Quantum Physics Paper Analysis

Characterizing large quantum systems with minimal assumptions is a central challenge in quantum information science. Self-testing provides the strongest form of certification by identifying the underlying quantum state solely from observed measurement statistics. However, existing self-testing methods for generic $n$-partite states face a scalability barrier, requiring exponentially many samples in the system size. In this work, we overcome this barrier by introducing a protocol that robustly self-tests almost all $n$-qubit states with only polynomial sample complexity. The key ingredient is an efficient scheme for device-independently evaluating multipartite Pauli measurements, which can be implemented using only a linear number of ancillary Bell pairs together with standard projective and Bell measurements, well within the reach of current quantum technology. Beyond self-testing states, our scheme provides a general framework for implementing a wide range of learning and certification protocols in the device-independent setting, thereby opening a scalable route to device-independent quantum information processing in large-scale quantum networks.

How much energy does a quantum computer consume? Are they more efficient than their classical counterparts? In this work, we make a step towards answering these questions. We define the energy efficiency of a quantum computer as the ratio of the number of algorithms it can perform during a given time over the energy consumed by the hardware during this time. We analyze the most representative physical platforms currently envisioned to be used as building blocks of quantum computers: superconducting qubits, silicon spin qubits, trapped ions, neutral atoms and photonic qubits. Including insights from experts in all these technologies and taking into account algorithm compilation constraints, we discuss the advantages and inconveniences of each platform from an energy standpoint. Beyond providing concrete values of the energy consumption of current quantum computers, we lay the foundation of a framework to benchmark the energy efficiency of any future quantum computing architecture.

Real-time decoding plays a crucial role in practical fault-tolerant quantum computing. Window decoding, in which the decoding problem is divided into windows, is a promising approach. While reducing the window size is desirable for faster decoding, each window contains a buffer region whose size must typically be at least the code distance to avoid degrading the logical error rate, which limits how much the window can shrink. In this paper, we propose an adaptive decoding scheme in which window decoding is first performed with a small buffer size and a decoding confidence (soft information) is computed; if the confidence is low, the buffer size is enlarged and decoding is redone. This approach reduces the average decoding time, since most shots are decoded with a small buffer. A central challenge in realizing this scheme is that existing forms of soft information are not directly applicable to window decoding, especially with a small buffer. We address this challenge by introducing a new form of soft information, the spatiotemporal complementary gap, specifically designed for this setting. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the proposed scheme reduces the average buffer size by approximately 40% while maintaining the logical error rate.

We study the fully generalized Grover's algorithm to find the optimal phase changes for each step of the iteration to maximize gain in probability of observation of the target, and when phase matching is required. We find that classical Grover's algorithm and phase matching remains to be optimal till the target probability gets close 1. However, as the probability of observation approaches 1, the optimal phase changes differ from $π$ and no longer observe phase matching. We provide the optimization statement to find the optimal phase changes given the current amplitude vector and the size of the set. To analyze this formula, we approach it from a numerical and analytical perspective, with the analytical perspective focusing on special cases that simplify the optimization and allow for general statements about its behavior. Finally, we provide an example of a 5 qubit system and show that for the final iteration the optimal phase changes differ from traditional Grover's algorithm and do not observe phase matching, but lead to an increase in the probability of the target.

High-purity germanium (Ge) has re-emerged as a versatile semiconductor platform for spin-based quantum information processing because it combines mature materials processing, access to spin-free isotopes, high mobilities, small effective masses, and strong but engineerable spin--orbit coupling. However, ``Ge qubits'' are not a single technology. Donor spin qubits, acceptor spin qubits, gate-defined hole spin qubits, and gate-defined electron spin qubits exploit different parts of the Ge band structure and therefore make distinct trade-offs among coherence, controllability, fabrication complexity, and scalability. Here we compare these four Ge-based spin-qubit modalities on a common physical and architectural footing. We review the shared Ge materials physics, including isotopic purification, the multivalley \(L\)-point conduction band, the spin-\(3/2\) valence band, heavy-hole/light-hole mixing, strain, interfaces, disorder, and phonons. We also introduce a common framework for estimating phononic-crystal-modified \(T_1\) using a calibrated reference relaxation rate, a geometry-dependent strain-density-of-states suppression factor, and parasitic relaxation channels. The comparison shows that gate-defined Ge hole-spin qubits currently offer the strongest combination of all-electrical control, demonstrated multiqubit operation, and scalability. Donor, acceptor, and gate-defined electron qubits remain important complementary directions for memory, hybrid, and exploratory architectures. Overall, Ge supports a diverse qubit ecosystem, with gate-defined hole-spin qubits presently providing the clearest path toward scalable Ge-based quantum processors.

A quantum compiler is a critical piece in the quantum computing pipeline since it allows an abstract quantum circuit to be run on a physical quantum computer. One extremely important subproblem in quantum compilation is the generation of a logical to physical qubit mapping. Typically in quantum compilers this step is either implemented as a random or a heuristic based assignment that aims to minimize additional (SWAP) gate overhead in the quantum circuit. In this paper, we present an alternative approach to solving the qubit mapping problem. Specifically, we formulate the qubit mapping problem with a combinatorial optimization (CO) objective. We then present a method to find a solution to the CO problem by training a reinforcement learning (RL) policy. We also propose a local search based post-processing algorithm to further reduce the overhead. Our results show a dramatic improvement over conventional techniques in reducing the number of SWAPs. On different real world datasets like MQTBench and Queko circuits, our trained policy achieves a \textbf{65-85\%} reduction in SWAP overhead when compared to existing quantum compilers.

We introduce a new family of CSS codes obtained from rate-1 precoded polar codes, which harnesses the precoding benefits obtained for classical short blocklength polar codes. We optimize the rate profile and precoder of these codes with a genetic algorithm, and present codes of dimension $ [\![256, 2 ]\!] $ and $ [\![512, 2]\!] $ that have logical error rates similar to the $ [\![1201, 1, 25 ]\!] $ surface code over the depolarizing channel.

Quantum computation holds the promise of solving certain complex problems exponentially faster than classical computers. However, the high prevalent noise in current quantum devices impedes the accurate execution of even basic algorithms. This can be remedied by protecting quantum information with a quantum error-correcting code, where the logical information of an algorithmic qubit is spread across multiple physical qubits. Individual quantum errors are then located and corrected by the fault-tolerant measurement of multi-qubit stabilizer operators (parity checks). Unfortunately, error correction and fault tolerance both impose large demands on the qubit overhead: hundreds to thousands of physical qubits per logical qubit. We reduce the spacetime cost of fault tolerance by redesigning key building blocks of an error-corrected quantum computer. First, we develop a combinatorial proof with flag fault tolerance that exponentially reduces the extra qubits needed to measure a stabilizer of any size, while tolerating one fault. We leverage these proofs to then design state preparation circuits for the Steane and Golay codes with 100% yield. Next, we improve error correction on a planar layout by showing that a distance-four code encoding six logical qubits protects information as well as the distance-five surface code, using one-tenth as many physical qubits. Finally, we optimize the time overhead of logical gates in surface code quantum computers by protecting measurement results with a classical code, cutting computation time by a factor of two to six. Our hardware-agnostic optimizations of fault tolerance overheads thus suggest new routes to advance the timeline of error-free quantum computing.

Qubit routing is a fundamental problem in quantum compilation, known to be NP-hard. Its dynamic nature makes local routing decisions propagate and compound over time, making global efficient solutions challenging. Existing heuristic methods rely on local rules with limited lookahead, while recent learning-based approaches often treat routing as a generic sequential decision problem without fully exploiting its underlying structure. In this paper, we introduce QAP-Router, framing qubit routing based on a dynamic Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP) formulation. By modeling logical interactions, or quantum gates, as flow matrices and hardware topology as a distance matrix, our approach captures the interaction-distance coupling in a unified objective, which defines the reward in the reinforcement learning environment. To further exploit this structure, the policy network employs a solution-aware Transformer backbone that encodes the interaction between the flow matrix and the distance matrix into the attention mechanism. We also integrate a lookahead mechanism that blends naturally into the QAP framework, preventing myopic decisions. Extensive experiments on 1,831 real-world quantum circuits from the MQTBench, AgentQ and QUEKO datasets show that our method substantially reduces the CNOT gate count of routed circuits by 15.7%, 30.4% and 12.1%, respectively, relative to existing industry compilers.

Probabilistic error cancellation (PEC) is unbiased but suffers exponential sampling overhead set by noise-weighted circuit volume, whereas quantum error-detecting codes (QEDCs) remove many physical faults by stabilizer post-selection but leave an undetectable logical residue. We exploit this complementarity by using post-selection to map physical noise to a weaker accepted logical channel, and then applying PEC only to the residual channel. The resulting feedback-free QED+PEC scheme interleaves Clifford logical blocks, stabilizer measurements, post-selection, and probabilistic cancellation on accepted trajectories, without real-time decoding or active recovery. A key complication is that post-selection correlates accepted fault branches through stabilizer-commutation constraints, so the sparse Pauli-Lindblad factorization underlying bare PEC no longer applies directly. We therefore construct the inverse channel perturbatively: for fixed order $K$, only accepted fault branches up to order $K$ are retained, reducing preprocessing from $2^m$ branches to $O(m^K)$ per block. The order-$K$ protocol cancels the normalized post-selected channel through degree $K$, leaving a per-block error $O(W^{K+1})$ that accumulates at most linearly. For logical GHZ-state preparation with the $[[n,n-2,2]]$ Iceberg code under circuit-level depolarizing noise and ideal stabilizer measurements, first-order QED+PEC reaches $n=200$ physical qubits and lowers sampling overhead by three to four orders of magnitude relative to standard PEC while maintaining $F\simeq0.956$. Syndrome-noise tests show that readout-only flips mainly increase post-selection cost, whereas noisy GHZ-assisted global stabilizer extraction can remove the advantage. This identifies a discrete-Zeno trade-off: cheap detection reshapes the effective channel PEC must invert, rather than simply adding overhead.

Achieving uniform and scalable control of semiconductor spin qubits remains a key challenge for large scale quantum computing. In this work, we investigate how gate oxide thickness influences uniformity in dense two dimensional silicon quantum dot arrays. Using a 7 x 7 array fabricated in a 300 mm CMOS-process patterned by EUV lithography, we statistically characterize 392 quantum dots across four different oxide thicknesses. The threshold voltages, capacitances, lever arms, and charging energies are extracted using parallel row based measurements and we identify an optimal SiO2 thickness of 17 nm that minimizes threshold voltage variability below 63 mV standard deviation. Our observations illustrate how multiple sources of disorder can introduce competing oxide-thickness dependencies, resulting in non-monotonic trends. These results provide key design guidelines for dense, scalable silicon spin qubit architectures.

Quantum error correction (QEC) is essential for enabling quantum advantages, with decoding as a central algorithmic primitive. Owing to its importance and intrinsic difficulty, substantial effort has been made to QEC decoder design, among which neural decoders have recently emerged as a promising data-driven paradigm. Despite this progress, practical deployment remains hindered by a fundamental accuracy-latency tradeoff, often on the microsecond timescale. To address this challenge, here we revisit neural decoders for surface-code decoding under explicit accuracy-latency constraints, considering code distances up to d=9 (161 physical qubits). We unify and redesign representative neural decoders into five architectural paradigms and develop an end-to-end compression pipeline to evaluate their deployability and performance on FPGA hardware. Through systematic experiments, we reveal several previously underexplored insights: (i) near-term decoding performance is driven more by data scale than architectural complexity; (ii) appropriate inductive bias is essential for achieving high decoding accuracy; and (iii) INT4 quantization is a prerequisite for meeting microsecond-scale latency requirements on FPGAs. Together, these findings provide concrete guidance toward scalable and real-time neural QEC decoding.

Nanophotonic quantum memory is a vital component for scalable quantum information processing in quantum computing, networking, and sensing. Here we store single-photon-level telecom-band optical pulses for more than 1 microsecond using an atomic frequency comb in erbium-doped thin-film lithium niobate, far exceeding what is practically achievable by propagation in even the best nanophotonic devices because of propagation losses. We verify the quantum nature of this storage by demonstrating phase coherence and sub-single-photon noise upon retrieval. We also show the flexibility of our platform by storing up to 20 temporal modes and demonstrating an acceptance bandwidth up to 2.2 GHz. These results establish erbium-doped thin-film lithium niobate as a practical platform for on-chip quantum memory at telecom wavelengths, a key missing element for photonic quantum computing and quantum networking.

Scaling superconducting quantum processors beyond the constraints of monolithic planar architectures is essential for fault-tolerant quantum computation. Here we demonstrate a three-dimensional (3D) integrated superconducting quantum processor in which two qubit chips are vertically stacked on opposing sides of a carrier chip and galvanically connected via multilayer flip-chip bonding. Intrachip qubit coupling is mediated by planar tunable couplers, whereas interchip coupling is enabled by vertical tunable couplers embedded in the carrier chip. Randomized benchmarking reveals simultaneous single-qubit gate fidelities of 99.87 % with negligible crosstalk, and controlled-Z gates achieve an average fidelity of 97.5 % for both intrachip and interchip operations. We further demonstrate high-fidelity Bell-state preparation and coherent generation of a four-qubit $W$ state, confirming the architecture's capability for interchip entanglement distribution. These results establish vertical coupling as a promising pathway toward scalable quantum processors compatible with advanced quantum error-correcting codes.

Quantum processors are being integrated into HPC ecosystems as co-processors, where compilation of quantum circuits into hardware-executable form determines both output fidelity and runtime. Current compilers use a fixed pass sequence and ignore the fact that optimal pass selection varies with circuit, hardware, and noise conditions. We present TuniQ, a reinforcement learning-based system that selects compilation passes at each pipeline stage, adapting to circuit, backend, and current noise profile. TuniQ introduces several novel design components like a dual-encoder for stage-aware representation, shaped rewards for cross-stage credit assignment, and dynamic action masking for valid compilation. Evaluated across diverse quantum workloads on multiple IBM Quantum Cloud processors, TuniQ improves fidelity and reduces compilation time over the state-of-the-art IBM Qiskit transpiler, generalizes across backends without retraining, and scales strongly to utility-scale circuits with growing advantage.

The hypergraph product creates a quantum stabilizer code from two input classical linear codes; a paradigmatic example being the surface code as a hypergraph product of two classical repetition codes. Many properties of the hypergraph product code can be inherited from those of the classical codes such as the code dimension, minimum distance and certain fault-tolerant gadgets. We investigate ways to reduce the number of physical qubits in hypergraph product codes while maintaining some of their useful properties for fault tolerance. We show that the code dimension, canonical logical basis, and minimum distances of the hypergraph product code are preserved through this reduction. We also provide distance-preserving syndrome measurement schedules as well as examples of reduced hypergraph product codes with parameter improvements such as $[\![610,64,6]\!] \rightarrow [\![441,64,6]\!]$ and $[\![1225,49,11]\!] \rightarrow [\![931,49,11]\!]$. In memory simulations with circuit-level depolarizing noise, we observe that the reduced codes can have similar subthreshold performance as their unreduced versions, but using fewer physical qubits. Finally, we show how overhead reduction can be compatible with homomorphic measurement gadgets, fold-transversal gates and automorphisms, which extends the savings to logical computation.

We construct a 3D Pauli stabilizer Hamiltonian whose ground state space can encode a qubit for exponential time when coupled to a bath at non-zero temperature. Our construction recursively applies a sequence of transformations to a seed Hamiltonian that increases the memory lifetime of the encoded qubit while maintaining geometric locality in $\mathbb{R}^3$.

Solid-state processors require control layers whose errors are legible to quantum-error-correction decoders. We show that crystallographic symmetry can provide such a layer in strain-active Lambda manifolds. When the projected strain tensor and Lambda-transition operators share a multiplicity-one two-dimensional irreducible representation, symmetry fixes the linear strain interaction to a scalar dot product. Two phase-locked mechanical modes synthesize a circular strain field, enabling complex phononic Lambda-leg control without local microwave near fields. On this manifold we construct a superadiabatic echo-lune holonomic gate using Lambda-leg control and a resonant double-quantum counterdiabatic tone. Rotating-frame simulations of a nitrogen-vacancy center give 99.88% conditional average fidelity in 1.833 microseconds, or 99.40% when leakage is counted as error. A resonant gigahertz high-overtone bulk acoustic resonator analysis translates the Hamiltonian into Rabi-rate, linewidth, and envelope-tracking requirements. The bright-state structure organizes noise: A2-sector perturbations are parity-filtered into an optically distinguishable auxiliary state, whereas transverse E-sector faults are echo suppressed and retained as a decoder stress axis. The extracted channel has 0.47% erasure probability and 0.168% residual Z error. In XZZX code-capacity simulations, this biased-erasure model yields a nominal 64% fit-extrapolated data-qubit reduction relative to an unstructured Rabi baseline. Repeated-round detector-model diagnostics preserve the nominal distance-9 proxy and identify missed erasures, transverse floors, leakage/flag timing, and strong crosstalk as validation limits. Extensions to orbital Lambda systems and bright-projector phonon-bus diagnostics identify crystallographic symmetry as a principle for co-designing phononic actuation, leakage, noise bias, and quantum decoding.

The ability to locally control and measure subsets of ancilla qubits in an efficient and crosstalk-free manner is a key ingredient in quantum error correction (QEC). Dual-species neutral atom arrays offer an ideal implementation of these capabilities, enabling independent state preparation, manipulation, and detection on each species. In this work, we realize such a dual-species Rydberg array of Na and Cs atoms trapped in co-localized 2D optical tweezer arrays, using Na as an ancilla to measure stabilizers of surrounding Cs data qubits. We identify the finite interspecies Rydberg-Rydberg interaction strength as a practical obstacle to high-fidelity multi-body entanglement and show that, by tuning the Rabi frequency and the detuning of the Rydberg driving field, the resulting geometric phase error can be compensated. This yields a protocol for simultaneous, non-destructive, in situ stabilizer readout of multiple data qubits via global pulses alone. Using this protocol, we demonstrate non-destructive measurement of Pauli-Z stabilizers on four-qubit Cs plaquettes via a single global Rydberg pulse sequence. Our results demonstrate dual-species tweezer arrays as a promising route towards scalable QEC and open the door to new quantum control protocols leveraging both interspecies and intraspecies interactions.

