests non-chiral character of this state leads to another puzzle in the chirality studies — how the chirality emerges with increasing spin of levels along a partner band.