Quantum physics articles within Nature Physics

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  • Article |

    Normally, quantum operations are thought of as being applied in a particular order, but it is possible to create superpositions of different orders. An experiment now demonstrates this indefinite causal order may give an advantage for quantum sensing.

    • Peng Yin
    • , Xiaobin Zhao
    •  & Guang-Can Guo

  • News & Views |

    A quantum engineering technique powered by disorder offers access to local correlation functions down to single-site resolution in nuclear spin ensembles, allowing the study of both spin and energy hydrodynamics.

    • Yaoming Chu
    •  & Jianming Cai

  • Article |

    Probing strongly interacting quantum systems with high spatial resolution can be challenging. An experiment now uses disorder in nuclear spin chains as a local probe to investigate spin and energy hydrodynamics.

    • Pai Peng
    • , Bingtian Ye
    •  & Paola Cappellaro

  • Research Briefing |

    It’s a long-standing theoretical prediction that mutual information in locally interacting, many-body quantum systems follows an area law. Using cold-atom quantum-field simulators on an atom chip to measure the scaling of von Neumann entropy and mutual information, that prediction is now proved true.

  • Article |

    The scaling of entanglement entropy and mutual information is key for the understanding of correlated states of matter. An experiment now reports the measurement of von Neumann entropy and mutual information in a quantum field simulator.

    • Mohammadamin Tajik
    • , Ivan Kukuljan
    •  & Jörg Schmiedmayer

  • Research Briefing |

    Photon bound states are quantum states of light that emerge in systems with ultrahigh optical non-linearities. A single artificial atom was used to study the dynamics of these states, revealing that the number of photons within the pulse determines the time delay after the pulse scatters off the atom.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Measurements on a single artificial atom—a quantum dot—coupled to an optical cavity show scattering dynamics that depend on the number of photons involved in the light–matter interaction, which is a signature of stimulated emission.

    • Natasha Tomm
    • , Sahand Mahmoodian
    •  & Richard J. Warburton

  • Research Briefing |

    Controlling the spatial distribution of optically active spin defects in solids is a long-standing goal in the quantum sensing and simulation communities. Measurements of the many-body noise generated by the spins were used to verify that a highly coherent and strongly interacting quantum spin system was confined to two dimensions within a diamond substrate.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Solid-state systems are established candidates to study models of many-body physics but have limited control and readout capabilities. Ensembles of defects in diamond may provide a solution for studying dipolar systems.

    • E. J. Davis
    • , B. Ye
    •  & N. Y. Yao

  • News & Views |

    The study of complexity of unitary transformations has become central to quantum information theory and, increasingly, quantum field theory and quantum gravity. A proof of how complexity grows with system size demonstrates the power of a geometric approach.

    • Michal P. Heller

  • News & Views |

    Two superconductors connected by a weak link form a Josephson junction, a nonlinear circuit element at the heart of many quantum devices. Quantized electrical current steps that were predicted decades ago have now been observed experimentally.

    • Gianluca Rastelli
    •  & Ioan M. Pop

  • Article |

    It has been predicted that Josephson junction devices could produce quantized currents in analogy to the Shapiro steps of voltage used to define the voltage standard. These dual Shapiro steps have now been observed in a Josephson junction array.

    • Nicolò Crescini
    • , Samuel Cailleaux
    •  & Nicolas Roch

  • News & Views |

    Boson sampling is a benchmark problem for photonic quantum computers and a potential avenue towards quantum advantage. A scheme to realize a boson sampler based on the vibrational modes in a chain of trapped ions instead has now been demonstrated.

    • Norbert M. Linke

  • Article |

    The scalability of quantum information processing applications is generally hindered by loss and inefficient preparation and detection. A minimal loss network based on phonons has now been realized with trapped ions.

    • Wentao Chen
    • , Yao Lu
    •  & Kihwan Kim

  • News & Views |

    Quantum correlations between entangled particles can be used by parties in a network to verify that they share a specific quantum state. A proposal for network-assisted self-testing generalizes this approach to states of any number of qubits.

    • Anna Pappa

  • News & Views |

    Quantum mechanical fluctuations of the electromagnetic field in a vacuum between two close together objects result in an attractive force. Now, it has been experimentally shown that by exploiting a similar repulsive interaction, attraction between objects can be modulated simply by tuning temperature.

    • Victoria Esteso Carrizo

  • Research Briefing |

    Coherent multidimensional spectroscopy with nanoscale spatial resolution was used to directly probe a plasmon polariton quantum wave packet. To reproduce these results an improved quantum model of photoemission was required, in which the coherent coupling between plasmons and electrons is accounted for with the plasmon excitations extending beyond a two-level model.

  • Letter |

    Quantum systems produce correlations that cannot be mimicked by classical resources, which can be used to certify quantum states without trusting the underlying devices. A network can perform this procedure for pure states with any number of systems.

    • Ivan Šupić
    • , Joseph Bowles
    •  & Matty J. Hoban

  • Letter |

    Plasmonics allows precise engineering of light–matter interactions and is the driver behind many optical devices. The local observation of a plasmonic quantum wave packet is a step towards bringing these functionalities to the quantum regime.

    • Sebastian Pres
    • , Bernhard Huber
    •  & Tobias Brixner

  • News & Views |

    ‘Squeezing’ of light can be used to alter the distribution of quantum noise to benefit quantum sensing and other applications. An improved design for a microwave photon squeezer provides high performance over a large bandwidth.