We consider the problem of synthesizing Clifford quantum circuits for devices with all-to-all qubit connectivity. We approach this task as a reinforcement learning problem in which an agent learns to discover a sequence of elementary Clifford gates that reduces a given symplectic matrix representation of a Clifford circuit to the identity. This formulation permits a simple learning curriculum based on random walks from the identity. We introduce a novel neural network architecture that is equivariant to qubit relabelings of the symplectic matrix representation, and which is size-agnostic, allowing a single learned policy to be applied across different qubit counts without circuit splicing or network reparameterization. On six-qubit Clifford circuits, the largest regime for which optimal references are available, our agent finds circuits within one two-qubit gate of optimality in milliseconds per instance, and finds optimal circuits in 99.2% of instances within seconds per instance. After continued training on ten-qubit instances, the agent scales to unseen Clifford tableaus with up to thirty qubits, including targets generated from circuits with over a thousand Clifford gates, where it achieves lower average two-qubit gate counts than Qiskit's Aaronson-Gottesman and greedy Clifford synthesizers.

Topologically-ordered quantum states with Abelian excitations can host defects that obey effective non-Abelian statistics, in principle allowing for quantum information processing via defect braiding. These extrinsic defects (or twists) are typically studied as static features of the lattice. However, an alternative proposal considers how an underlying topologically ordered quantum substrate can be locally perturbed to create and manipulate synthetic defects \cite{you_synthetic_2013}. Unfortunately, while largely referenced, elements of this proposal were never systematically studied. Understanding the energy spectrum is particularly important in finite size and finitely perturbed systems, which are crucial for experimental realizations. In this work we announce a significant step in this direction by explicitly constructing, simplifying, and numerically studying the spectral properties of synthetic defects in a model system. First, we introduce two alternative representations of this problem in both spin and Majorana languages. In the former we describe emergent virtual symmetries which constrain and simplify the problem and in the latter we show a direct connection to Kitaev's well-known Majorana chain. We utilize these simplifications to perform numerical calculations to indicate the location of the quantum phase transition driving the emergence of the synthetic defects. We conclude by discussing key steps for future work to more clearly and completely study this phenomena.

We introduce Unitaria, a Python library that brings the simplicity of classical linear algebra toolkits such as NumPy and SciPy to the implementation of quantum algorithms based on block encodings, a general-purpose abstraction in which a matrix is embedded as a sub-block of a larger unitary operator. Their implementation has so far required deep knowledge of low-level circuit construction, which Unitaria aims to eliminate. The library provides a composable, array-like interface through which users can define block encodings of matrices and vectors, combine them through standard operations such as addition, multiplication, tensor products, and the Quantum Singular Value Transformation, and extract the resulting quantum circuits automatically. A key feature is a matrix-arithmetic evaluation path in which every operation can be computed directly on encoded vectors and matrices without dependence on ancilla qubits or circuit simulation. This enables correctness verification and classical simulation that scale well beyond what state vector simulation permits and also allows resource estimation, including gate counts, qubit counts, and normalization constants, without executing any circuit. Together, these capabilities allow researchers to develop, verify, and analyze quantum linear algebra algorithms today, ahead of the availability of error-corrected hardware. Unitaria is open source and available at https://github.com/tequilahub/unitaria.

The scalability of quantum computing is currently limited by physical, technological, and architectural constraints that hinder the integration of a large number of qubits within a single quantum processor. Distributed quantum computing (DQC) has therefore emerged as a viable alternative, aiming to interconnect multiple smaller quantum processing units (QPUs) to jointly operate on a global quantum state. While this paradigm enables scalable architectures, it introduces significant communication overhead due to the cost of non-local quantum operations across distant nodes. In this work we propose a distributed formulation of the iQFT over a quantum network composed of $P$ nodes, each hosting $Q$ qubits, enabling the execution on a logical register of size $n = P \cdot Q$. Furthermore, we introduce a communication-efficient variant based on a threshold-driven pruning strategy, referred to as a \emph{communication horizon}, which exploits the exponentially decreasing significance of controlled-phase rotations to safely omit remote gates with negligible impact. By reducing the number of inter-node quantum interactions, the proposed approach significantly lowers the quantum communication requirements of the distributed iQFT while preserving its functional correctness. Crucially, we show that this approach fundamentally alters the scaling of the algorithm: the entanglement resource consumption per node saturates to a constant value, reducing the global communication complexity from quadratic $\mathcal{O}(P^2)$ to linear $\mathcal{O}(P)$. As the iQFT constitutes a critical building block in many quantum algorithms, the techniques presented in this paper directly contribute to improving the practicality and scalability of distributed quantum computation.

We introduce a cavity-enhanced optical architecture for collective quantum processing in which logical qubits are encoded in the polarization subspace of recirculating intracavity modes. The physical carrier and computational degree of freedom are explicitly separated: harmonic cavity bundles provide a stable resonant substrate, while programmable polarization transformations implement single-qubit operations. A polarization-selective nonlinear interaction in the entanglement region generates tunable controlled-phase gates, enabling a universal gate set. A parameter-scaling analysis shows that order-unity conditional phases are attainable in centimeter-scale cavities using experimentally accessible solid-state nonlinear media, without requiring extreme nonlinear coefficients, millisecond photon lifetimes, or sub-hertz laser stabilization. The results indicate that resonant recirculation provides a physically plausible platform for cavity based collective quantum architectures.

In fault-tolerant quantum circuit synthesis, T gates supplied via magic states dominate space-time cost, while Clifford gates incur negligible overhead. Conventional flows minimize AND count in an {XOR, AND, NOT} basis as a proxy for T, which neglects phase cancellation and can be far from T-optimal. We instead formulate an exact T synthesis problem and canonicalize Boolean functions under Clifford equivalence. By precomputing T-optimal implementations up to seven variables and developing a customized mapper, we reduce the T count by up to 14.3% on EPFL benchmarks and improve the T counts of several cryptographic modules by up to 40%.

We reformulate the Rényi entanglement of purification as a constrained minimum output Rényi entropy problem. Equivalently, for $p>1$, this formulation can be expressed in terms of a constrained maximal output Schatten $p$-norm. More precisely, for a completely positive map $Ω:L(B')\to L(A)$, we consider the quantity $\upsilon_p(Ω)$ defined by optimizing $\|(Ω\otimes \mathrm{id}_E)(σ^{B'E})\|_p$ over all bipartite states $σ^{B'E}$ whose $B'$-marginal is maximally mixed. We focus on the case $p=2$. First, we compute $\upsilon_2$ for the transpose-depolarizing channel and prove that it is multiplicative under tensor powers. We then establish a general multiplicativity criterion: whenever a completely positive map $N:L(B')\to L(A)$ satisfies $N^{\dagger} \mathbin{\circ} N=a\,\mathrm{id}_A+b\,\mathrm{Tr}[\cdot]\,I_d$ for some constants $a,b\ge 0$, where $N^{\dagger}$ denotes the Hilbert-Schmidt adjoint of $N$, the quantity $\upsilon_2(N)$ is multiplicative under tensor powers. Examples of channels satisfying this criterion include the transpose-depolarizing channel, the depolarizing channel, and their respective complementary channels. Furthermore, we show that, for every completely positive map $Ω$, multiplicativity of $\upsilon_p(Ω)$ implies multiplicativity for its complementary map. This yields the corresponding additivity statements for the associated Rényi-2 entanglement of purification.

Entanglement in continuous-variable Gaussian systems is a key resource, and common reservoirs can both suppress and generate correlations. Existing work focused on pre-entangled states or Markovian baths, leaving open whether separable squeezed inputs entangle in structured environments or under modulation. We study two bosonic modes coupled to a common reservoir, each initialized in a separable squeezed vacuum. Dynamics are analyzed utilizing Gaussian covariance methods, evolved under approximate Non-Markovian quantum state diffusion (QSD), finite-temperature pseudomode embeddings, and Bures-based non-Markovian diagnostics. We identify three mechanisms absent in Markovian dynamics: (1) A detuning condition that freezes entanglement trajectories across reservoir correlation times; (2) birth, death, and revival of entanglement from orthogonal inputs; and (3) integer-locked beating with square-wave oscillations produced by periodic detuning. All mechanisms persist at finite temperature, with deviations bounded within 5% in cryogenic regimes and 20% at moderate occupations. These deviation bounds align with cryogenic cavity, phononic, and optomechanical platforms, where structured spectral densities and detuning modulation are already accessible. Structured reservoirs are shown to emerge as tunable entanglement resources for continuous-variable quantum technologies.

We construct coherent states for the quantized electromagnetic field that correspond to the classical non-null torus knot solutions of Maxwell's equations in vacuum. We derive the displacement operators from the general relation between classical fields and coherent state amplitudes and verify the defining properties of coherent states through direct computation. We determine the observables of the model: field expectation values, energy density, Poynting vector, helicity, photon number, quadrature uncertainties, and correlation functions, and calculate their expectation values in the knotted coherent states in terms of the integer parameters $(n,m,l,s)$ of the classical solutions. As an example, we particularize the construction in the case of the Hopfion coherent state. These results establish the quantum-classical correspondence for this type of vacuum topological electromagnetic systems.

Adaptive Non-local Observables (ANOs) have shown that making quantum observables dynamic can substantially enlarge the function space of Variational Quantum Algorithms, partly shifting hardware demands from circuit synthesis to measurement design. However, this advantage is accompanied by a steep increase in the number of parameters, as well as the classical optimization cost for varying general Hermitian observables. We propose a special form of ANO that significantly reduces this burden by considering only diagonal observables paired with quantum circuits. Mathematically, this is equivalent to the full ANO of a large parameter space since diagonal matrices are canonical representatives of the ANO space modulo unitary similarity. As a result, Diagonal ANO retains the same capability of full ANO while reducing $k$-local observable complexity from $O(4^k)$ to $O(2^k)$ and lowering the corresponding measurement-side classical computation. In this sense, diagonal ANO preserves much of the benefit of full ANO while encompassing conventional VQCs as a special case.

We show that the covariance matrix of any cylindrically symmetric coherent orbital angular momentum (OAM) eigenmode with quantum number $\ell$ takes a universal form depending only on $\langle r^2\rangle$, $\langle k_r^2\rangle$, and $\ell$, independently of the radial profile, and that this form is identical to the covariance matrix of a twisted Gaussian Schell-model (TGSM) beam.} More specifically, both matrices share the same pattern of zero and nonzero entries, with the off-diagonal blocks proportional to $\ell$ and the TGSM twist parameter $u$, respectively. This result holds for an arbitrary radial profile and provides direct term-by-term identification of parameters between the two sets of beams. We work out the correspondence in detail for three important families: Laguerre--Gaussian (LG), Bessel--Gaussian, and perfect vortex beams (PVBs), and derive the conditions under which each coherent OAM mode maps onto a physically realizable TGSM beam. {Because the covariance matrix governs second-moment evolution under arbitrary ABCD (symplectic) transformations, any two beams sharing the same covariance matrix are second-order indistinguishable at every propagation plane. In particular, the matched TGSM and coherent OAM beams share identical beam-width evolution, far-field divergence, and $M^2$ beam-quality factor.} In particular, the well-developed TGSM propagation toolbox applies directly to the second-order moment evolution of the three coherent families. We further show that within each beam family the covariance matrix uniquely determines the beam parameters, with exact uniqueness established for LG modes. Additional results include cross-family second-moment equivalence conditions and a proof that PVB modes form a complete orthonormal basis in the limit $w\to 0$.

We introduce an ultrafast, bright, entangled twin-beam source generated by type-0 parametric down-conversion in periodically-poled lithium niobate at MHz repetition rate, with continuously tunable Schmidt number $K$ set by the pump pulse duration. Photon-number statistics characterization via $g^{(2)}(0)$ and singular-value decomposition of the signal spectral density matrix yield $K\simeq1.05$ and $K\simeq1.03$, respectively, maintained over multiple orders of magnitude in brightness. Group-delay dispersion of the pump drives a continuous transition from single-mode operation to a controlled multimode regime, consistent with the temporal gain window departing from the inverse phase-matching bandwidth. Strong non-degeneracy of the source (signal at 1.37 um, idler at 4.0 um, $\sim 100$ fs duration) decouples a mid-infrared interaction wavelength, which overlaps with molecular vibrational resonances, from a near-infrared detection band, establishing a practical platform for quantum-enhanced metrology, nonlinear interferometry, and mid-infrared spectroscopic sensing. We show that in the bright few-mode limit, the total entanglement resource is clearly separated between modal and occupational degrees of freedom, and that our source allocates up to 95-97% of that resource to the occupational sector.

We present a new mechanism for long-range entanglement (LRE) in strongly symmetric many-body mixed states that does not rely on symmetry anomalies or long-range correlations. Our primary example is the maximally mixed state in the translation-invariant subspace on a one-dimensional ring. This state is LRE because translationally symmetric short-range entangled states span a subspace whose dimension grows only polynomially with system size, whereas the full translation-invariant subspace grows exponentially. We further discuss certain unconventional properties of this state, including logarithmically growing conditional mutual information, strong-to-weak spontaneous symmetry-breaking, and Rényi-index-dependent operator-space entanglement. We also construct a geometrically non-local Lindbladian to stabilize this state as the steady state. Our results identify dimensional mismatch as a novel route to LRE that is intrinsic to many-body mixed states.

We show by a counting argument that even though translation symmetry admits symmetric short-range entangled (SRE) eigenstates, there are not enough such SRE eigenstates to span the zero momentum sector. This means that the fixed point strong-to-weak spontaneous symmetry breaking state of translation symmetry is long-range entangled: it cannot be written as a mixture of SRE states. This is a subtle form of long-range entanglement in mixed states that cannot be detected by long-range connected correlation functions.

We investigate realizations of (1+1)-dimensional fusion category symmetries on tensor-product Hilbert spaces, allowing for mixing with quantum cellular automata (QCAs). It was argued recently that any such realizable symmetry must be weakly integral. We develop a systematic analysis of QCA-refined realizations of fusion categories and prove two statements. First, we show that, under certain physical assumptions on defects, any QCA-refined realization has QCA and symmetry-operator indices determined by the categorical data, up to the freedom of redefining the symmetry operators. Second, we construct a lattice model that provides a QCA-refined realization for any weakly integral fusion category symmetry on a tensor product Hilbert space. We also compute indices of the QCAs in our lattice model and show agreement with the first result. As an application of the general construction, we give an explicit QCA-refined realization of general Tambara-Yamagami categorical symmetries.

The performance of quantum resource manipulation protocols, including key examples such as distillation of quantum entanglement, is measured in terms of the rate at which desired target states can be produced from a given noisy state. However, to achieve optimal rates, known protocols require precise tailoring to the quantum state in question, demanding a perfect knowledge of the input and allowing no errors in its preparation. Here we show that distillation of quantum resources in the framework of resource non-generating operations can be performed universally: optimal rates of distillation can be achieved with no knowledge of the input state whatsoever, certifying the robustness of quantum resource distillation. The findings apply in particular to the purification of quantum entanglement under non-entangling maps, where the optimal rates are governed by the regularised relative entropy of entanglement. Our result relies on an extension of the generalised quantum Stein's lemma in quantum hypothesis testing to a composite setting where the null hypothesis is no longer a fixed quantum state, but is rather composed of i.i.d. copies of an unknown state. The solution of this asymptotic problem is made possible through new developments in one-shot quantum information and a refinement of the blurring technique from [Lami, arXiv:2408.06410].

We show that the low-energy states of non-Abelian topological orders possess extensive magic which is long-ranged, and cannot be eliminated by a constant-depth local unitary circuit. This refines conventional notions of complexity beyond the linear circuit depth which is required to prepare any topological phase, and provides a new resource-theoretic characterization of topological orders. A central technical result is a no-go theorem establishing that stabilizer states--even up to constant-depth local unitarie--cannot approximate low-energy states of non-Abelian string-net models which satisfy the entanglement bootstrap axioms. Moreover, we show that stabilizer-realizable Abelian string-net phases have mutual braiding phases quantized by the on-site qudit dimension, and that any violation of this condition necessarily implies extensive long-range magic. Extending to higher spatial dimensions, we argue that any state obeying an entanglement area law and hosting excitations with nontrivial fusion spaces must exhibit extensive long-range magic. This applies, in particular, to ground-states and low-energy states of higher-dimensional quantum double models.

The possibility of laser cooling and the presence of closely spaced rovibrational doublets make polyatomic molecules an attractive platform for the $\mathcal{P}$, $\mathcal{T}$-violation searches. We study the spectrum of the lowest rovibrational state of the AcOCH$_3+$ symmetric top molecule. The electronic structure full-electron computation was performed within a relativistic coupled cluster method with double and perturbative triple excitations. The rovibrational wavefunctions are obtained using a coupled channel technique, taking into account all rovibrational effects and anharmonicities of the potential. As a result, the vibrational frequencies, as well as the values of the electric dipole moments for the rovibrational states, were computed.

Independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) states are ubiquitous in quantum information theory. However, in a practical setting, the i.i.d. assumption is too stringent, and possibly not realistic. A physically more compelling class of 'almost i.i.d.' sources was recently proposed by [Mazzola/Sutter/Renner, arXiv:2603.15792]. In this paper, we introduce two alternative definitions of almost i.i.d. states, based on the normalised quantum Wasserstein distance and on the idea of looking at the average $k$-body marginal. We explore some basic properties of these notions and prove a strict hierarchical relation among them, with Mazzola et al.'s notion being the strictest, the one based on $k$-body marginals the loosest, and the one based on the quantum Wasserstein distance in between. Strict separation is established by means of explicit examples.

Classifying interactions is key in the physical sciences, and bonding mechanisms in matter-antimatter systems remain particularly enigmatic. Here we focus on a paradigmatic example of positronium hydride (PsH) dimer composed of two protons, two positrons, and four electrons, whose bonding nature has been previously described as either ionic, covalent, or van der Waals-like. Accurate quantum Monte Carlo calculations show that the two positrons occupy a delocalized molecular orbital that envelopes the two hydrogen anions and responds as a collective dipole to an applied electric field. This positronic bonding stems from quantum correlations that resemble a single covalent bond formed between negatively charged pseudo-nuclei, but with a bond strength commensurate with the traditional van der Waals interaction. Our findings suggest that the ability to form delocalized proto-bonds is a more general property of quantum systems, and could be present in a broader class of particles, antiparticles, and quasi-particles interacting with matter.

