Bound entanglement in the Jaynes-Cummings model

We study in detail entanglement properties of the Jaynes-Cummings model assuming a two-level atom (qubit) interacting with the first $N$ levels of an electromagnetic field mode (qudit) in a cavity. In the Jaynes-Cummings model, the number operator is the conserved quantity that allows for the exact diagonalization of the Hamiltonian and thus we study states that commute with this conserved quantity and whose structure is preserved under the Jaynes-Cummings dynamics. Contrary to the common belief, we show that there are bound entangled states that satisfy the symmetries imposed by the conservation of the number of excitations when $N>3$. Furthermore we show that \emph{the Jaynes-Cummings interaction can be used to generate bound-entanglement} between the atom and the mode.Comment: Improved abstract, references and new section on the generation of bound entanglement using the JC interactio

Why you should not use the electric field to quantize in nonlinear optics

We show that using the electric field as a quantization variable in nonlinear optics leads to incorrect expressions for the squeezing parameters in spontaneous parametric down-conversion and conversion rates in frequency conversion. This observation is related to the fact that if the electric field is written as a linear combination of bosonic creation and annihilation operators one cannot satisfy Maxwell's equations in a nonlinear dielectric.Comment: This version corrects a minor typo from the published version in Optics Letters. Eq. 22 should have an \epsilon_0 that is lacking in the OL versio

Fast optimization of parametrized quantum optical circuits

Parametrized quantum optical circuits are a class of quantum circuits in which the carriers of quantum information are photons and the gates are optical transformations. Classically optimizing these circuits is challenging due to the infinite dimensionality of the photon number vector space that is associated to each optical mode. Truncating the space dimension is unavoidable, and it can lead to incorrect results if the gates populate photon number states beyond the cutoff. To tackle this issue, we present an algorithm that is orders of magnitude faster than the current state of the art, to recursively compute the exact matrix elements of Gaussian operators and their gradient with respect to a parametrization. These operators, when augmented with a non-Gaussian transformation such as the Kerr gate, achieve universal quantum computation. Our approach brings two advantages: first, by computing the matrix elements of Gaussian operators directly, we don't need to construct them by combining several other operators; second, we can use any variant of the gradient descent algorithm by plugging our gradients into an automatic differentiation framework such as TensorFlow or PyTorch. Our results will find applications in quantum optical hardware research, quantum machine learning, optical data processing, device discovery and device design.Comment: 21 pages, 10 figure

Melting of Lennard-Jones rare gas clusters doped with a single impurity atom

Single impurity effect on the melting process of magic number Lennard-Jones, rare gas, clusters of up to 309 atoms is studied on the basis of Parallel Tempering Monte Carlo simulations in the canonical ensemble. A decrease on the melting temperature range is prevalent, although such effect is dependent on the size of the impurity atom relative to the cluster size. Additionally, the difference between the atomic sizes of the impurity and the main component of the cluster should be considered. We demonstrate that solid-solid transitions due to migrations of the impurity become apparent and are clearly differentiated from the melting up to cluster sizes of 147 atoms

High efficiency in mode selective frequency conversion

Frequency conversion (FC) is an enabling process in many quantum information protocols. Recently, it has been observed that upconversion efficiencies in single-photon, mode-selective FC are limited to around 80%.In this letter we argue that these limits can be understood as time-ordering corrections (TOCs) that modify the joint conversion amplitude of the process. Furthermore we show, using a simple scaling argument, that recently proposed cascaded FC protocols that overcome the aforementioned limitations act as "attenuators" of the TOCs. This observation allows us to argue that very similar cascaded architectures can be used to attenuate TOCs in photon generation via spontaneous parametric down-conversion. Finally, by using the Magnus expansion, we argue that the TOCs, which are usually considered detrimental for FC efficiency, can also be used to increase the efficiency of conversion in partially mode selective FC

Broadband pseudothermal states with tunable spectral coherence generated via nonlinear optics

It is well known that the reduced state of a two-mode squeezed vacuum state is a thermal state---i.e. a state whose photon-number statistics obey a geometric distribution. More exotic \emph{broadband} states can be realized as the reduced state of two spectrally-entangled beams generated using nonlinear optics. We show that these broadband "pseudothermal" states are tensor products of states in spectral Schmidt modes, whose photon-number statistics obey a geometric distribution. We study the spectral and temporal coherence properties of these states and show that their spectral coherence can be tuned---from perfect coherence to complete incoherence---by adjusting the pump spectral width. In the limit of a cw pump, these states are tensor products of true thermal states, but with different temperatures at each frequency. This could be an interesting state of light for investigating the interplay between spectral, temporal, and photon-number coherences.Comment: 6 pages main text, 1 full-page figure (12 pages total including reference and appendices

Strong coupling of two quantum emitters to a single light mode: the dissipative Tavis-Cummings ladder

A criterion for strong coupling between two quantum emitters and a single resonant light mode in a cavity is presented. The criterion takes into account the escape of cavity photons and the spontaneous emission of the emitters, which are modeled as two level systems. By using such criterion, the dissipative Tavis-Cummings ladder of states is constructed, and it is shown that the inclusion of one more emitter with respect to the Jaynes-Cummings (single emitter) case increases the effective parameter region in which $n^{\text{th}}$ order Rabi splitting is observed.Comment: 3 figure

Franck-Condon factors by counting perfect matchings of graphs with loops

We show that the Franck-Condon Factor (FCF) associated to a transition between initial and final vibrational states in two different potential energy surfaces, having $N$ and $M$ vibrational quanta, respectively, is equivalent to calculating the number of perfect matchings of a weighted graph with loops that has $P = N+M$ vertices. This last quantity is the loop hafnian of the (symmetric) adjacency matrix of the graph which can be calculated in $O(P^3 2^{P/2})$ steps. In the limit of small numbers of vibrational quanta per normal mode our loop hafnian formula significantly improves the speed at which FCFs can be calculated. Our results more generally apply to the calculation of the matrix elements of a bosonic Gaussian unitary between two multimode Fock states having $N$ and $M$ photons in total and provide a useful link between certain calculations of quantum chemistry, quantum optics and graph theory.Comment: 13+3 pages, 4 figures. Source code available at https://github.com/XanaduAI/fockgaussia

Gaussian Boson Sampling using threshold detectors

We study what is arguably the most experimentally appealing Boson Sampling architecture: Gaussian states sampled with threshold detectors. We show that in this setting, the probability of observing a given outcome is related to a matrix function that we name the Torontonian, which plays an analogous role to the permanent or the Hafnian in other models. We also prove that, provided that the probability of observing two or more photons in a single output mode is sufficiently small, our model remains intractable to simulate classically under standard complexity-theoretic conjectures. Finally, we leverage the mathematical simplicity of the model to introduce a physically motivated, exact sampling algorithm for all Boson Sampling models that employ Gaussian states and threshold detectors.Comment: 5+5 pages, 2 figures. Closer to published versio