    • Baleegh Abdo

  • Letter
    | Open Access

    A scanning nitrogen-vacancy microscope is used to image ferroelectric domains in piezoelectric and improper ferroelectric samples with high sensitivity. The technique relies on the nitrogen-vacancy’s Stark shift produced by the samples’ electric field.

    • William S. Huxter
    • , Martin F. Sarott
    •  & Christian L. Degen

  • Letter |

    The presence of small thermal regions in a many-body localized system could lead to its delocalization. An experiment with cold atoms now monitors the delocalization induced by the coupling of a many-body localized region with a thermal bath.

    • Julian Léonard
    • , Sooshin Kim
    •  & Markus Greiner

  • News & Views |

    Reconstructing the motional quantum states of massive particles has important implications for quantum information science. Motional tomography of a single atom in an optical tweezer has now been demonstrated.

    • Hannes Bernien

  • Article |

    A tomography protocol that exploits the control offered by optical tweezers allows the reconstruction of motional states of a single trapped atom. This has implications for the study of non-classical states of massive trapped and levitated particles.

    • M. O. Brown
    • , S. R. Muleady
    •  & C. A. Regal

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A formal analysis of the physical limits of entanglement manipulation shows that it cannot be done reversibly, highlighting an important difference from thermodynamics.

    • Ludovico Lami
    •  & Bartosz Regula

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sufficient optical gain provided by Yb3+ doping allows phonon lasing from a levitated optomechanical system at the microscale, which exhibits strong mechanical amplitudes and nonlinear mechanical harmonics above the lasing threshold.

    • Tengfang Kuang
    • , Ran Huang
    •  & Guangzong Xiao

  • Article |

    Time-crystalline order appears in periodically driven systems with broken time-translation symmetry. Now, a protocol based on pulse drives of different frequencies is used to create and continuously observe time crystals with long lifetimes.

    • William Beatrez
    • , Christoph Fleckenstein
    •  & Ashok Ajoy

  • Article |

    Quantum operations can be considered as points in a high-dimensional space in which distance reflects the similarity of two operations. Applying differential-geometric methods in this picture gives insights into the complexity of quantum systems.

    • Adam R. Brown

  • Article |

    Established methods of controlling silicon spin qubits require high-frequency signals that can be difficult to implement for various reasons. Exploiting the coupling between spin and valley degrees of freedom provides an alternative approach.

    • Xinxin Cai
    • , Elliot J. Connors
    •  & John M. Nichol

  • News & Views |

    The magnetic flux in a superconducting loop can only change by discrete jumps called phase slips. The energy dissipated by an individual phase slip has now been detected thanks to advances in precision temperature measurements.

    • José Aumentado

  • News & Views |

    The emission of light from qubits in a superconducting circuit can be controlled in order to choose the direction of the photons’ propagation, which could be used to route information in quantum networks.

    • Simone Gasparinetti

  • Article |

    Generalized measurements that do not correspond to conventional basis projections of the quantum wavefunction are a part of several important protocols in quantum information. These measurements can be certifiably performed on higher-dimensional systems using optical fibre technology.

    • Daniel Martínez
    • , Esteban S. Gómez
    •  & Gustavo Lima

  • Article |

    In bosonic systems, the presence of particles in a given quantum level can enhance the transition rates into that state, an effect known as bosonic stimulation. Bosonic enhancement of light scattering has now been observed in an ultracold Bose gas.

    • Yu-Kun Lu
    • , Yair Margalit
    •  & Wolfgang Ketterle

  • Letter
    | Open Access

    Photonic waveguides with appropriately engineered interactions allow the experimental realization of non-Abelian quantum holonomies of the symmetry group U(3), which is known from the strong nuclear force.

    • Vera Neef
    • , Julien Pinske
    •  & Alexander Szameit

  • News & Views |

    The performance of computing devices is determined by the implementation of logical operations at the hardware level. A quantum AND gate designed using three energy levels of a superconducting circuit may speed up quantum computing algorithms.

    • Zhang Jiang

  • Letter |

    Interspecies comparisons between atomic optical clocks are important for several technological applications. A recently proposed spectroscopy technique extends the interrogation times of clocks, leading to highly stable comparison between species.

    • May E. Kim
    • , William F. McGrew
    •  & David R. Leibrandt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    To run algorithms on a computer they are broken down into logical operations that are implemented in hardware. A quantum logical AND gate has now been demonstrated, which could substantially improve the efficiency of near-term quantum computers.

    • Ji Chu
    • , Xiaoyu He
    •  & Dapeng Yu

  • Editorial |

    The 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”, a long-anticipated topic for the prize.

  • Article |

    Hexagonal boron nitride is a common component of 2D heterostructures. Defects implanted in boron nitride crystals can be used to perform spatially resolved sensing of properties, including temperature, magnetism and current.

    • A. J. Healey
    • , S. C. Scholten
    •  & J.-P. Tetienne

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ultracold gases composed of lanthanide atoms are characterized by long-range dipolar interactions. These have now been exploited to observe quantized vortices in a dipolar condensate through the manipulation of the atoms by rotating external magnetic fields.

    • Lauritz Klaus
    • , Thomas Bland
    •  & Francesca Ferlaino

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