The classical simulation of quantum algorithms is a crucial tool for circuit development, testing, and validation. Although acceleration using GPUs significantly reduces simulation time, most high-performance simulators rely on vendor-specific frameworks that target data-center hardware. To broaden access to quantum simulation, this work proposes a vendor-agnostic approach targeting the integrated GPUs commonly found in consumer-grade laptops. A primary challenge in state-vector simulation is its inherently poor spatial locality, which creates a memory bandwidth bottleneck. Consequently, baseline implementations experience a severe degradation in relative GPU speedup as the number of simulated qubits increases. To address this limitation, we introduce a state partitioning optimization that reorganizes the quantum state vector to maximize the last-level cache locality and minimize costly main memory fetches. We evaluate this strategy using a Quantum Phase Estimation algorithm across diverse architectures from Intel, AMD, and Apple. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed optimization successfully mitigates performance degradation at larger qubit scales. In particular, for a 28-qubit simulation, the optimization reversed a performance deficit on an Intel Core i5, improving the GPU speedup over the CPU from 0.95x to 1.89x, and increased the Apple M1 Pro speedup from 3.71x to 5.88x. Overall, this approach yields consistent execution time improvements, demonstrating the viability of integrated GPUs for efficient quantum circuit simulation.

Nondestructive detection of single-electron motion is crucial for quantum information processing with electrons trapped in Paul traps. The standard approach in Penning traps is to detect the image current induced on the trap electrodes by the electron's oscillatory motion. However, applying this approach in Paul traps for single electrons is currently hindered by motional frequency fluctuations arising from trap anharmonicities and instabilities in the rf trapping field. In this work, we propose a robust detection scheme exploiting the transient dynamics of parametric driving to overcome these limitations. Distinct from traditional steady-state approaches, our method focuses on the transient regime to break the temporal constraints imposed by steady-state assumptions, thereby enabling fast readout. We show that a controlled ramp of the parametric drive effectively locks the frequency of the electron motion in the transient regime, rendering the signal highly resilient to realistic experimental noise and inherent micromotion. This work paves the way for the experimental realization of nondestructive detection of single-electron motion in Paul traps.

Quantifying quantum resources for simulating the fundamental forces of Nature is sensitive to the mapping of gauge fields onto finite quantum computational architectures. When locally truncating lattice gauge theories in the irreducible representation basis, it has been proposed to further deform the theory via quantum groups. The purpose of this deformation is (1) to provide an infinite tower of finite-dimensional ($d = k+1$) groups systematically approximating the infinite-dimensional gauge links and (2) to restore the physical unitarity of a plaquette operator diagonalization procedure analytically derived from the field continuum by recontracting vertex pairs. For the SU(2)$_k$ Yang-Mills pure-gauge theory, we provide a constructive strategy of gauge-variant completions to extend this unitarity to the entire computational Hilbert space, leading to well-defined time evolution unitaries as targets for optimized circuit synthesis. Leveraging basic circuit decompositions and symmetries of the diagonalized plaquette operator, we report resource upper-bounds on the generalized-controlled-X two-qudit gates for arbitrary local truncation $d$, reducing estimates and scaling relative to the non-deformed theory by three polynomial powers from $O(d^8)$ to $O(d^5)$. Examining the stronger q-deformed gauge constraint, which softens the total flux at vertices, we show that the physical Hilbert space dimension of the deformed plaquette operator scales equivalently to its non-deformed counterpart with a constant factor $0.2563(5)$. Thus, despite affecting interactions at all scales as exemplified by the observed flux hierarchy inversion symmetry, q-deformation continues to pass scrutiny as a reliable truncation offering advantages in quantum circuit synthesis.

We derive closed-form propagators for any $K$-qubit subsystem of a closed $N$-qubit network with a single conserved excitation. A single transition amplitude simultaneously controls excitation flow between subsystems, the positivity and complete positivity of every propagator, the entanglement entropy of every subsystem, and the quantum Fisher information for global parameters. Positivity and complete positivity coincide, determined solely by the direction of excitation flow, independently of subsystem size, coherence, or entanglement structure. A propagator is positive and completely positive if and only if it contracts the subsystem state toward its fixed point. The ensemble of propagators collectively constrains global properties inaccessible to any single subsystem. For single-qubit subsystems, we characterize the ensemble's fixed-point distribution and domain of positivity, finding a band of states that lies inside the positivity domain of every propagator yet is never visited by the physical dynamics. The quantum Fisher information decomposes into state and process contributions over any observation window $[t_1,t_2]$, with the state contribution bounded while the process contribution grows secularly. The total Fisher information is minimal when all future propagators are nonpositive and not completely positive, and near its maximum when they are positive and completely positive.

Shared multipartite entanglement defines a ``whatever channel'', i.e., a latent communication substrate that does not determine a priori which end-to-end entangled links are activated, but can be configured to support different entanglement-connectivity graphs through Local Operations and Classical Communication (LOCC). Building on this, we propose a resource-driven framework in which multipartite entanglement is treated as a programmable resource that induces a space of admissible entanglement-graph configurations. Within this framework, connectivity provisioning emerges as a particular instance of a more general resource reconfiguration process. To support this paradigm, we introduce a set of structural design parameters that characterize the operational degrees of freedom of the resource and define the admissible transformations independently of the specific mechanism used to realize them. We then formalize Entanglement Rolling as a measurement-based protocol that operates over the induced configuration space, enabling the systematic reconfiguration of the shared resource across a family of multipartite states. Finally, we analyze the proposed framework under realistic noise conditions. Leveraging the Noisy Stabilizer Formalism (NSF), we derive closed-form noise maps that characterize the effect of noise on the resource transformations and show that the proposed approach maintains reliable performance under relevant noise processes.

The Majorana stellar representation translates abstract quantum spin states into intuitive geometric constellations on the Bloch sphere, revealing symmetries, degeneracies, and correlations that traditional algebraic methods often obscure. Within quantum information science, this framework provides a powerful lens for characterizing symmetric multi-qubit and higher-spin systems. By encoding entanglement directly into spatial coordinates, the constellation geometry yields exact measures of concurrence, three-tangle, and genuine multipartite entanglement, while its dynamical evolution uncovers internal anomalous contributions to geometric phases. While interest in stellar representations has resurged, existing literature remains fragmented, lacking a unified treatment of these entanglement-specific metrics and their higher-dimensional dynamics. This review synthesizes the entanglement-centric perspective on Majorana representations, bridging discrete algebraic classifications (e.g., SLOCC orbits) with continuous geometric interpretations. Crucially, we highlight how this framework circumvents \#P-hard computational bottlenecks, leveraging polynomial-time tractability to evaluate multipartite invariants. We detail the interplay between constellation topology and higher-spin Berry/Hannay phases, explore extensions beyond pure symmetric states, and review applications in quantum metrology, state engineering, and condensed-matter physics. By foregrounding entanglement as the unifying theme, this comprehensive examination establishes Majorana stars as a fundamental geometric language, uniquely positioned to inspire new theoretical and experimental directions in quantum technologies.

We prove that the maximum eigenvalue of the (both signed and unsigned) Laplacian of level $k$ Kikuchi graph of any graph $G$ with $m$ edges is at most $m+k$. This confirms four recent conjectures of Apte, Parekh, and Sud. As applications, we obtain that tensor products of one and two qubit product states achieve an approximation ratio of $5/8$ for Quantum Max Cut and $5/7$ for the XY Hamiltonian. Moreover, combining our bounds with the algorithms analyzed by Apte, Parekh, and Sud, yields efficient algorithms achieving an approximation ratio of $0.614$ for Quantum Max Cut and $0.674$ for the XY Hamiltonian. Finally, we also make modest progress on Brouwer's conjecture and improve Lew's bound on the sum of the top-$k$ eigenvalues of a Graph Laplacian.

Rydberg atoms provide a powerful platform for exploring strongly interacting quantum systems, both in free space and in structured electromagnetic environments, with growing applications in quantum technology. Accurately modeling their single-atom properties and mutual interactions is essential for interpreting experiments and designing new architectures. We present a unified theoretical framework for Rydberg atoms and their interactions based on multi-channel quantum defect theory (MQDT) and static electromagnetic Green's tensors. MQDT provides a precise description of Rydberg states of divalent atoms such as strontium and ytterbium, while the Green's tensor formalism provides a general and flexible approach for calculating interactions between two Rydberg atoms in arbitrary geometries, including modifications induced by nearby surfaces. We implement this framework in an updated version of the open-source PairInteraction software [Weber et al., J.~Phys.~B~50 (2017)]. The implementation leverages high-performance libraries and achieves speedups of one order of magnitude for pair-potential calculations compared to prior software. We demonstrate the capabilities of the framework through example applications to divalent atoms and show excellent agreement with experimental data for an exemplary Stark map of $^{174}$Yb. The modular software architecture enables the community to extend it further.

By implementing the Bogoliubov-de Gennes (BdG) formalism of population-imbalanced atomic Fermi gases with pairing interactions in a thin spherical shell, we characterize the Larkin-Ovchinnikov-Fulde-Ferrell (LOFF) state in such a compact geometry. We first construct a phase diagram showing where uniform solutions of spin-polarized Fermi superfluid from the BdG equation cease to exist due to the vanishing order parameter. Near the boundary, various LOFF states with spatially modulating order parameters and density profiles can survive as convergent solutions to the BdG equation. When both uniform and LOFF solutions are present, we compare their grand potentials to determine the energetically favorable state and find that the LOFF states with multiple nodes in the order parameter become more stable at higher spin polarization. However, the LOFF state only survives close to the phase boundary where the uniform solutions vanish, indicating fragility of the LOFF state on a spherical surface. We also briefly discuss possible implications.

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are hardware security primitives whose inherent physical complexity can be exploited for secure authentication and cryptographic key generation. Silicon photonic devices, owing to their suitability for quantum and artificial intelligence applications alongside standard CMOS fabrication processes, constitute a highly promising substrate for integrated multifunctional PUFs. Despite the advanced security guarantees offered by quantum cryptographic protocols and the central role of silicon photonics in quantum technologies, quantum readout strategies based on single-photon states for photonic PUFs remain largely unexplored. In this work, we experimentally demonstrate a silicon nitride (SiN) programmable photonic Mach Zehnder interferometer mesh that implements a unitary transformation and operates as a PUF, whose secret physical signature arises from uncontrollable waveguide variations during fabrication. Using experimentally derived parameters from the SiN integrated mesh, we further introduce and numerically evaluate a quantum readout protocol that combines single-photon states with PUFs. Maximally mixed quantum states are employed to conceal the underlying unitary transformation from passive eavesdropping. Security against adversaries possessing devices fabricated under similar conditions is assessed, with authentication performance quantified through Monte Carlo analysis of the false acceptance and false rejection rates as a function of the number of detected events and corrected errors. The results indicate exceptional performance with equal error rates as low as 10 to the minus 14, highlighting the potential of quantum secure PUFs for high security authentication applications.

We introduce a nonlocal Maxwell demon teleporting ergotropy at finite temperature via classical communication and a shared surface code. The teleported ergotropy is exponentially protected below a topological threshold. We identify a thermodynamic phase transition separating a profitable demon phase from a thermal phase. A quadratic infrastructure cost strictly enforces the second law, imposing a fundamental thermodynamic horizon on separation distance. This establishes quantum error correction as a resource for nonlocal thermodynamics beyond fault-tolerant computation.

We present a tool QSeqSim, a Qiskit-integrated symbolic backend that fills the current gap of having no Qiskit-native support for simulating while-loop quantum programs and their induced sequential quantum circuits. QSeqSim takes Qiskit QuantumCircuit objects, translates them into OpenQASM 3 code, and organises the resulting program into a combination of combinational, dynamic, and sequential circuits, thereby assigning while-loops a precise sequential circuit semantics with explicit internal and external qubits. Building on this semantics, QSeqSim adopts a Binary Decision Diagram (BDD)-based symbolic representation and integrates weighted model counting to compute measurement probabilities efficiently by exploiting sharing in structured and sparse BDDs. On top of this Boolean backbone, it introduces dedicated symbolic operators for state composition and state retention, thereby enabling efficient symbolic execution of sequential quantum circuits. Our experiments demonstrate that QSeqSim scales to substantial while-induced sequential circuits; in particular, in the quantum random walk benchmark we successfully simulate circuits with over 1000 qubits for more than 10 loop iterations. QSeqSim is available at https://github.com/Veri-Q/QSeqSim.

Ultrafast continuous-variable quantum states offer new opportunities for advanced quantum technologies, but efficient homodyne detection of these states remains challenging. Here, we present a method for efficient ultrafast homodyne detection by exploiting temporal correlations in detector signals. By optimizing the temporal weight used to extract quadrature outcomes, we achieve a substantial increase in the signal-to-noise ratio of ultrafast homodyne detection, thereby improving the detection efficiency. We analyze the autocorrelations of shot noise and electronic noise and determine the optimal weight by solving a generalized Rayleigh quotient problem. The optimal weight enhances the squeezing and anti-squeezing levels observed experimentally. These results highlight the importance of optimized signal processing for efficient quantum measurements.

Single-photon detection possibility is a fundamental requirement for quantum technologies, including communication, computing and sensing. To achieve scalability and practical deployment, increasing attention is being directed toward integration of detectors with photonic integrated circuits, which offer compactness and compatibility with mass production. Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors have emerged as the leading solution, combining near-unity efficiency, high temporal performance and the ability to be embedded across a wide range of photonic material platforms. In this review we trace the development of integrated superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors from early demonstrations to recent advances, outlining the progress in device architectures, material engineering and integration strategies. We also discuss performance benchmarks, emerging alternative designs, the future opportunities and challenges for this rapidly evolving field.

We consider an extended model of quantum computation where a scalable fault-tolerant quantum computer is coupled to one or more ancilla qubits that evolve according to a nonlinear Schrödinger equation. Following the approach of Abrams and Lloyd, an efficient quantum circuit evaluating an $n$-bit Boolean function in conjunctive normal form is used to prepare an ancilla encoding its number $s$ of satisfying assignments ($0 \le s \le 2^n$). This is followed by a nonlinear quantum state discrimination gate on the ancilla qubit that is used to learn properties of $s$. Here we consider three types of state discriminators generated by different nonlinear Hamiltonians. First, given a restricted Boolean satisfiability problem with the promise of at most one satisfying assignment ($ 0 \le s \le 1$), we show that a qubit with $\langle σ^z \rangle σ^z$ nonlinearity can be used to efficiently determine whether $s = 0$ or $s = 1$, solving the UNIQUE SAT problem. Here $\langle A \rangle := \langle ψ| A |ψ\rangle $ denotes expectation in the current state. UNIQUE SAT is NP-hard under a randomized polynomial-time reduction (of course any discussion of complexity assumes a scalable, fault-tolerant implementation). Second, for unrestricted satisfiability problems with $ 0 \le s \le 2^n$, a Hamiltonian with $ \langle σ^x \rangle σ^y - \langle σ^y \rangle σ^x$ nonlinearity can be used to efficiently determine whether $s=0$ or $s>0$, thereby solving 3SAT, which is NP-complete. Finally, we show that $ \langle σ^y \rangle \langle σ^z \rangle σ^x - \langle σ^x \rangle \langle σ^z \rangle σ^y $ nonlinearity can be used to efficiently measure $s$ and solve #SAT, which is #P-complete. The nonlinear models are of mean field type and might be simulated with ultracold atoms.

The Heisenberg-Weyl group $HW(d)$ related to a $d$-dimensional Hilbert space $H(d)$, is enlarged into the Heisenberg-Weyl-parity group $HWP(d)$ that incorporates parity transformations. It consists of $2d^3$ elements, of which $d^3$ elements belong to the $HW(d)$ subgroup, and extra $d^3$ elements which are related through a Fourier transform with the former ones. It is shown that $HWP(d)$ is a generalised version of the dihedral group. The properties of operators that combine displacements and parity, are discussed. $HWP(d)$ is shown to be a solvable group, and commutators of its elements perform displacement and parity transformations of quantum states, along loops in the discrete phase space.$2d^2$ coherent states related to the $HWP(d)$ group are introduced, which consist of $d^2$ coherent states related to the $HW(d)$ subgroup, and extra $d^2$ coherent states which are related through a Fourier transform with the former ones. In noisy cases, expansion of an arbitrary state in terms of the $2d^2$ coherent states with Bargmann coefficients, is advantageous in comparison to expansion in terms of the $d^2$ coherent states related to $HW(d)$. One of the consequences of the $HWP(d)$ group, is a natural unification of the Wigner and Weyl functions. The properties of the unified Wigner-Weyl function are discussed.

One of the most common approaches for coupling optical single-photon sources and photonic integrated circuits is to use a cavity. The cavity acts as a spectral filter that distorts the light spectrum and changes its statistical properties. But in the general case one should take into account not only spectral filtering of light but also the spectral filter influence on the single-photon source dynamics. We build an effective analytical model for description of the cavity influence on the photon statistics of light emitted by the single-photon source as spectral filtering only. We show that this model correctly describes the photon statistics even in a strong-coupling regime between the single-photon source and the spectral filter. Our results can be useful for analytical modeling of photon statistics of quantum emitters strongly coupled to various electromagnetic interfaces.

Spectrally multiplexed telecom quantum networks require quantum memories that combine efficient storage with programmable frequency addressing. An ideal integrated implementation should therefore unite a native telecom transition, efficient storage and fast on-chip spectral control. Here we demonstrate a cavity-enhanced quantum memory in an isotopically purified $^{167}\mathrm{Er}^{3+}$-doped thin-film lithium niobate microring resonator. Long-lived hyperfine shelving states support persistent, high-contrast atomic frequency comb preparation, with a single-component comb lifetime of $277.6 \pm 52.6$s. Together with cavity impedance matching, this yields an on-chip storage efficiency of $23.3 \pm 0.5\%$ for 100-ns storage. The intrinsic electro-optic response of lithium niobate enables frequency-selective storage and routing of retrieved photons at rates up to 20~MHz with inter-channel crosstalk below $10^{-4}$. We further store and retrieve time-energy-entangled telecom photons, violating an entanglement-witness bound by more than 11 standard deviations and thus verifying the quantum nature of the storage process. Our results establish erbium-doped thin-film lithium niobate as a programmable light--matter interface for spectrally multiplexed quantum networks.

