Diffraction-Unlimited Position Measurement of Ultracold Atoms in an Optical Lattice

We consider a method of high-fidelity, spatially resolved position measurement of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice. We show that the atom-number distribution can be nondestructively determined at a spatial resolution beyond the diffraction limit by tracking the progressive evolution of the many-body wavefunction collapse into a Fock state. We predict that the Pauli exclusion principle accelerates the rate of wavefunction collapse of fermions in comparison with bosons. A possible application of our principle of surpassing the diffraction limit to other imaging systems is discussed.Comment: 6+6 pages, 3+3 figures, PRL accepted versio

Full-Counting Many-Particle Dynamics: Nonlocal and Chiral Propagation of Correlations

The ability to measure single quanta has allowed complete characterization of small quantum systems such as quantum dots in terms of statistics of detected signals known as full-counting statistics. Quantum gas microscopy enables one to observe many-body systems at the single-atom precision. We extend the idea of full-counting statistics to nonequilibrium open many-particle dynamics and apply it to discuss the quench dynamics. By way of illustration, we consider an exactly solvable model to demonstrate the emergence of unique phenomena such as nonlocal and chiral propagation of correlations, leading to a concomitant oscillatory entanglement growth. We find that correlations can propagate beyond the conventional maximal speed, known as the Lieb-Robinson bound, at the cost of probabilistic nature of quantum measurement. These features become most prominent at the real-to-complex spectrum transition point of an underlying parity-time-symmetric effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. A possible experimental realization with quantum gas microscopy is discussed.Comment: 6+8 pages, 3+3 figures, to appear in PR

Anomalous Topological Active Matter

Active systems exhibit spontaneous flows induced by self-propulsion of microscopic constituents and can reach a nonequilibrium steady state without an external drive. Constructing the analogy between the quantum anomalous Hall insulators and active matter with spontaneous flows, we show that topologically protected sound modes can arise in a steady-state active system in continuum space. We point out that the net vorticity of the steady-state flow, which acts as a counterpart of the gauge field in condensed-matter settings, must vanish under realistic conditions for active systems. The quantum anomalous Hall effect thus provides design principles for realizing topological metamaterials. We propose and analyze the concrete minimal model and numerically calculate its band structure and eigenvectors, demonstrating the emergence of nonzero bulk topological invariants with the corresponding edge sound modes. This new type of topological active systems can potentially expand possibilities for their experimental realizations and may have broad applications to practical active metamaterials. Possible realization of non-Hermitian topological phenomena in active systems is also discussed.Comment: 6+5 pages, 4+4 figures, to appear in PRL, see also supplementary movie published with the manuscrip

Precise multi-emitter localization method for fast super-resolution imaging

We present a method that can simultaneously locate positions of overlapped multi-emitters at the theoretical-limit precision. We derive a set of simple equations whose solution gives the maximum likelihood estimator of multi-emitter positions. We compare the performance of our simultaneous localization analysis with the conventional single-molecule analysis for simulated images and show that our method can improve the time-resolution of superresolution microscopy an order of magnitude. In particular, we derive the information-theoretical bound on time resolution of localization-based superresolution microscopy and demonstrate that the bound can be closely attained by our analysis.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Multi-particle quantum dynamics under real-time observation

Recent developments in quantum gas microscopy open up the possibility of real-time observation of quantum many-body systems. To understand the dynamics of atoms under such circumstances, we formulate the dynamics under a real-time spatially resolved measurement and show that, in an appropriate limit of weak spatial resolution and strong atom-light coupling, the measurement indistinguishability of particles results in complete suppression of relative positional decoherence. As a consequence, quantum correlation in the multi-particle dynamics persists under a minimally destructive observation. We numerically demonstrate this for ultracold atoms in an optical lattice. Our theoretical framework can be applied to feedback control of quantum many-body systems which may be realized in subwavelength-spacing lattice systems.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, to appear in PR