We study a generic quantum Markovian master equation for a linearly displaced or driven harmonic oscillator. It was known that the displacement dynamics of Gaussian mixed states depends on the unitary part of the Liouvillian, the decay rate of the system but not on the bath temperature. Here we further show that the fast-rotating modes do not affect the system's displacement dynamics under linear driving forces. Analytical solutions of the quantum master equation are obtained for displaced Gaussian mixed states. Because the non-driven and driven Liouvillians are related by a unitary displacement operator, they are expected to share the same exceptional points structure. At the exceptional points, the displacement of critically damped oscillator displays a characteristics polynomial-in-time prefactor multiplied by an exponential decay. We discuss how external time-dependent forces affect the displacement dynamics using impulsive force and harmonic force as examples. The results obtained for constant driving remain valid in the presence of time-dependent driving.

The application of quantum computing to data management has attracted growing interest, yet remains constrained by a limited understanding of how the physical behaviour of quantum devices relates to the structure and difficulty of database problems. In particular, evaluating quantum annealing approaches for combinatorial optimisation, which is central to many data management tasks, poses significant challenges beyond the scope of conventional empirical and complexity-theoretic methods. We present a computational toolbox for the systematic numerical analysis of quantum annealing processes derived from data management problem formulations. Adopting a physics-informed perspective, the toolbox enables the study of spectral and dynamical properties -- such as energy gaps and eigenstate structure -- that are inaccessible through direct hardware measurements, yet essential for understanding computational hardness and scaling behaviour. Our approach further provides derived quantities and visualisation techniques that support the interpretation of optimisation dynamics, the identification of structural similarities to canonical physical models, and the construction of reduced effective descriptions. By bridging methodological gaps between quantum computing and database systems research, this work establishes a principled foundation for evaluating quantum approaches and guiding future co-design efforts.

Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are a leading platform for solid-state quantum sensing and quantum information processing. While most optical studies rely on the visible fluorescence associated with the triplet transitions, the infrared singlet transition near $1042$ nm, which is typically considered dark within the singlet manifold of the NV optical cycle, provides an alternative optical channel. Here, we report wavelength-resolved optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) measurements of this infrared emission. We directly observe ODMR contrast in the $1042$ nm emission and analyze its dependence on the magnetic field. The field-dependent spectral dispersion of the ODMR signal demonstrates that the spin-state information encoded in the NV center is transcribed to the infrared singlet emission through the spin-selective intersystem crossing, in close analogy to the visible fluorescence readout. These results establish infrared ODMR as a high-fidelity optical readout pathway. Crucially, by extending spin-state transcription directly into the $1300-1600$ nm range, this work demonstrates a direct, conversion-free interface between diamond spin-qubits and standard telecommunication infrastructure, bypassing the efficiency bottlenecks of active frequency conversion and benefiting from the already well-developed technologies in this range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

In this study, we explore the behavior of photon added coherent states in a deformed harmonic oscillator subjected to dissipative decoherence. We use $q-$deformation as our nonlinear function to model our system. By adjusting the deformation parameter, we show that $q-$deformed photon added coherent state (DPACS) exhibit greater nonclassicality and resilience to decoherence compared to those of a standard harmonic oscillator. Additionally, we investigate the nonclassical properties and entanglement of DPACS under decoherence induced by interaction with a dissipative photon-loss environment.

Current cloud-based quantum processors offer access to advanced hardware hosted on a remote server, but do not guarantee data or algorithm privacy. Blind quantum computation provides information-theoretic privacy by enabling a client to execute an algorithm without disclosing information about either the task or the final result. Here, we execute a measurement-based blind quantum computation protocol on a superconducting processor comprising two flip-chip-bonded modules, one acting as a server and the other as a client. The server generates a two-dimensional cluster state and forwards it to the client. Using this resource, the client implements a universal gate set with only adaptive single-qubit rotations and measurements. To illustrate this approach, we execute a three-qubit instance of the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm. We analyze the server's quantum state after each rotation of a measurement-based single-qubit gate to verify that negligible information about the computation is revealed to the server, consistent with the one-way flow of information that guarantees blindness. This proof-of-principle demonstration establishes key elements of blind quantum computation in superconducting-circuit architectures, indicating that intermediate-scale implementations of blind protocols may become feasible with realistic near-term improvements in gate fidelities.

Positive maps that are not decomposable are a key resource in entanglement theory because they can detect bound entangled states, yet systematic methods for constructing them remain limited. We introduce an optimization framework based on differentiable semidefinite programming (SDP) for generating positive non-decomposable maps under flexible structural constraints on their Choi matrices. The method combines SDP-based certificates of non-decomposability and positivity with gradient-based optimization, enabling a systematic search over maps with different input and output dimensions. Within this framework, we generate previously unknown numerical examples, identify a parametrized family of maps arising from masked Choi matrices, and construct real non-decomposable maps. We further show that the same approach can be adapted to explore open questions in quantum information theory, including the PPT square conjecture and recently proposed eigenvalue bounds for 2-positive trace-preserving maps.

We study scattering for continuous-time quantum walks on finite graphs with two attached leads. We derive explicit formulae for the two-terminal scattering matrix in terms of characteristic polynomials of the finite graph and its vertex-deleted subgraphs. For real-weighted two-terminal graphs, we then introduce three real quantities, $μ_1$, $μ_2$, and $ν$, which are each additive under parallel composition of graphs. In these variables, perfect transmission at fixed momentum is characterized by the condition $μ_1=μ_2$ together with a hyperbola in the corresponding $(μ,ν)$-plane, whose points determine the transmission phase. This turns the search for graphs with prescribed transmission properties into a geometric vector-sum problem for smaller building blocks.

We propose a superconducting circuit hosting $d$ low-lying states, well separated from the rest of the spectrum, that naturally realizes a qudit system protected from leakage errors. The system represents a generalization of the fluxonium and the low-energy states are constituted by fractional fluxon states, that we call {\it fraxons}, localized in the minima of a suitably designed Josephson potential. The latter is tailored through a Fourier engineering approach, that employs multi-harmonic Josephson building block elements composed by a Josephson junction and an inductance connected in series. We present the spectrum of a $d=4$ and a $d=5$ qudit system and study in detail the qutrit case. We analyze the dipole matrix elements for coupling to radiation and propose a non-Abelian, stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) protocol for single-qutrit gates, that is particularly suited for the present system. The proposed platform opens novel perspectives in circuit engineering and quantum computing beyond the qubit paradigm.

The parametric amplification enabled by two-photon driving constitutes a versatile platform for advanced quantum technologies. We present an optimized scheme for implementing quantum batteries (QBs) based on a superconducting circuit system, where a two-photon-driven LC resonator serves as the charger and an array of transmon qubits functions as the battery. Our results show that two-photon parametric driving exponentially enhances the effective cavity-qubit coupling, which in turn gives rise to near-degenerate energy-level structures and highly entangled quantum states. This significantly enhances the charging power and enables rapid energy transfer from the charger to the battery. Moreover, the engineered squeezed cavity mode and the associated quantum correlations effectively suppress environmentally induced decoherence, thereby delaying energy leakage and facilitating stable energy storage. The proposed scheme remains robust against practical experimental imperfections, such as parameter disorder and environmental noise, preserving its performance advantages. The work provides a feasible platform for realizing high-power, high-stability QBs and highlights the potential of parametric control in quantum energy technologies.

Wigner's thought experiment illustrates quantum theory's measurement problem by considering an observer who measures a quantum system inside a sealed lab, modeled unitarily by an outsider. Recent extensions of this thought experiment, referred to as extended Wigner's friend arguments, question how different observers can reason consistently about each other in quantum setups, and challenge the absoluteness of the outcome value obtained by the friend under a notion of locality. In this work, we present an argument against the absoluteness of free choices under the same notion of locality, using an extended Wigner's friend scenario based on the Pusey--Barrett--Rudolph theorem. Similar arguments based on other contextuality or nonlocality models are possible.

Rydberg atomic electrometry leverages the extreme sensitivity of highly excited atoms for calibration-free electric field measurements. The technique uses a non-metallic vapor cell to link properties of an RF field to a spectroscopic readout in the optical domain. Most demonstrations have so far focused on detecting linearly-polarized fields, for which the induced splitting of dressed atomic levels is rotationally invariant. Here we report on Rydberg atomic measurements of RF fields in a general state of polarization (SOP) which we map onto the Poincaré sphere through spectroscopic fingerprints. For a Stokes vector circumnavigating a Poincaré sphere meridian, we witness a continuous transformation of the atomic eigenenergy spectrum. Because the relative positions of eigenenergies are locked in place by quantization of angular momentum, the framework is universal and calibration free. We provide a specific demonstration in rubidium, which generalizes to all systems with a single valence electron.

Speech emotion recognition (SER) remains fragile in real-world conditions because emotional cues are subtle, speaker-dependent, and easily confounded by recording variability, while high-performing deep models typically rely on large and carefully curated training sets. Quantum machine learning offers an alternative way to introduce nonlinear correlation modeling with compact modules, yet existing quantum SER studies remain limited and the impact of circuit structure is not well understood. This paper presents HQTN-SER, a hybrid quantum-classical framework that investigates how quantum tensor network connectivity can support SER under small-qubit settings. HQTN-SER introduces (i) an MPS-inspired quantum tensor network module that enforces structured interactions to model correlations in speech representations with a small number of trainable parameters, and (ii) a fusion strategy that combines quantum measurement features with a learned classical latent embedding for end-to-end emotion classification. We evaluate HQTN-SER on three public benchmarks (RAVDESS, SAVEE, and MDER) under a unified preprocessing and training protocol. The proposed model achieves consistent performance across datasets, RAVDESS = 80.12%, SAVEE = 78.26% and MDER = 73.51% accuracy, with stable convergence and low qubit counts, showing that tensor network structure can be an effective and hardware-aware design choice for quantum-assisted SER. The results provide a reproducible baseline and clarify when structured quantum modules can add value to affective computing today.

Entanglement can hide in two fundamentally different ways. First, multi-copy correlations can carry information that no single-copy measurement on an unknown state is able to access. Second, bound entangled states possess a positive partial transpose, which makes them invisible to the Peres-Horodecki criterion and all moment inequalities that depend on it. Here we show that the moment difference between the partial transpose and purity decomposes exactly as a chirality-chirality correlator, where the relevant operator is the scalar spin chirality -- the same quantity that governs chiral spin liquids and the topological Hall effect. This decomposition identifies the specific physical structure that multi-copy entanglement detection probes. Using the same controlled-SWAP circuits, we develop a multi-channel spectral classifier for bound entanglement. The classifier combines realignment spectral features with chirality corrections and achieves 99.9% recall at zero false positives across all three known 3x3 bound entangled families, compared with ~40% for the CCNR criterion alone. We also introduce a marginal-noise construction that produces CCNR-invisible bound entangled states, which the classifier detects but which remain invisible to all single-parameter criteria. We validate our approach experimentally on three IBM Quantum processors and demonstrate negativity reconstruction with mean errors of 0.002-0.027, chirality detection for pure and mixed entangled states, and bound entanglement detection across two structurally distinct families (Horodecki and chessboard) on a single gate-based superconducting processor.

Mode-pairing quantum key distribution (MP-QKD) protocol achieves performance beyond the repeaterless rate-transmittance bound and exhibits excellent practicality by avoiding the requirement for difficult global phase locking. However, the source side of MP-QKD still relies on the assumption of continuous phase randomization, an experimentally infeasible requirement in practice. Therefore, the practical security of the protocol cannot be fully guaranteed. In this work, we propose a discrete-phase-randomized mode-pairing quantum key distribution (DPR-MP-QKD) protocol and analyze the basis-dependence of the source side. Then, we introduce a concrete discrete version of the decoy state method that ensures the security of the DPR-MP-QKD protocol. Finally, simulation results indicate that as the number of discrete phases increases, the key rate performance of DPR-MP-QKD progressively approaches that of the continuous case, with convergence achieved at approximately 14 discrete phases. Moreover, our approach drastically lowers the demand for randomness. While conventional continuous phase randomization demands an unlimited supply of random bits, we show that merely a few bits (e.g., 4) are adequate.

We study far-field discrimination between one and two incoherent point sources in the singular regime of weak and closely spaced emitters. Under ideal alignment, spatial-mode demultiplexing (SPADE) attains the quantum-optimal large-sample Stein exponent, but the finite-photon behavior near the one-source boundary and the effect of realistic imperfections remain less understood. Using singular learning theory, we analyze both the aligned and misaligned problems. In the aligned Gaussian case, we derive the zeta-function poles for direct imaging and SPADE, show that both share the same real log canonical threshold $λ=1/2$ but differ in multiplicity, and obtain the corresponding Bayes free-energy asymptotics. This yields a universal subleading advantage of aligned SPADE in the local prior-weighted regime. In the misaligned setting, we study a physically motivated binary-SPADE reduction that retains the full leading $O(s^2)$ leakage contrast near alignment, with corrections from the detailed higher-mode redistribution entering only at $O(s^4)$. We show that misaligned binary-SPADE and direct imaging acquire nontrivial local power on different intrinsic scales, $s=O(n^{-1/4})$ and $s=O(n^{-1/2})$, respectively. However, finite-$n$ Neyman--Pearson comparisons under common physical conditions reveal that direct imaging is stronger on the plotted grids and that misaligned binary-SPADE exhibits an exact blind separation $s^\ast=2θ$, where its power collapses to $α$. These results identify model singularity as a structural organizing principle for finite-photon quantum discrimination and clarify how ideal aligned SPADE benchmarks can fail to translate into finite-$n$ advantages under misalignment.

We show that standard multi-path interferometry, using only pairwise visibility measurements, provides an operational route to tests of preparation noncontextuality. Under ideal symmetric conditions, interference visibility directly encodes state overlaps, without requiring tomography or SWAP tests. For three paths, any jointly diagonalizable (coherence-free) description must satisfy ${V}_{12}^2+{V}_{23}^2-{V}_{13}^2\le 1$, where ${V}_{ij}$ are two-path visibilities. Pure qubit detector states violate this bound, achieving a maximal value of $5/4$. We generalize to arbitrary $n$-path interferometers and derive the tight qubit bound $S_n^{\max}=n\cos^2(π/2n)-1$ for all $n\ge3$, achieved by coplanar pure qubit states with uniform angular separation $π/n$. A robustness analysis yields explicit experimental thresholds. Under the operational equivalences used in overlap-based generalized noncontextuality frameworks, violations of these visibility inequalities also witness preparation contextuality. For $n$-cycle inequalities, only the pairwise visibilities appearing in the cycle need to be measured.

Cavity-magnon systems, combining magnons and photons, offer a versatile platform for studying quantum entanglement and advancing quantum information science. In this work, we propose a scheme for generating nonreciprocal magnon-magnon entanglement in a hybrid system consisting of two yttrium iron garnet spheres coupled to a spinning whispering-gallery-mode cavity. By leveraging the magnon Kerr nonlinearity and the Sagnac effect arising from the cavity rotation, we show that the entanglement can be substantially enhanced, and the resulting entanglement exhibits pronounced nonreciprocal characteristics. Furthermore, our scheme demonstrates that the entanglement remains robust against thermal noise and persists at bath temperatures up to 100 mK. This work underscores the potential of spinning cavity-magnon systems as a versatile platform for realizing nonreciprocal quantum devices and facilitating the development of quantum technologies.

Recently, the technique of counterdiabatic driving, which provides an effective strategy for accelerating adiabatic quantum evolution, has been widely applied in the preparation of many-body quantum states. In this work, we propose a theoretical scheme for the efficient preparation of Dicke states in a system of non-interacting two-level atoms. Our approach leverages the one-axis twisting (OAT) interaction to generate non-classical correlations and combines it with time-dependent external fields to achieve precise control over the dynamics of the system. By employing rapid adiabatic passage (RAP), it demonstrates how the system can be steered from an initial coherent spin state to a target Dicke state with high fidelity [S. C. Carrasco, M. H. Goerz, S. A. Malinovskaya, V. Vuletić, W. P. Schleich, and V. S. Malinovsky, Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{132}, 153603 (2024)]. To further optimize the preparation process, we introduce counterdiabatic driving (CD), which suppresses non-adiabatic transitions. Numerical simulations confirm that our scheme can achieve high-fidelity Dicke states for a moderate number of particles. Our results provide a scalable and experimentally feasible approach to prepare Dicke states, with potential applications in quantum metrology, quantum communication, and quantum information processing.

Matrix product states (MPS) are a standard tensor-network representation for ground states of one-dimensional quantum many-body systems, and they underpin widely used simulation tools such as DMRG. However, while quantum model checking has been developed mainly for quantum programs and communication protocols (with properties expressed along a time axis), there is still no comparable framework for systematically verifying \emph{spatial} and \emph{size-dependent} properties of physical many-body states, where the key parameter is the system size. This paper takes a step toward bridging the gap. We propose \emph{Linear Chain Logic} (LCL), a spatial logic designed to specify physically meaningful properties of periodic MPS families as the system size grows, such as nontriviality on rings and large-size asymptotic patterns. Our approach builds on a simple but powerful connection: every periodic MPS naturally induces a completely positive map (a quantum operation) on its virtual space, so many quantitative features of the MPS can be analysed through the repeated application of the operation. Using this perspective, we derive an effective procedure to compute the inner products of an MPS at a given size and to support richer LCL specifications, without relying on brute-force state expansion. We then develop approximate model-checking algorithms that combine sound bounding with asymptotic structural analysis, enabling scalable reasoning about large system sizes. Experiments on representative MPS families illustrate that our method can automatically verify nontriviality and detect asymptotic spatial regimes in a way that complements traditional numerical techniques.

Adaptive quantum Fisher information (QFI) estimation requires a stopping rule that distinguishes accuracy from apparent numerical stability. For Krylov-shadow QFI estimators, finite Krylov order $K$ produces truncation bias, while finite sample budget $M$ produces finite-$M$ sampling-side error. We show that a width-only empirical stopping rule, based on interval width and local Krylov stability, can declare convergence at small $(K,M)$ even when the post hoc error exceeds the requested tolerance; we call this event a \emph{false stop}. The mechanism is a narrow empirical interval centered on a biased low-$K$ estimate. We give a two-component stopping analysis that separates the Krylov and sampling terms, and we implement a guarded rule that permits a success declaration only after minimum thresholds in $K$ and $M$ and a persistence condition are satisfied. On a five-level dephasing benchmark at $n=4$ qubits, the guarded rule suppresses the false success declarations produced by the width-only empirical rule, whose false-stop rates range from $0.16$ to $0.68$ across the tested noise levels. Under the main fixed resource limit, the guarded rule refuses to make success declarations rather than accepting biased low-$K$ estimates; a separate true-relative-tolerance sampling-budget sequence then shows that, after Krylov and sampling recalibration, the same decision principle can make success declarations without observed false stops. These results show that stopping reliability is a distinct design requirement for adaptive QFI estimation: sampling precision at fixed $K$ does not by itself establish that Krylov truncation bias is controlled.

As quantum computers become available through multi-tenant cloud platforms, ensuring privacy against adversaries sharing the same quantum processing unit becomes critical. We introduce and explore \emph{covert quantum computing}, a new concept that ensures an adversary with access to all other quantum computational units (QCUs) of a quantum computer cannot detect computation on the subset that they cannot access. Analogous to covert communication, we employ information theory. However, since here the adversary controls the systems used for detection, we require a richer framework for covertness analysis that accounts for the use of quantum memories and adaptive operations. Thus, we adopt the \emph{quantum-strategy} framework used in quantum game theory and memory channel discrimination. Current quantum computers use planar graph circuit layouts and typically assume nearest-neighbor crosstalk. We derive discrete isoperimetric inequalities to show that, for an $n$-qubit circuit under this model, only $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{n})$ border qubits provide detection information to the adversary. We then explore this scaling law on IQM's 54-qubit \emph{Emerald} processor and IBM's 156-qubit \emph{ibm\_fez} machine employing the Heron 2 architecture. We implement Ramsey experiments on qubits not used in computation, and detect nearest-neighbor crosstalk, as expected. However, we also observe long-range coupling effects beyond the border qubits, revealing a side channel that the adversary can exploit. We hypothesize that this long-range crosstalk is induced by leakage from the drive and control lines. Beyond weakening covertness, it exposes co-tenants to both adversarial and unintended crosstalk and degrades circuits that span spatially distributed qubits, motivating further work on spatial isolation and crosstalk characterization.

While the interplay of correlations and geometric frustration in doped Mott insulators provides a fertile ground for exotic quantum phases, the nature of the metallic state emerging upon particle doping remains poorly understood. In this work, we investigate the triangular-lattice Hubbard model with particle doping and provide compelling evidence for an intrinsic, interaction-driven quantum state, which we term the Nagaoka supermetal. This state is characterized by a sublinear temperature dependence in the DC resistivity, along with singular behaviors in the charge compressibility and zero-frequency spectral weight. To understand the origin of these singular properties, we derive an effective low-energy model and demonstrate that a higher-order Van Hove singularity emerges from the reconstructed dispersion. This singularity gives rise to a power-law divergence in the density of states, capturing the anomalous properties observed in the supermetallic regime. Our findings offer a new perspective on non-Fermi liquid states in geometrically frustrated systems and are directly accessible in current ultracold atom experiments.

We solve an open problem in entanglement theory posed by Yu et al., {\it Nature Communications 12, 1012 (2021)}. The problem is to show, via an entanglement witness, that the $14$-qubit state $Φ_{\text{E8}}$ is entangled. Inspired by a method from quantum codes, we combine symmetric extension with moment matrices to prove that $Φ_{\text{E8}}$ is entangled. The proof has the form of a rational infeasibility certificate for a semidefinite program, yielding an explicit entanglement witness. Our approach unifies and extends several earlier methods that involve the Lovász theta number of the Pauli anti-commutativity graph, promising scalability and flexibility in further applications.

Neural-network quantum states have emerged as a powerful variational framework for quantum many-body systems, with recent progress often driven by massively parallel architectures such as transformers. Recurrent neural network quantum states, however, are frequently regarded as intrinsically sequential and therefore less scalable. Here we revisit this view by showing that modern recurrent architectures can support fast, accurate, and computationally accessible neural quantum state simulations. Using autoregressive recurrent wave functions together with recent advances in parallelizable recurrence, we develop variational ansätze, called parallel scan recurrent neural quantum states (PSR-NQS), which can be trained efficiently within variational Monte Carlo in one and two spatial dimensions. We demonstrate accurate benchmark results and show that, with iterative retraining, our approach reaches two-dimensional spin lattices as large as $52\times52$ while remaining in agreement with available quantum Monte Carlo data. Our results establish recurrent architectures as a practical and promising route toward scalable neural quantum state simulations with modest computational resources.

Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) are a central paradigm for noisy intermediate-scale (NISQ) quantum computing, yet their reliance on predesigned and pretrained variational quantum circuits (VQCs) introduces critical security vulnerabilities, particularly backdoor attacks. These attacks embed hidden malicious behaviors that remain dormant under normal conditions but are activated by specific triggers, leading to adversarial outcomes such as incorrect predictions or manipulated objective values. This paper presents a survey of backdoor attacks in VQCs, covering data-poisoning, compiler-level, and quantum-native mechanisms. We formalize key terminology and threat models, and review existing attack strategies along with their empirical characteristics. We also analyze current detection and defense approaches, highlighting their limitations, especially against quantum-specific threats. By synthesizing recent advances, this survey outlines the evolving security landscape of VQCs and identifies key challenges and future directions for developing robust, quantum-aware defenses in hybrid quantum-classical systems.

Using techniques from the theory of von Neumann algebras, we propose a framework for addressing questions of controllability of bilinear systems on infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces. In the setup, we assume only that the drift and control terms arising in a bilinear control system are affiliated with a von Neumann algebra of finite type acting on the same Hilbert space. When the control terms satisfy basic norm bound conditions, we prove existence of time-optimal controls. In the more general setting where all operators may be unbounded, we show how the dynamical Lie algebra for the system is still well-defined and may be used to check approximate controllability of the system in question. We discuss how this approach can be applied to classical dynamical systems through the Koopman operator formalism, and investigate potential candidates for the von Neumann algebra which may guide the choice of controls. We illustrate how an affiliation relation naturally arises in both classical and quantum control systems with a few examples.

In this article, we introduce a new form of quantum selective measurement in which the von Neumann projection postulate is replaced by quasilinear evolution, governed by a nonlinear generalization of the von Neumann equation. We demonstrate that this equation preserves the equivalence of quantum ensembles and, consequently, satisfies the no-signalling principle, ensuring consistency with both quantum mechanics and Einstein causality. Our approach eliminates the need for instantaneous, discontinuous state collapse and provides a unified description of the postmeasurement quantum state reduction as a form of quantum state evolution. Notably, it does not require invoking concepts such as the quantum state assigned to a classical apparatus. At the same time, the stochastic character of selective measurement and the Born rule remain unchanged. We present several numerical solutions of the evolution equation for quasilinear selective measurement in two-level quantum systems and compare them with the standard von Neumann projection. The results demonstrate agreement between the two measurement schemes in their fundamental properties. Furthermore, we investigate phenomena associated with the structural instability of the evolution equation and identify very narrow parameter regions in which the outcomes deviate from those predicted by the von Neumann projection. These regions may offer opportunities to test the proposed approach experimentally. Finally, using specific analytical solutions, we discuss the Stern-Gerlach experiment within the framework of quasilinear measurement.

Enhancing quantum illumination with highly entangled probes remains an active area of research. In this context, non-Gaussian operations provide an effective route for engineering probe states that can surpass the standard two-mode squeezed state (TMSS). In this work, we investigate a specific nonlocal non-Gaussian operation protocol and show that the engineered state using this protocol outperforms previously considered local non-Gaussian scenarios, engineered based on photon catalysis, addition, and subtraction under realistic conditions, including photon loss. Furthermore, by employing a $50{:}50$ beam splitter with photon-number difference detection, we demonstrate a significant enhancement in the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for target detection relative to the TMSS. Thus, our protocol exhibits improved performance, highlighting a resource-efficient and experimentally feasible probe for enhanced quantum illumination.

We propose replacing the instantaneous state reduction in von Neumann selective measurement with continuous nonlinear evolution. Despite its nonlinearity, this evolution preserves the equivalence of quantum ensembles and hence obeys the no-signaling principle. Its final states coincide with those produced by the von Neumann projection. The defining features of rank-one projective measurement are retained: convergence to the eigenstate of the observable associated with the selected outcome, independence of this final state from the initial state, and consistent action on entangled states.

Tweezer arrays of polarizable objects are a promising platform for assembling quantum matter and building next-generation quantum sensors. Light-induced dipolar interactions have emerged as a method to couple their motion, thereby establishing a new paradigm for controlling collective mechanical degrees of freedom. Here, we extend these into the regime of Floquet-driven interactions, combined with the intrinsic nonreciprocity of optical forces. We demonstrate beamsplitter, single-, and two-mode squeezing operations, as well as signatures of a negative-mass-like oscillator arising from the nonreciprocity. Moreover, we show that a programmable combination of these operations enables continuous tuning of complex eigenfrequencies. These results establish a toolbox of quantum operations of nonreciprocal interactions that are essential for investigating non-Hermitian many-body physics and collective quantum optomechanics.

In quantum many-body dynamics, locally encoded information typically scrambles across the entire system, becoming inaccessible to local probes. The upper bound of accessible information of local probes can be characterized by the Holevo information via optimal measurement. In this work, we investigate the information dynamics of quantum scrambling utilizing local randomized probes, quantified by the averaged accessible information (AAI). We derive an analytical expression for the AAI under Haar-random measurements and demonstrate that it is a function of purity of local reduced density matrix. Operationally, we employ the classical shadow protocol, using only single-qubit randomized Pauli measurements, to efficiently extract the AAI across extended subsystems. Through numerical simulations across diverse many-body paradigms, we show that the AAI can reveal distinct scrambling behaviors, resolving phenomena that range from dynamical confinement and ballistic transport to persistent scar revivals and many-body localization. This work highlights a pragmatic paradigm shift--from relying on optimal measurements to utilizing randomized local probes--for the characterization of complex quantum information dynamics.

Geometric phases are foundational to isolated quantum systems, yet their thermodynamic role in open systems remains unrevealed Developing a dissipative adiabatic perturbation expansion, we discover a Berry-phase-induced chiral work difference that survives decoherence. This chirality evolves from an interferometric thermodynamic Aharonov-Bohm effect in the unitary regime to a fringe-free signal in the dissipative regime. We illustrate this framework in a two-level system and assess its experimental feasibility. Our findings clarify the role of quantum geometry in the geometric formulation of thermodynamics.

We analyze the decoherence of a particle's spatial superposition moving along a stationary worldline through the Minkowski vacuum. The particle is modeled via an internal degree of freedom that couples to a scalar field, and an external degree of freedom, i.e., its quantized center-of-mass motion around the stationary worldline. Assuming a separation of time scales between the particle's internal and external dynamics, we first obtain an effective red-shifted polarizability of the particle, characterizing the trajectory-dependent linear response of the internal oscillator to the field. We then derive a quantum Brownian motion master equation for the particle's center of mass, under the Born-Markov approximation, which describes its decoherence in the position basis, as well as, Hamiltonian modifications corresponding to a dispersive potential. The resulting decoherence has two components: (1) arising from a modified field spectrum observed by the particle; and (2) due to a differential time-dilation over the particle's extended spatial wavefunction. For stationary trajectories, both contributions take an effectively thermal form. We evaluate the decoherence rates for two specific cases of hyperbolic and uniform circular motion.

Periodically driven systems host topological phases without static analogs, such as the anomalous Floquet phase characterized by trivial bulk bands yet robust boundary modes. In this work, we investigate the scattering problem of a Floquet Chern insulator and reveal the non-Hermitian skin effect (NHSE) of reflected waves. Using a discrete-time scattering formalism, we demonstrate how the non-Hermitian winding number of the reflection matrix is linked to the bulk Floquet invariant via boundary resonances. This reflected-wave NHSE relies on which quasienergy gap the incident wave resides in, leading to a gap-dependent Goos-Hänchen (GH) shift. We further show that the momentum-integrated GH shift quantitatively yields the Floquet topological invariant of the corresponding gap. Our work highlights a frequency-dependent NHSE of reflected waves in driven systems and provides a real-space scattering approach to identify non-equilibrium topology.

Integrated photonics has emerged as a promising platform for quantum communication and quantum computation. Thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) has gained significant attention in this field due to its exceptional optical properties, enabling the realization of numerous integrated photonic devices. However, quantum memory, which serves as a universal building block for the quantum internet, has not yet been demonstrated in TFLN. In this study, we realized the first on-chip quantum memory using erbium ions doped TFLN. The developed quantum memory achieves a storage time of 400 ns with an efficiency of 1.95%, significantly outperforming conventional waveguide delay lines. The multimode capability is demonstrated by successfully storing four temporal modes. Furthermore, single-photon-level coherent pulses are encoded into time-bin qubits and stored with a fidelity of 96.8% , surpassing the classical limit achievable by measure-and-prepare strategy. Our results demonstrate the first on-chip quantum memory for telecom-band time-bin qubits in TFLN, providing a key building block toward integrated quantum registers and repeaters for scalable quantum information processing.

We revisit the Schwarzschild singularity in a semiclassical setting where the background geometry is classical and quantum effects enter through Bohmian (quantal) trajectories associated with a Klein Gordon wave packet. Using the Madelung-Bohm decomposition of the Klein Gordon wavefunction, we show that the quantum-modified motion is equivalent to geodesic motion in an effective metric conformally related to Schwarzschild, with a conformal factor fixed by the wavefunction amplitude. Solving the wavefunction equation near $r\to 0$ determines this factor and yields finite curvature invariants, in suitable coordinates the interior extends smoothly and the effective spacetime is geodesically complete. This suggests that quantum dynamics on a fixed classical background can regularize the Schwarzschild singularity without a full theory of quantum gravity.

Violations of the Leggett-Garg inequality (LGI) up to its algebraic bound under non-Hermitian dynamics are well established theoretically. Here, we demonstrate that such extreme violations are intrinsically fragile when realistic measurement processes are taken into account. We consider an open two-level system described by a time-local hybrid Liouvillian, with a continuous parameter $q \in [0,1]$, representing detector efficiency, i.e., the fraction of quantum jump trajectories that are retained in the ensemble. This parameter interpolates between trace-preserving Lindblad dynamics ($q=1$) and non-Hermitian ``no-jump" evolution ($q=0$). While $K_3$ approaches its algebraic maximum of 3 in the null-efficiency limit, even an infinitesimal increase in detector efficiency induces a rapid, highly nonlinear suppression toward the classical bound. This logarithmic sensitivity reveals that maximal LGI violations are not robust physical features but rather singular limits of idealized measurement conditions. Our results have direct experimental implications: achieving algebraic LGI violations in systems undergoing continuous time evolution requires near-perfect suppression of detected quantum jumps (i.e., effective post-selection), placing stringent constraints on detector performance. In contrast to discrete protocols based on time-non-divisible dynamics, our framework shows that extreme violations arising within continuous, divisible quantum trajectory evolution constitute a fundamentally fragile regime.

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a method to strongly increase the sensitivity of spin measurements on nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond, which can be readily implemented in existing quantum sensing experiments. While charge state transitions of this defect are generally considered a parasitic effect to be avoided, we show here that these can be used to significantly increase the NV center's spin contrast, a key quantity for high sensitivity magnetometry and high fidelity state readout. The protocol consists of a two-step procedure, in which the charge state of the defect is first purified by a strong laser pulse, followed by weak illumination to obtain high spin polarization. We observe a relative improvement of the readout contrast by 17 %, and infer a reduction of the initialization error of more than 50 %. The contrast enhancement is accompanied by a beneficial increase of the readout signal. For long sequence durations, typically encountered in high-resolution magnetometry, a measurement speedup by a factor of >1.5 is extracted, and we find that the technique is beneficial for sequences of any duration. Additionally, our findings give detailed insight into the charge and spin polarization dynamics of the NV center, and provide actionable insights for direct optical, spin-to-charge, and electrical readout of solid-state spin centres.

We present the results of an experimental study of the anomalous anisotropy of alignment signals in cesium vapors under strong spin exchange conditions in zero magnetic fields under linearly polarized optical pumping. We show that the anisotropy of the Hanle resonances in the plane perpendicular to the pump beam increases sharply with increasing concentration. In one direction, the resonance widths are determined by classical spin exchange, while in the other, by the SERF (Spin-Exchange Relaxation Free) effect. With further concentration increases, additional nonlinear effects arise, such as an increase of the normalized signal amplitude, effective magnetic field, bistability, hysteresis, and memory. To explain these observations, as well as the results presented in our previous studies, we construct a demonstration theoretical model incorporating spontaneous polarization effects arising under strong spin exchange. The model qualitatively shows that the experimentally observed ultra-narrow alignment resonances may originate predominantly from quadrupole anisotropy associated with spontaneous transverse orientation projected onto the detection axis.The unique properties of these resonances, such as their ultra-small width and magnetic field-controlled bistability with a long-term memory effect, make them promising for use in quantum sensing and information.

Nanophotonic traps for cold atoms typically have trap volumes that are orders of magnitude smaller than, e.g., free-space optical tweezers. This makes efficient loading of these traps challenging, thereby limiting the total number of atoms coupled to the nanophotonic waveguide. Here, we demonstrate that $Λ$-enhanced gray-molasses ($Λ$GM) can substantially increase the number of trapped atoms in a nanofiber-based cold-atom setup. Specifically, we observe a six-fold increase in the number of loaded atoms compared to conventional red-detuned polarization gradient cooling. Despite the unusually small depth of our optical trap of only 24 $μ$K, we load about 4000 individual Cesium atoms, achieving optical depths exceeding 140 and reaching the collisional blockade regime over a length of approximately 1 mm. After loading, we perform efficient EIT-assisted cooling that is found to increase the trap storage time to 400(9) ms. This is a 5-fold improvement over the passive storage time. Remarkably, EIT-cooling also works with two co-propagating nanofiber-guided light fields and requiries only about a few hundred picowatt of optical power. Our results provide an efficient method to boost both the number of loaded atoms and the storage time of nanophotonic atom traps.

Lattice geometry profoundly shapes physical phenomena such as subsystem symmetry and directed percolation (DP). Among various lattice geometries, hyperbolic lattices are characterized by constant negative curvature and non-Abelian translation symmetry, offering a rich platform for investigating this geometry-physics interplay. However, the exponentially growing lattice size and nontrivial translation symmetry make approaches developed for Euclidean lattices incompatible, a limitation particularly evident in uniform cellular automata (CA). To resolve this, we develop a higher-order non-uniform cellular automata (NUCA) algorithm applicable to both translationally invariant regular Euclidean and hyperbolic lattices. In the algorithm, the non-uniform update rules incorporate nontrivial geometric data through a lattice-deforming procedure. We demonstrate the broad applicability of our algorithm to hyperbolic lattices through several applications on the hyperbolic $\{5,4\}$ lattice. By applying a linear NUCA, we generate subsystem symmetry-protected topological (SSPT) states and spontaneous subsystem symmetry-breaking states associated with regular or irregular subsystem symmetries unattainable on Euclidean lattices. We design the multi-point strange correlators to detect nontrivial SSPT states and derive a sufficient condition for non-Abelian translationally invariant NUCA-generated models. Furthermore, by generalizing the NUCA to non-uniform Clifford quantum cellular automata (CQCA), we generate subsystem symmetries of the hyperbolic cluster state, extending the established correspondence between translationally invariant CQCA and subsystem symmetries. Moreover, we simulate the DP process via a probabilistic NUCA that inherits the treelike structure of the lattice, and numerically estimate percolation thresholds and the phase diagram.