Information Retrieval and Criticality in Parity-Time-Symmetric Systems

By investigating information flow between a general parity-time (PT) -symmetric non-Hermitian system and an environment, we find that the complete information retrieval from the environment can be achieved in the PT-unbroken phase, whereas no information can be retrieved in the PT-broken phase. The PT-transition point thus marks the reversible-irreversible criticality of information flow, around which many physical quantities such as the recurrence time and the distinguishability between quantum states exhibit power-law behavior. Moreover, by embedding a PT-symmetric system into a larger Hilbert space so that the entire system obeys unitary dynamics, we reveal that behind the information retrieval lies a hidden entangled partner protected by PT symmetry. Possible experimental situations are also discussed.Comment: 6+5 pages, 1+2 figure

Quantum Trajectory Thermodynamics with Discrete Feedback Control

We employ the quantum jump trajectory approach to construct a systematic framework to study the thermodynamics at the trajectory level in a nonequilibrium open quantum system under discrete feedback control. Within this framework, we derive quantum versions of the generalized Jarzynski equalities, which are demonstrated in an isolated pseudospin system and a coherently driven two-level open quantum system. Due to quantum coherence and measurement backaction, a fundamental distinction from the classical generalized Jarzynski equalities emerges in the quantum versions, which is characterized by a large negative information gain reflecting genuinely quantum rare events. A possible experimental scheme to test our findings in superconducting qubits is discussed.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figure

Quantum critical behavior influenced by measurement backaction in ultracold gases

Recent realizations of quantum gas microscope offer the possibility of continuous monitoring of the dynamics of a quantum many-body system at the single-particle level. By analyzing effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonians of interacting bosons in an optical lattice and continuum, we demonstrate that the backaction of quantum measurement shifts the quantum critical point and gives rise to a unique critical phase beyond the terrain of the standard universality class. We perform mean-field and strong-coupling-expansion analyses and show that non-Hermitian contributions shift the superfluid--to-Mott-insulator transition point. Using a low-energy effective field theory, we discuss critical behavior of the one-dimensional interacting Bose gas subject to the measurement backaction. We derive an exact ground state of the effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian and find a unique critical behavior beyond the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid universality class. We propose experimental implementations of post-selections using quantum gas microscopes to simulate the non-Hermitian dynamics and argue that our results can be investigated with current experimental techniques in ultracold atoms.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure

General achievable bound of extractable work under feedback control

A general achievable upper bound of extractable work under feedback control is given, where nonequilibrium equalities are generalized so as to be applicable to error-free measurements. The upper bound involves a term which arises from the part of the process whose information becomes unavailable and is related to the weight of the singular part of the reference probability measure. The obtained upper bound of extractable work is more stringent than the hitherto known one and sets a general achievable bound for a given feedback protocol. Guiding principles of designing the optimal protocol are also outlined. Examples are presented to illustrate our general results.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Measurement-induced quantum criticality under continuous monitoring

We investigate entanglement phase transitions from volume-law to area-law entanglement in a quantum many-body state under continuous position measurement on the basis of the quantum trajectory approach. We find the signatures of the transitions as peak structures in the mutual information as a function of measurement strength, as previously reported for random unitary circuits with projective measurements. At the transition points, the entanglement entropy scales logarithmically and various physical quantities scale algebraically, implying emergent conformal criticality, for both integrable and nonintegrable one-dimensional interacting Hamiltonians; however, such transitions have been argued to be absent in noninteracting regimes in some previous studies. With the aid of $U(1)$ symmetry in our model, the measurement-induced criticality exhibits a spectral signature resembling a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid theory from symmetry-resolved entanglement. These intriguing critical phenomena are unique to steady-state regimes of the conditional dynamics at the single-trajectory level, and are absent in the unconditional dynamics obeying the Lindblad master equation, in which the system ends up with the featureless, infinite-temperature mixed state. We also propose a possible experimental setup to test the predicted entanglement transition based on the subsystem particle-number fluctuations. This quantity should readily be measured by the current techniques of quantum gas microscopy and is in practice easier to obtain than the entanglement entropy itself.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figures, v3: This version includes corrections to the results obtained by an erroneous numerical algorithm in the previous versions, which caused quantitative changes to the numerical result