The self-duality of the transverse-field Ising model is an archetype for dualities that, alongside symmetry and topology, are used as an organizing principle throughout modern physics. This duality, however, is not exact. The original and dual models have different symmetries and numbers of ground states, and the duality is implemented by a non-invertible operator giving rise to a non-invertible symmetry at the quantum critical point. Here, we show that by adjusting the model to accommodate open rather than periodic boundary conditions, it allows for an exact duality implemented by a unique invertible operator. In the model with exact duality, the symmetry at the quantum critical point is also exact, and hence invertible. Moreover, we find that the exact duality necessitates the presence of an anomalous edge degree of freedom, thus realizing a duality rather than topology based bulk-boundary correspondence. Finally, the exactness of the duality implies that the spontaneous breakdown of a global symmetry in terms of the original model can equivalently be described as spontaneously breaking a local symmetry in the dual system. We show that this seeming contradiction of Elitzur's theorem can be explained by the original and dual models obtaining different sensitivities to spatially local perturbations in any physical implementation of the Hamiltonian. Although the dual partners are mathematically equivalent, their physical implementations therefore are not. In analogy to the spontaneous breakdown of symmetries, we term this emergent distinction due to arbitrarily small environmental influences spontaneous duality breaking.

Efficient generation and high-quality distribution of entanglement is becoming increasingly more relevant in the field of quantum technologies, with important applications such as multiparty computation as well as quantum key distribution (QKD) on the rise. Quantum communication protocols based on entanglement offer an inherent quantum based randomness for key generation and provide in general higher security compared to prepare and measure implementations. Moreover, the future quantum internet will also be based on the distribution of entanglement for securely connecting quantum computers in a network. In this work we show the feasibility of using sequential time-bin entangled states for quantum key distribution in metropolitan networks using off-the-shelf components. The time-bin encoding ensures high fidelity distribution robust against random polarisation fluctuations occuring in optical fibers. Modulated laser pulses in the GHz frequency range are used to generate time-bin entangled photon pairs. The entangled photons are then sent over an about 30km long (9.5dB loss) fiber link within the Vienna fiber network, showing high degree of distributed entanglement with a measured 93\% quantum visibility.

The quantum enhancement of success probability in the Random Access Code (RAC) protocols remains unexplored from two important perspectives. First, the use of entanglement between two co-measurable degrees of freedom of a single particle (intraparticle entanglement) in achieving such quantum enhancement has not been investigated. Second, no explicit quantitative correspondence has been established between the predicted/observed quantum advantage and the underlying quantum resource responsible for it. In this work, we address both these aspects simultaneously by harnessing a single-particle resource. For this purpose, the RAC protocol is formulated in terms of intraparticle entanglement between, for instance, spin/polarization and path degrees of freedom of a single particle. Within this framework, a relevant Bell-type inequality, derived from the assumption of noncontextuality for single particle path-spin measurements, is used. Based on these ingredients, the formulated analysis reveals that the magnitude of quantum-mechanical violation of such Bell-type inequality, signifying a form of quantum contextuality, is quantitatively commensurate with the quantum enhancement of success probability in any intraparticle entanglement-assisted $n$-bit RAC protocol. In particular, the maximal success probability of a quantum $n \mapsto 1$ RAC protocol corresponds to the maximal quantum violation of the relevant Bell-type inequality. This correspondence is empirically testable using a readily implementable single-particle interferometric setup requiring coherence preservation only for a single particle.

Photon loss and dephasing rapidly degrade the sensitivity of quantum sensors, yet systematic methods for designing error-correcting codes whose geometry is simultaneously adapted to the sensing task and the noise channel do not exist. Here we establish that orbital-angular-momentum (OAM) encoding and Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) lattice geometry are structurally coupled: an OAM mode of topological charge $\ell$ induces a phase-space rotation $θ_\ell=\ellπ/\ell_{\max}$, corresponding to a family of twisted GKP stabilizer lattices. Using an end-to-end differentiable Strawberry Fields--TensorFlow circuit, we jointly optimise $\ell$, the lattice aspect ratio $r$, and the finite-energy envelope $ε$ to maximise quantum Fisher information subject to $P_{\rm err}\leq10^{-3}$. The optimum occurs at the fractional charge $\ell=1.5$ ($θ=67.5^\circ$), implementable with a half-integer spiral phase plate, which reduces $P_{\rm err}$ by $23.9\times$ relative to the square-lattice baseline while leaving $\mathcal{F}_Q$ unchanged to within $0.2\%$. This surpasses the best integer value ($\ell=2$, $15.7\times$) and arises from an exact $180^\circ$ periodicity of the $P_{\rm err}(θ)$ landscape, confirmed analytically and numerically. We derive a transcendental balance equation for the optimal angle $θ^*(η,γ,r)$ and prove that it decreases with both $γ$ and $η$. A Shannon-inspired metrological capacity $\mathcal{C}=\mathcal{F}_Q\cdot(-\ln P_{\rm err})$, maximised at $\ell=1.5$ with a $41\%$ gain over the square lattice, quantifies the joint sensitivity--fault-tolerance resource. These results establish a geometric design principle for noise-adaptive quantum sensors and a fully open-source differentiable template extensible to other bosonic code families.

Product formulas for Trotter Suzuki simulation remain a practical route to Hamiltonian evolution on noisy intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) hardware, yet their accuracy hinges on three coupled choices: term grouping, product formula order, and timestep allocation. Toolchains such as Qiskit and Paulihedral lean on hand tuned heuristics, while the discrete nature of grouping and order makes naive gradient based optimization awkward. We describe a generate and evaluate loop: a conditional diffusion model proposes strategies, a physics informed neural network (PINN) supplies differentiable fidelity feedback, and a graph neural network (GNN) encodes commutator structure. Training spans a hybrid space (discrete grouping and order, continuous time steps); the closed loop uses REINFORCE and a Pareto tracker. On the transverse field Ising model (TFIM), under our primary comparison setup, the method reaches 85.6% of the fidelity of a fourth order Qiskit baseline (0.856) at roughly 21.8% of the circuit depth and 19.2% of the baseline CNOT count. Under an equal depth budget, fine tuning in the loop reached a best observed fidelity of 0.9994. Updated ablations show that, for a fixed training budget and default guidance knobs, module contributions depend on the training recipe and guidance hyperparameters CFG in particular needs to be tuned jointly with compute budget. Overall, the results suggest that "generative model and physics supervision" is a viable angle for NISQ oriented compilation, though where it wins still depends on the operating point.

The homogeneity of the microwave magnetic field is essential in controlling a large volume of ensemble spins, for example, in the case of sensitive magnetometry with nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond. This is particularly important for pulsed measurement, where the fidelity of control pulses plays a crucial role in its sensitivity. So far, several magnetic field-forming systems have been proposed, but no detailed comparison has been made. Here, we numerically study the homogeneity of five different systems, including a planar antenna, a dielectric resonator, a cylindrical inductor, a barrel-shaped coil, and a nested barrel-shaped coil. The results of the simulation allowed us to optimize the design parameters of the barrel-shaped field-forming system, which led to significantly improved magnetic field uniformity. To measure this effect, we experimentally compared the homogeneity of a field-forming system having a barrel shape with that of a planar field-forming system by measuring Rabi oscillations of an ensemble of NV centers with them. Significant improvements in inhomogeneity were confirmed in the barrel-shaped coil.

Efficient, scalable, and magnetic-field-free superconducting diodes are essential for future superconducting electronics; yet, despite significant efforts, such practical devices remain unrealized. The main challenge lies in achieving broad-range in-situ tunability, both for optimization and for achieving transistor-like operation. Here, we study diodes based on four-terminal niobium planar Josephson junctions. We show that the multiterminal structure eliminates the need for an external magnetic field and enables essentially unrestricted in-situ tunability, along with reconfigurability of the diode polarity, leading to new functionality. For example, we demonstrate that such diodes can operate as Gauss neurons via reentrant superconductivity. By deliberately tuning the junction parameters, we obtain effectively infinite nonreciprocity (within experimental resolution) leading to threshold-free ac-current rectification. Such technologically simple, reconfigurable, and broadly tunable diodes could be instrumental for future digital and neuromorphic computing.

The traversable wormhole protocol in coupled Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) systems produces a transmission signal C(t) widely interpreted as evidence of holographic dynamics. Recent work has questioned this interpretation, showing that similar signals arise in generic thermalizing systems. We address what the signal actually probes by systematically destroying quantum chaos in the SYK model via random coupling deletion, while monitoring the transmission signal across the chaos-to-integrable transition. Using exact diagonalization of the doubled SYK model at N=10 with 50 disorder realizations per sparsity, supplemented by Krylov-subspace extensions to N=20, we find that the ensemble-averaged peak height varies by less than 1.1% across a 50-fold sparsification range, even as the underlying spectrum transitions from Gaussian-unitary-ensemble to sub-Poisson statistics. A 1,200-instance sweep over the inter-system coupling mu confirms that the signal is controlled by mu alone, with no dependence on internal chaos. We further verify that the thermofield double state retains its thermal structure under sparsification despite substantial changes to the state vector, providing a structural explanation for the invariance. These results indicate that the transmission signal diagnoses inter-system coupling fidelity rather than holographic dynamics, and that future quantum-simulation experiments require independent chaos diagnostics to substantiate gravitational claims. As a practical consequence, the invariance implies that 98% of the Hamiltonian's coupling terms can be discarded (with variance rescaling of the survivors), reducing the gate count per Trotter step by approximately 50x at N=10 and bringing larger traversable-wormhole simulations within experimental reach.

Bell's theorem states that no description of a Bell experiment can be simultaneously local, realistic in the sense of counterfactual definiteness, and free of conspiracy between settings and hidden state. The recent generation of experiments has confirmed the predicted violation of the CHSH inequality, so one of the assumptions must be abandoned. Which one, and how one reconstructs a coherent worldview after doing so, is a question on which many authors disagree. This paper is written by three such authors. All three reject both counterfactual definiteness and conspiratorial violation of statistical independence of setting choices and state. After a joint exposition of the classical half of Bell's theorem in the language of Pearl-style causal graphs, a joint summary of the loophole-free experiments, and a joint survey of the recent literature, each author states where they have presently arrived. Gill accepts irreducible and non-local quantum randomness and finds the choice between locality and realism a false dichotomy. In his later works, Bell derives counterfactual definiteness from classical local causality, and that is what has to go. The metaphysical concepts "realism", "locality", "causality" need to be reconsidered. Helland reconstructs the Hilbert-space formalism from a theory of accessible variables, and from this theory he concludes that every observer must be limited in a specific sense. Jongejan proposes a geometric hidden-variable construction in which the degree of violation of the CHSH inequality depends on the number of dimensions of space, Tsirelson's bound corresponding to three dimensions. The authors conclude with a discussion.

Topological pumps offer a promising route to operate as connecting buses, supplying efficient and robust connectivity between non-neighboring elements in a network. Here, we investigate a finite quasiperiodic Fibonacci-type photonic chain and demonstrate its ability for end-to-end pumping, with only small and simple changes to the system. First, we use a tight-binding formalism to numerically show that a localized pumping state can be transferred between opposite ends of the system, with only a small structural change to the chain. Then, we experimentally implement this topological pump in an array of coupled optical waveguides, where light propagation is effectively described by the tight-binding model under the paraxial approximation, enabling direct correspondence between theory and experiment. We numerically simulate and experimentally demonstrate pumping by injecting light into a single waveguide at one end of the setup, which activates a localized pumping state. As the light propagates along the wave guide array, it is also pumped to the other end. We further show that pumping remains robust against structural deformation, such as controlled defects in the waveguide array. Our results establish that quasiperiodic Fibonacci-type photonic lattices are a robust and experimentally viable platform for disorder-resilient state transfer.

Hybrid quantum--classical pipelines increasingly support applications such as drug discovery, fraud detection, and cloud quantum processing unit (QPU) auditing, yet existing integrity-verification methods remain largely classical and fail to capture quantum-stage behaviour. We propose QCIVET, a contract-based integrity-verification framework that models a hybrid pipeline as a sequence of stages with explicit specifications and audits it at both syntactic and semantic levels. Syntactic integrity is enforced through a hash-chained audit trail with optional external anchoring, while semantic integrity at quantum stages is verified using a calibrated observable-deviation test grounded in the behavioural-subtyping discipline of Liskov and Wing. We prove soundness under the diamond-norm distance between quantum channels, conditional completeness for informationally complete observable families, and compositionality under inheritance chains. We further identify a class of Z-only-sneaky overrides that evade weak single-Pauli contracts but are exposed by multi-Pauli contracts. The framework is evaluated under calibration-derived noise models from IBM Quantum Eagle r3 and Heron r2 processors, and the subtype-separation protocol is validated end-to-end on a real ibm_fez (Heron r2) processor. QCIVET is instantiated on three representative applications: variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) for drug discovery, quantum-assisted fraud detection, and customer-side auditing of cloud QPU services. The reference implementation, including a real-time verification engine with sub-millisecond per-stage commit latency, is released as open source.

Feedback-based quantum optimization is a quantum approach to combinatorial optimization. In this paper, we introduce the classical counterpart of feedback-based quantum optimization by using the quantum-classical correspondence of spin systems to discuss the possibility of quantum advantage. It also enables us to develop higher-order theory of a previously proposed classical approach to feedback-based quantum optimization. First, we compare the feedback-based algorithm for quantum optimization (FALQON) and its variant with their classical counterparts. Then, we perform benchmark tests of various quantum and classical algorithms with small-scale instances, and of classical algorithms with large-scale instances. Main findings are that (i) quantum algorithms can be advantageous to classical algorithms in terms of the quality of solutions, while classical algorithms tend to show faster convergence than quantum ones, and (ii) one of the classical algorithms discussed in this paper shows significant scalability for higher-order unconstrained binary optimization problems. These findings highlight the importance of quantumness and the usefulness of classical approaches.

The quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) holds promise for combinatorial optimization but is constrained by limited qubits. While divide-and-conquer frameworks like QAOA$^{2}$ address scalability by partitioning graphs into subgraphs, existing methods suffer from two fundamental limitations: i) misalignment between heuristic partitioning metrics and quantum optimization goals, and ii) topology-blind parameter initialization that leads to optimization cold starts. To bridge these gaps, we propose Neural QAOA$^{2}$, an end-to-end differentiable framework that jointly generates graph partitions and initial parameters. By integrating a generative evaluative network (GEN), our method utilizes a differentiable quantum evaluator as a high-fidelity performance surrogate to provide direct gradient guidance, enabling the joint generator to learn the intrinsic mapping from graph topology to high-quality partition and parameter configurations. Extensive experiments on 183 QUBO, Ising, and MaxCut instances (21 to 1000 variables) demonstrate that our gradient-driven approach broadly outperforms heuristic baselines, ranking first on 101 instances. It exhibits zero-shot generalization across out-of-distribution graph topologies and scales.

We study quantum transport in a periodically driven (Floquet) topological system coupled to static fermionic reservoirs. Using the Floquet nonequilibrium Green's-function (NEGF) formalism we show, from exact numerics for a strip geometry, that the two-terminal (longitudinal) conductance is quantized as $|W_{\varepsilon}|\,e^2/h$, while the Hall (transverse) conductance is quantized as $W_{\varepsilon}\,e^2/h$, where $W_{\varepsilon}$ is the Floquet winding invariant associated with the quasienergy gap at $\varepsilon = 0$ or $\varepsilon = Ω/2$. Quantization is achieved only after summing over the contribution of all Floquet sidebands. We provide an analytic understanding of this Floquet conductance sum rule, by considering the Hall conductance in the weak coupling limit. In that limit, we show that the Floquet Hall conductance gets contributions from the Floquet sidebands, which includes the signs of the velocities of the edge modes. Their sum yields exact quantization, as predicted by the Floquet sum rule. We find that in a wide range of parameter regime, the convergence is fast, making observation of the sum rule and Floquet winding numbers accessible to experiments.

We consider the multi-qubit fixed-excitation state transfer along the spin chain with dipole-dipole interaction subjected to the interaction with environment governed by the Lindblad equation preserving the excitation number during spin-evolution. The state transfer algorithm includes the state restoring via Kraus operators and ancilla measurement. As a result, the transferred state appears in superposition with completely mixed state, the latter disappears with vanishing interaction with environment. In that case we deal with probabilistic perfect state transfer. Example of an arbitrary multi-qubit one-excitation state transfer is present and its robustness with respect to perturbation of the Kraus operators is studied.

Quantum information platforms enable analog quantum simulations, such as quantum annealing, offering a promising route to solving complex combinatorial optimization problems. Here, we propose a quantum information architecture based on networks of interacting parity-time (PT)-symmetric non-Hermitian qubits. While the dynamics of individual PT-symmetric qubits have been experimentally demonstrated across multiple platforms including NV centers, superconducting circuits, and trapped-ion systems yet coherent dynamics in interacting systems remain largely unexplored. To address this issue we theoretically investigate stationary and time-dependent Hamiltonians relevant to quantum annealing using a minimal model of two interacting XX-coupled PT-symmetric non-Hermitian qubits. We analyze both symmetry-preserving and symmetry-broken regimes and demonstrate that adding even tiny PT-symmetric non-Hermitian terms in the qubits Hamiltonian allows to greatly enhance the probability of reaching the ground state after annealing.

Quantum key distribution (QKD) promises information-theoretic security based on quantum mechanics and idealized device models. Practical implementations, however, deviate from these models due to unavoidable device imperfections, and existing security proofs fall short of capturing the complexity of real-world systems. Here we introduce a versatile numerical finite-key security framework valid against general coherent attacks and applicable to a broad class of practical QKD setups. It accommodates most relevant imperfections at both transmitter and receiver, including non-independent-and-identically-distributed (non-IID) signals arising in high-speed QKD systems due to the limited bandwidth of optical modulators, while requiring only partial characterization of the apparatuses. We demonstrate the power of our framework by proving the security of a realistic decoy-state QKD implementation with laser sources, providing a practical route towards rigorous security certification of real-world QKD setups.

Some collapse models proposed that gravitational effects cause the instability of mass distribution superpositions, leading to wave function collapse. In this paper, we utilize the quantum Boltzmann equation (QBE) to analyze the behavior of a fermion in a spatial superposition under graviton emission. We introduce a quantitative measure that links the stability of the superposition to the spatial separation, particle mass, and gravitational coupling. By examining the collision term in the QBE, we derive the decoherence rate and show how it depends on these parameters. Our results provide a detailed framework for understanding gravity induced decoherence, bridging the gap between quantum field theory and collapse models. We also discuss the implications of these findings for experimental tests of gravitationally induced wave function collapse and the broader class of collapse models known as dissipative continuous spontaneous localization (CSL) model.

Quantum batteries, which use quantum systems to store and deliver energy, are promising for next-generation energy storage. However, optimizing charging strategies and understanding the interplay between dissipation and quantum coherence remain open challenges. Here, we investigate steady-state charging in an open quantum battery and demonstrate that the charging timescale depends on the spectral gap of the Liouvillian operator governing dissipative dynamics. As a minimal example, we examine a three-level quantum battery realized in a single trapped ${}^{40}\mathrm{Ca}^{+}$ ion, where energy from an engineered thermal photon reservoir is coherently transferred to a long-lived metastable storage state. We find that long-term dynamics are confined to a low-dimensional manifold of slow Liouvillian modes, with their spectral structure determining the relaxation rate to the charged steady state. By adjusting experimentally accessible parameters, such as reservoir occupation and coherent coupling strength, the non-Hermitian Liouvillian spectrum can approach an exceptional point. This increases the spectral gap and accelerates the approach to steady state. As a result, this mechanism significantly enhances asymptotic charging power without relying on many-body collectivity or steady coherence. Our findings offer fundamental insights into open quantum thermodynamics and provide a path to efficient energy storage and fast-charging solutions in emerging quantum technologies.

We investigate the quantum computing of the vibrational dynamics of CO$_2$ and H$_2$O by constructing the vibrational Hamiltonian in qubit and qudit form by two types of qubit encodings (binary and direct) and a qudit encoding. We simulate the time-dependent vibrational population transfer using the three different encodings, including the effect of noise and find that the qudit encoding leads to the most accurate results both for CO$_2$ and H$_2$O because of the small number of terms in the qudit Hamiltonian as long as the same values of the entangling gate error rates are adopted.

We perform an exhaustive semidefinite-programming search over all 11{,}117 connected non-isomorphic simple graphs on eight vertices to maximize the quantum contextuality gap $Δ(G)=\vartheta(G)-α(G)$, where $\vartheta(G)$ is the Lovász theta function and $α(G)$ is the independence number of the exclusion graph $G$ within the Cabello--Severini--Winter framework for projective measurements. A previously uncharacterized graph on $n=8$ vertices and $m=10$ edges, which we name the Quad-$C_5$ graph (graph6 code: \texttt{GCQb`o}), achieves $Δ=0.46784$, surpassing the Wagner graph $W$ ($Δ\approx0.414$, $m=12$) with two fewer edges. We determine numerically, via the PSLQ integer-relation algorithm at 50-digit precision, that Quad-$C_5$ is a \emph{qutrit} contextuality witness with $η_3=1+\sqrt{5}$ (minimal polynomial $x^2-2x-4=0$), while numerical evidence indicates the Wagner graph requires a four-dimensional (two-qubit) Hilbert space. The graph contains four mutually overlapping induced five-cycles, and its adjacency spectrum is dominated by golden-ratio eigenvalues, tracing the contextuality advantage algebraically to the KCBS pentagon. Under depolarizing noise, Quad-$C_5$ at $d=3$ shares the critical visibility $v^*=1/(3\sqrt{5}-5)\approx0.585$ of the KCBS witness -- an analytically provable coincidence arising from a uniform shift of the graph parameters -- while at $d=4$ it strictly surpasses the Wagner graph in noise robustness.

We investigate the purification dynamics of a single qubit under continuous in time monitoring. By employing a collisional model framework where the system interacts sequentially with ancillary qubits, we describe the conditioned evolution of the density matrix through a stochastic master equation. We show that for initial mixed states, the dynamics reduce to a multiplicative Langevin equation for a single scalar parameter representing the state's purity. This stochastic process is solved exactly using the Onsager-Machlup path integral formalism, allowing us to derive the full probability distribution for the qubit's trajectories. Our analytical results reveal that purification is characterized by a dynamical crossover from a diffusion dominated regime to a measurement dominated regime, visible in the emergence of a bimodal state distribution. The analytical solutions are in strong agreement with numerical simulations, providing a robust theoretical benchmark for the study of information extraction in monitored quantum systems.

Closed-form expressions for all matrix elements required for variational calculation of the electronic structure of periodic solids have been derived using a basis of explicitly correlated Gaussians (ECGs). Periodic basis functions are constructed by summing shifted correlated Gaussians over all composite lattice translations, where a generalized unfolding theorem reduces the resulting double lattice sum to a single sum through a unified computational framework for overlap, kinetic energy, and Coulomb potential operators. The formalism has been validated through application to an infinite one-dimensional hydrogen chain, where the ground-state energy per atom computed in the thermodynamic limit is shown to agree with finite-chain results extrapolated by other many-body methods.

In the field of quantum reservoir computing (QRC), many different computational models and architectures have been proposed. From these models, we identify feedback based models -- which use a feedback mechanism to re-embed classical measurements from the QRC -- and recurrent models -- which use a multi-register approach with memory and readout qubits -- as the two major competing architectures that have been discussed and validated on hardware. In this paper, we advance upon the recurrent architectures, which employ a two register approach to endow the QRC with a fading memory. While these approaches have been validated on hardware and have demonstrated great real-world performance on noisy-intermediate-scale-quantum (NISQ) quantum processing units (QPUs), the exact mechanism through which the memory capacity arises is not completely understood or fully controllable. With this, we augment the recurrent approaches and present a hardware-realizable mechanism, which we call a tunable partial-SWAP, that allows for the direct control of the rate of memory dissipation from a QRN implemented on a gate-based QPU. The theory behind this mechanism is discussed in terms of a controlled amplitude-damping channel and validation experiments using a randomized short-term memory capacity (STMC) recall benchmark and the NARMA-5 dataset are conducted using simulation and IBM QPUs, respectively.

Nonreciprocal quantum batteries offer superior charging performance compared to reciprocal quantum batteries. We consider a charger-battery system comprising two optical cavities that interact independently with a third auxiliary cavity. We show that the nonzero dissipation of the auxiliary cavity induces a nonreciprocal exchange of excitations among the charger-battery system. Therefore, by engineering the loss in the auxiliary cavity, we induce a directional energy flow that enhances the charging efficiency. Using numerical and analytical calculations, we show that the steady-state energy stored in the battery significantly exceeds that in the charger. We compare our results with those of the reciprocal cases and demonstrate that our nonreciprocal quantum battery model exhibits a significant charging advantage. We believe that our proposed scheme represents a step forward in cavity-loss engineering, making it a viable approach for nonreciprocal quantum batteries with existing experimental techniques.

Quantum computation is frequently mischaracterized as the simultaneous execution of exponentially many classical computations. This article offers a conceptual clarification of why this "branchwise parallelism" picture is misleading, demonstrating that the components of a quantum superposition cannot be treated as independently readable classical branches. Quantum speedups arise instead from reversible embeddings of algebraic structure made accessible through engineered interference patterns. We review this mechanism through several constraints: unitary garbage erasure is impossible, copying and deletion are context-dependent, and contextuality obstructs a single global classical history. We also distinguish circuit or unitary universality from Turing universality: dense generation of unitaries is not the same as symbolic computation over unbounded inputs with recursion, uniformity, and self-reference. In closed unitary dynamics there is no nontrivial absorbing halting state of the classical many-to-one kind; operational termination requires clocks, flags, measurements, open-system records, or external control. Exponential Hilbert-space dimension supplies a geometry for interference and high-dimensional embedding, not unlimited classical readout.

Measurement-based quantum computing uses measurement patterns on predefined quantum resource states to execute quantum logic. Quantum simulation offers an important use case on near-term devices. However, pattern optimization depends on the multivariable interplay between hardware and software constraints and is therefore use-dependent and highly non-trivial. Optimization of large-scale patterns under realistic assumptions remains a barrier. We announce the release of the quantum measurement pattern library QPatLib, a dataset that, in v1.0, presents patterns for use in measurement-based quantum simulation. We present the workflow for generating patterns that execute Pauli-string unitaries needed for many quantum algorithms. We provide benchmark patterns for measurement-based quantum unitary evolution. The measurement patterns are defined with different conventions for commuting Pauli-string subsets to allow scaling of pattern size and complexity. The purpose of the library is to (i) serve as a standardized testbed for pattern-optimization protocols for measurement-based quantum simulation routines, (ii) offer a suite of patterns for direct use on hardware, (iii) provide data to empirically justify pattern design principles, and (iv) provide a flexible resource for future storage and use of measurement-based patterns beyond quantum simulation.

Color centers in silicon are emerging as promising platforms for quantum technologies. Among them, the G center has attracted considerable interest owing to its bright telecom O-band single-photon emission and its optically addressable metastable electron-spin triplet state. Here we investigate the spin properties of ensembles of G centers under above-band-gap excitation. We elucidate the spin photo-dynamics giving rise to the optical detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) response of G centers. The optimal pulsed sequence for measuring the ODMR spectrum of the G defects is identified, along with the temperature and optical-power regimes maximizing the spin readout contrast. Through magneto-optical measurements, we detect a level-anticrossing of the G center electron spin states. At last, we demonstrate coherent spin control of the defects, and characterize their spin-coherence properties. Unveiling the spin degree of freedom of the G center opens new avenues for the realization of quantum memories and quantum registers based on silicon color centers.

It was recently proven that, in contrast to their matrix analogues, the moments of a real Gaussian tensor of size N do not in general factorize over their connected components in the asymptotic large N limit. While the original proof of this rather surprising result was not constructive, explicit examples of non-factorizing moments, which are expectation values of trace-invariants, have since then been discovered. We explore further aspects of this problem, with a focus on Haar-distributed (or Gaussian) complex random tensors, which are more directly relevant to quantum information. We start out by exhibiting an explicit example of non-factorizing trace-invariant, thereby filling a gap in the recent literature. We then turn to the opposite question: that of finding interesting families of trace-invariants that do in fact factorize at large N. We establish three main theorems in this regard. The first one provides a sufficient combinatorial bound ensuring large N factorization, that is also simple enough to be applicable to various cases of practical relevance. Our second main result shows that the expectation value of any compatible trace-invariant is dominated by certain tree-like combinatorial structures at large N, which we refer to as tree-like dominant pairings. Our third main theorem establishes that any trace-invariant admitting tree-like dominant pairings does actually factorize at large N. In this way, we are able to prove that various families of trace-invariants that have been previously studied in the literature do factorize at large N. We apply our findings to the theory of multipartite quantum entanglement: to any trace-invariant is associated a multipartite generalization of Rényi entanglement entropy, whose typical expectation value in the uniform random quantum state can be explicitly computed assuming large N factorization.

We study exact-regenerating codes for entanglement-assisted distributed storage systems. Consider an $(n,k,d,α,β_{\mathsf{q}},B)$ distributed system that stores a file of $B$ classical symbols across $n$ nodes with each node storing $α$ symbols. A data collector can recover the file by accessing any $k$ nodes. When a node fails, any $d$ surviving nodes share an entangled state, and each of them transmits a quantum system of $β_{\mathsf{q}}$ qudits to a newcomer. The newcomer then performs a measurement on the received quantum systems to generate its storage. Recent work [1] showed that, under functional repair where the regenerated content may differ from that of the failed node, there exists a unique optimal regenerating point that \emph{simultaneously minimizes both storage $α$ and repair bandwidth $d β_{\mathsf{q}}$} when $d \geq 2k-2$. In this paper, we show that, under \emph{exact repair}, where the newcomer reproduces exactly the same content as the failed node, this optimal point remains achievable. Our construction builds on the classical product-matrix framework and the Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS)-based stabilizer formalism.

We achieve query-optimal quantum simulations of non-Hermitian Hamiltonians $H_{\mathrm{eff}} = H_R + iH_I$, where $H_R$ is Hermitian and $H_I \succeq 0$, using a bivariate extension of quantum signal processing (QSP) with non-commuting signal operators. The algorithm encodes the interaction-picture Dyson series as a polynomial on the bitorus, implemented through a structured multivariable QSP (M-QSP) circuit. A constant-ratio condition guarantees scalar angle-finding for M-QSP circuits with arbitrary non-commuting signal operators. A degree-preserving sum-of-squares spectral factorization permits scalar complementary polynomials in two variables. Angles are deterministically calculated in a classical precomputation step, running in $\mathcal{O}(d_R \cdot d_I)$ classical operations. Operator norms $α_R\,,β_I$ contribute additively with query complexity $\mathcal{O}((α_R + β_I)T + \log(1/\varepsilon)/\log\log(1/\varepsilon))$ matching an information-theoretic lower bound in the separate-oracle model, where $H_R$ and $H_I$ are accessed through independent block encodings. The postselection success probability is $e^{-2β_I T}\|e^{-iH_{\mathrm{eff}}T}|ψ_0\rangle\|^2\cdot (1 - \mathcal{O}(\varepsilon))$, decomposing into a state-dependent factor $\|e^{-iH_{\mathrm{eff}}T}|ψ_0\rangle\|^2$ from the intrinsic barrier and an $e^{-2β_I T}$ overhead from polynomial block-encoding.

When multiple quantum emitters couple to a common electromagnetic environment, interference in their collective radiative dynamics gives rise to superradiance and subradiance. In regimes where coherent interactions and collective dissipation compete, the microscopic many-body dynamics and quantum correlations among the emitters that underlie superradiance and subradiance are theoretically challenging and remain experimentally elusive, even though collective emission has been observed in many physical systems. Here, we realize a superconducting qubit array coupled to a common microwave waveguide that mediates collective dissipation, with simultaneous access to coherent interactions and microscopic measurements of many-body dynamics. Engineered qubit-waveguide couplings with tunable amplitude and phase enable control of collective interference and the resulting super- and subradiant states. Leveraging site-resolved control and readout, we directly observe the microscopic decay dynamics of multi-qubit states across different excitation manifolds and track the evolution of populations and tunable quantum correlations. We reveal collective decay in regimes beyond the ideal Dicke model, where strong qubit-qubit interactions stabilize superradiance and subradiance against local dephasing and reshape decay pathways through spatially and spectrally structured many-body eigenstates. Our results establish a flexible platform for exploring collective phenomena in many-body quantum optics and driven-dissipative approaches to robust quantum information processing.

Engineered dissipation provides a powerful route to controlling and stabilizing quantum states in open systems. Superconducting circuits are particularly suited to this approach due to their tunable coupling to dissipative environments. Here we realize programmable local reservoirs for superconducting qubits through parametrically driven coupling to readout resonators, creating energy-selective incoherent pump and loss. Using coupled superconducting qubits, we autonomously stabilize entangled single-excitation states with fidelity up to 90.8%. We probe the stabilization dynamics under varying initial conditions and bath parameters, and implement robust classical shadow estimation for accurate and scalable state characterization. Finally, we numerically study a configuration where the engineered pump and loss share a common dissipative mode, leading to reservoir-mediated interference and classically correlated steady states. Our results demonstrate a scalable and hardware-efficient framework for dissipative preparation and control of correlated many-body states in superconducting circuits.

Shot noise sets a fundamental limit on the sensitivity of classical optical measurements, with coherent emitters achieving the lowest possible shot-noise level. Emission from sub-Poissonian light provides a pathway to surpass this limit, and single-photon sources provide a natural platform for generating such light. However, it is commonly assumed that continuously excited single-photon sources exhibit Poissonian statistics. In this work, a theoretical model of a continuously driven two-level single-photon source is developed, treating both excitation and radiative decay as stochastic processes. The analysis demonstrates that photon emission can display sub-Poissonian statistics when excitation and decay rates are comparable, showing that continuous excitation does not inherently preclude nonclassical emission. The model is further extended to include finite detection efficiency and detector dead time, illustrating how these practical non-idealities can affect the experimental observation of sub-Poissonian statistics.

Generalized Probabilistic Theories (GPTs) provide a unified framework for describing probabilistic physical theories, encompassing classical and quantum theories as well as hypothetical theories beyond quantum mechanics. Since most GPTs are highly unrealistic and far removed from known physical theories, it is important to constrain them by physically reasonable principles. One of the most important such principles is consistency with thermodynamics, which has been extensively studied through toy models involving semipermeable membranes (SPMs) implementing measurements. On the other hand, information thermodynamics, which plays a central role in understanding the relationship between measurement and thermodynamics in classical and quantum theory, has remained largely undeveloped in GPTs. In this work, we construct information thermodynamics in GPTs and provide a unified framework for analyzing the relationship between measurement, feedback, information erasure, and the second law of thermodynamics. We also formulate a general framework for SPM models and analyze the thermodynamic cost of measurements implemented by SPMs. As a result, we show that no work can be extracted in contradiction with the second law as long as the measurement processes are consistent with entropy nondecrease, and derive sufficient conditions for this property for several entropy definitions proposed in GPTs. Moreover, by considering measurement processes violating these conditions, we construct explicit GPT systems realizing isothermal SPM cycles from which positive work can be extracted. These results demonstrate that violations of the second law can arise from the lack of fundamental entropy properties or discrepancies between entropy definitions, and provide a unified and model-independent foundation for understanding the relationship between thermodynamics and measurement in GPTs.

While nonclassical light sources are fundamental to quantum communication and computing, solid-state platforms like color centers and quantum dots require cryogenic temperatures to reach the performance levels necessary for practical applications. Over the past decade, low-temperature engineering has transitioned from manual handling of liquid cryogens to automated closed-cycle cryostats. This review details the principles behind modern cooling hardware ranging from flow cryostats to mechanical cryocoolers and dilution refrigerators, with a specific focus on the requirements of optical quantum devices. Aimed at the practicing scientist, this overview provides the technical insights and historical context needed to navigate the current cryogenic landscape and evaluate its role in the future of quantum technology deployment.

Charge noise is an important factor limiting qubit coherence and relaxation in solid-state devices. In bilayer graphene (BLG) quantum dots, recently established as a promising platform for spin- and valley-based qubits, both the origin and magnitude of charge noise remain largely unexplored. Here, we investigate high-frequency charge noise using Landau-Zener-Stückelberg-Majorana (LZSM) interference spectroscopy. We study a single-particle charge qubit formed in a BLG double quantum dot at frequencies between 5 and 10 GHz and extract a noise spectral density $S_\varepsilon$ on the order of 0.5-0.9 neV$/\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$. This is comparable to values reported for III-V semiconductor platforms and silicon. From the temperature and frequency dependence of the charge qubit decoherence, we conclude that thermal (Johnson) noise or electron-phonon coupling dominates over two-level fluctuators.

We prove that the ground state of the AKLT models on the hexagonal lattice and the Lieb lattice satisfy the local topological quantum order (LTQO) condition. This will be a consequence of proving that the finite volume ground states are indistinguishable from a unique infinite volume ground state. Concretely, we identify a sequence of increasing and absorbing finite volumes for which any finite volume ground state expectation is well approximated by the infinite volume state with error decaying at a uniform exponential rate in the distance between the support of the observable and boundary of the finite volume. As a corollary to the LTQO property, we obtain that the spectral gap above the ground state in these models is stable under general small perturbations of sufficient decay. We prove these results by a detailed analysis of the polymer representation of the ground states state derived by Kennedy, Lieb and Tasaki (1988) with the necessary modifications required for proving the strong form of ground state indistinguishability needed for LTQO.

We introduce a general gravity-related collapse mechanism based on linearized gravity. Starting from the weak-field limit of general relativity, gravitoelectromagnetism suggests an effective coupling between the gravitoelectric potential and the mass density distribution. At the same time, it provides a similar relation for the gravitomagnetic vector potential and the mass current. Following a hybrid (classical-quantum) dynamics approach, these couplings lead to a master equation whose non-unitary part is determined by the underlying mass distribution and currents. When the gravitoelectric potential coupling is considered, the well-known Diósi-Penrose collapse model acting on positional degrees of freedom is recovered. However, upon including the gravitomagnetic vector potential, additional collapse mechanisms emerge for rotational degrees of freedom as well as for mixed mass-rotation contributions.

We present an optimal control-based strategy to enhance the estimation of impulse-like disturbances in continuously monitored linear classical and quantum systems by exploiting non-equilibrium states. Using optimal estimation techniques for linear Gaussian systems to collect information from the temporal vicinity of the disturbance, we cast the minimization of disturbance estimation uncertainty as a nonlinear optimal control problem over time-dependent system parameters. The resulting method dynamically shapes the estimation covariances through parametric modulation, maximizing information gain at a known impulse time. This differs fundamentally from conventional squeezing protocols using periodic modulation that effectively degrade inference of impulse-like disturbances. Applied to nanomechanical resonators and levitated nanoparticles, optimal parametric driving reduces estimation variance by up to a factor of two relative to steady-state operation

Quantum teleportation is a fundamental protocol in quantum information science, whose performance is conventionally evaluated under the assumption of ideal Bell-state measurements. In realistic implementations, however, joint measurements are often imperfect and can deviate from maximally entangled bases due to coherent errors in entangling operations. In this work, we analytically show how the entanglement of joint measurements determines teleportation performance and propose a strategy to overcome the limitations imposed by partially entangled joint measurements to recover the unit teleportation fidelity. We then derive an exact equation revealing a quantitative relation between measurement entanglement, channel entanglement, and the success probability to realize the unit-fidelity teleportation. We illustrate our results using elegant joint measurements and realistic coherent error models arising from imperfect entangling operations in quantum systems. Our work provides fundamental insight into the role of measurement entanglement in quantum teleportation and establishes a practical framework for achieving faithful teleportation without requiring substantial modifications to existing hardware.

We propose an experimental programme to test Leggett--Garg-type temporal correlations in single-neuron dynamics. The goal is to distinguish between diffusive (Wiener/cable-equation) models and non-diffusive persistent stochastic models based on Kac-type finite-velocity processes leading to the Telegrapher's equation. We show that while purely diffusive dynamics satisfies Leggett--Garg inequalities, persistent stochastic dynamics can produce oscillatory temporal correlations capable of violating these inequalities. The Leggett--Garg inequality may be viewed as a temporal analogue of Bell-type constraints. In the present context, however, violation is interpreted conservatively not as evidence of microscopic quantum coherence, but as evidence against a simple trajectory-based diffusive description. The resulting temporal correlations indicate persistence, memory, and contextual temporal structure mathematically analogous to that encountered in quantum systems. Using the analytic continuation connecting Kac processes to Dirac-like envelope equations, we argue that finite-velocity persistent stochastic transport provides a natural mechanism for such non-diffusive temporal correlations. These tests therefore offer a possible experimental probe of contextual and non-Markovian structure in neural dynamics without requiring claims of microscopic quantum coherence in the brain.

The quantum harmonic oscillator with time-dependent frequency is a paradigmatic model of driven quantum dynamics and one of the few nontrivial systems that admits an exact analytical solution. In this review paper, we present a unified treatment of the time-dependent oscillator based on the Lewis-Riesenfeld invariant method, Bogoliubov transformations and the Ermakov-Pinney equation. We show how these approaches naturally connect to squeezing for the description of excitations production, and to the breakdown of adiabaticity under generic frequency protocols. Exact results for sudden quenches and smooth ramps are discussed in detail. By explicitly bridging invariant methods and squeezing formalism, this review is meant to provide a comprehensive framework for understanding nonequilibrium dynamics in quadratic potentials, with applications ranging from thermodynamics and condensed matter to quantum control theory.

Quantum Hamiltonian Descent (QHD) is a continuous optimization algorithm based on simulating a time-dependent quantum Hamiltonian whose potential energy encodes the objective function and whose kinetic energy promotes exploration through quantum interference and tunneling. While QHD is formulated for unconstrained optimization, many real-world optimization problems are constrained and highly nonconvex. In this paper, we benchmark AL-QHD, a hybrid framework that embeds QHD within the Augmented Lagrangian Method (ALM), thereby solving a sequence of unconstrained subproblems while using ALM to enforce constraints. We evaluate AL-QHD on standard nonconvex test functions and use iterative refinement to improve solution accuracy at fixed per-run qubit cost. We also perform a gate-based resource analysis on ACOPF-derived power system subproblems constructed from power-network data to estimate the quantum-computer scale required for practical applications. Resource estimates on Texas7k-derived ACOPF instances show steep hard-gate scaling, reaching $\sim 4.46 \times 10^7$ entangling gates in a NISQ-oriented model and $\sim 9.42 \times 10^8$ T gates in a fault-tolerant model at $\sim 5.3 \times 10^2$ active variables. These results suggest that AL-QHD is a useful framework for studying constrained nonconvex optimization with QHD, but that practical ACOPF-scale applications would likely require large-scale fault-tolerant quantum hardware.

We study the thermodynamic value of side-information channels induced by Bell-type correlations through a CHSH prediction task embedded into a Szilard-type feedback engine. A thermal two-level system supplies a uniformly random physical microstate $X$, and a trusted referee encoding together with a nonsignalling correlation resource induces a controller bit $G$ that acts as side information about $X$. We show that the maximal average feedback work satisfies $\langle W_{\max}\rangle \le k_B T \ln 2 , I(X:G)$, with equality achievable in the ideal quasistatic limit. For the CHSH embedding considered here, the induced channel $X \to G$ is binary symmetric with success probability $p_{\rm win}=1/2+S(P)/8$, where $S(P)$ is the CHSH value. The corresponding reversible feedback work is $k_B T \ln 2 ,[1-h_2(p_{\rm win})]$, yielding a strict ordering of the optimal classical, quantum, and nonsignalling cases. The result should be interpreted as a thermodynamic valuation of CHSH-induced side information available to the controller, not as evidence that Bell nonlocality itself is a source of free energy. The analysis assumes that the controller receives only the compressed bit $G$ and does not include the thermodynamic cost of implementing the referee, the correlation resource, or the auxiliary preprocessing. A full-cycle analysis including controller-memory reset gives non-positive net work, consistent with the second law.

Achieving quantum state transfer in passive ways can become a powerful asset for scalable quantum networks. Here, we demonstrate how giant atoms coupled to 1D waveguides provide a platform for such a passive, deterministic transfer. Engineering the position and strength of coupling points, we show that the nonlocal interaction can be utilized for the emission of time-reversal-symmetric single-photon wavepackets by spontaneous decay. We first derive general analytical conditions under which arbitrary qubit decays can be mapped to wavevector-dependent couplings that guarantee perfect state transfer in the continuum limit of infinitely many coupling points. Then, for experimentally relevant configurations with a finite number of coupling points, we demonstrate that high transfer fidelities can still be achieved by optimization, reaching 87% with only two coupling points and exceeding 99% with ten or more. We further analyze the robustness of the protocol against disorder in leg positioning and extend the formalism to environments with nonlinear dispersion, showing that dispersion-induced distortions can be fully compensated by judiciously chosen setups. Our results establish giant atoms as a powerful platform for realizing high-fidelity quantum state transfer in a setting without time-dependent control, opening new avenues for scalable quantum networks and engineered light-matter interfaces.

We investigate a probe state preparation protocol based on two non-selective generalized quantum measurements to enhance parameter estimation in single-qubit systems. By fine-tuning the measurement strengths, we demonstrate the ability to design a broad class of probe states, initially prepared in a thermal state, which can be optimized for specific estimation tasks. We apply this framework to characterize the decay rate and the temperature of a generalized amplitude damping channel. Our results show that the preparation protocol significantly modulates the quantum Fisher information for both parameters. Furthermore, we derive a general analytical relationship between the quantum Fisher information, thermodynamic susceptibilities, and Hamiltonian variance, valid even in the transient regime. This connection highlights the role of energy fluctuations and kinetic response in determining metrological precision. Finally, we briefly discuss a quantum circuit for experimental implementation using nuclear magnetic resonance techniques.

Incompatible quantum channels cannot be jointly and exactly realized, meaning that any approximate joint realization inevitably entails a tradeoff in implementation accuracy. While this notion of channel incompatibility unifies fundamental limitations such as measurement uncertainty, the no information without disturbance principle, and the no-cloning and no-broadcasting theorems, connecting these traditional relations directly to the resource-theoretic strength of incompatibility has remained elusive. In this Letter, we show that generalized robustness, a typical resource quantifier of channel incompatibility, lower bounds the total error of any approximate joint realization. Applying this result to measurement channels provides a unified, model-independent framework encompassing error-error and information-error-disturbance tradeoffs. Furthermore, our robustness-based evaluation of disturbance outperforms an algebraic bound for all POVMs in dimensions up to six.

Predicting universal transport coefficients in far-from-equilibrium quantum systems remains a fundamental challenge. A paradigmatic example is the non-thermal fixed point (NTFP) of isolated Bose gases, where coherence spreads as $\ell^2(t) = C\hbar t/m$ with a universal constant $C$. While the scaling exponent $z=2$ is well established, the amplitude $C$ has remained elusive because the underlying particle cascade $n(k)\sim k^{-4}$ leads to a divergent kinetic energy, threatening the very existence of a constant speed limit. Here we resolve this paradox and present the first analytical, parameter-free prediction of a universal amplitude $C$. A deep interplay between symmetry and dissipation is uncovered. The emergent weak U(1) symmetry at the NTFP enforces a conserved total current, forcing the low-energy phase dynamics to obey a diffusive Langevin equation with noise entering as the divergence of a stochastic current. This structure, combined with dynamical decoherence of high-momentum modes, yields a universal power-law momentum distribution $\tilde{f}(v)\sim(1+v^2)^{-3}$ (with $v=k\ell$) that naturally regularizes the ultraviolet divergence. From this, a parameter-free geometric baseline $C=3$ is obtained, independent of microscopic details. The experimental value $C=3.4(3)$ [Martirosyan et al., Nature 647, 608 (2025)] is then shown to be quantitatively consistent with universal logarithmic corrections arising from a marginally irrelevant coupling at the fixed point. A new paradigm is thus established for predicting transport coefficients in strongly correlated non-equilibrium systems: symmetry constraints determine the low-energy effective theory, dynamical decoherence provides a natural ultraviolet completion, and scaling analysis delivers testable predictions moving beyond scaling exponents to quantitative amplitude prediction.

Barren plateaus in variational quantum circuits are commonly attributed to strong mixing dynamics that cause gradient variance to vanish exponentially with system size. Passive photonic circuits, central to linear optical quantum computing, challenge this picture: although their Hilbert space can be exponentially large, their dynamics are constrained to a Lie algebra whose dimension scales as the square of the number of modes. In photonic systems, postselection also plays a central role, with gradient concentration governed not by the Hilbert-space dimension but by how it reshapes the effective observable. Through exact statevector simulations, we compare allow-bunching evolution, collision-free filtering, and dual-rail postselection. In the allow-bunching and collision-free regimes, gradient variance remains consistent with polynomial rather than exponential decay over the tested system sizes. By contrast, dual-rail postselection induces exponential concentration beyond moderate system sizes, robustly across three initialization ensembles. These results indicate that photonic barren plateaus are governed by the interplay between passive linear-optical dynamics, postselection geometry, and task observables, offering practical guidance for designing near-term photonic variational architectures.

Uncertainty relations are usually stated as bounds on selected combinations of variances, but the full covariance matrix contains substantially richer information about the geometry of quantum state space and about the operational capabilities of quantum systems. Here we characterize the covariance matrices attainable by a finite-dimensional canonical pair of observables related by the discrete Fourier transform, the natural analogue of position and momentum in a finite Hilbert space. We combine analytic arguments with convex-geometric and semidefinite-programming methods based on joint numerical ranges to describe the admissible region through unitary invariants, in particular the trace and determinant of the covariance matrix. This provides a systematic way to identify extremal states, generalizing the notion of minimum-uncertainty states, and to quantify how the discrete uncertainty geometry approaches its continuous counterpart with increasing dimension. We further show that the resulting covariance-matrix characterization has direct consequences for applications: it yields accuracy bounds for multi parameter estimation protocols and separability criteria for finite-dimensional bipartite systems, including discrete analogues of continuous-variable EPR-type witnesses. Our results establish a systematic and versatile platform for connecting uncertainty relations, convex quantum geometry, metrology, and entanglement detection in finite-dimensional systems.

In superconducting devices running variational workloads, gate and readout fidelities drift on hour timescales, while existing runtime schedulers treat backend quality as static. The temporal dimension of calibration remains unresolved. We formulate runtime calibration as a state-trajectory feedback-control problem under a fixed wall-clock budget, and investigate whether spending time on calibration now can improve the future optimization trajectory. Calibration quality proxy is represented as a drifting equivalent-age state, recovery action is modeled as costly state reset, and policies are evaluated by time-integrated optimization gap over the full execution window. Using a finite-horizon rollout controller, we compare feedback calibration against a strengthened family of open-loop baselines across three latency regimes: cloud-like (25 ms), local-millisecond (1 ms), and tight-loop (4 $\mathrmμ$s). The results show a clear ordering: cloud-like feedback is generally uncompetitive, while local-ms and tight-loop regimes open a positive-gain region that grows with workload quality-sensitivity and initial calibration age. Crucially, the gap between local-ms and tight-loop control is modest for single-target recovery. The advantage of tight-loop integration emerges under capacity pressure, when many calibration targets must be processed within the same control window.

We develop an adiabatic quantum simulation framework on gate-based quantum computers to probe topological signatures of the one-dimensional fermionic Su--Schrieffer--Heeger--Hubbard (SSHH) model. We present explicit quantum-circuit constructions for initial-state preparation and time evolution, together with a practical measurement protocol and classical post-processing procedure for extracting the many-body Berry phase and the spatial profile of the sublattice polarization. Using classical simulations of the proposed circuits, we demonstrate -- for the first time within a genuine many-body framework -- that the topological characteristics of the SSH model remain robust against weak Hubbard interactions but eventually break down as the chiral-symmetry-breaking component of the interaction exceeds a threshold. The required qubit number, gate complexity, measurement shots, and classical pre- and post-processing costs all scale polynomially with system size. Our results provide a proof-of-concept framework for probing topological properties of interacting many-body systems via adiabatic quantum simulation on future large-scale quantum computers.

We report the first experimental realization of backward retrieval in a spin-wave quantum memory based on a Stark-echo-modulated protocol in Eu3+:Y2SiO5. By using Stark control, we preserve the full optical depth of the ensemble while suppressing coherent noise, enabling conditional storage fidelities above 97%. Our analysis shows that the present backward-retrieval efficiency is mainly limited by technical imperfections rather than by fundamental constraints. With realistic engineering improvements, backward retrieval in this protocol could move beyond the reabsorption-limited forward-emission regime. The protocol is also compatible with cavity-enhanced operation, offering an additional route toward higher efficiencies. These findings establish Stark-echo modulation as a practical and scalable route to high-efficiency, long-lived solid-state quantum memories.

Practical quantum key distribution (QKD) modulators inevitably introduce correlations, causing the state emitted in a given round to depend on the setting choices made in previous rounds. These correlations break the round-by-round independence structure on which many widely used security proof techniques rely, leaving a significant gap between available theoretical guarantees and the reality of practical implementations. In this work, we develop a finite-key security proof for decoy-state BB84 against general coherent attacks that rigorously incorporates correlations introduced by Alice's bit-and-basis encoder, while requiring only partial characterization of such correlations.

We investigate the spectral structure of reset-driven Floquet quantum channels generated by the Hamiltonian evolution of a many-body system followed by periodic resetting of a bath. By tuning a chaos-controlling parameter in the underlying Hamiltonian, we uncover an exceptional-point-induced spectral transition from a symmetry-constrained ergodic regime to a fully chaotic regime. Across this transition, increasing the chaos parameter causes the real eigenvalues of the channel to drift, coalesce at exceptional points, and bifurcate into complex-conjugate pairs, signaling the progressive breaking of symmetry constraints in operator space. We further show that the channel spectrum sharply distinguishes chaotic, ergodic, many-body localized, and scarred dynamical regimes. Finally, we connect the leading channel eigenvalues to experimentally accessible probes based on quantum mutual information, establishing a link between the spectral organization of reset-driven quantum channels and observable relaxation dynamics.

We study the tunneling effect of Dirac fermions in a monolayer WSe$_2$ subjected to a static electrostatic barrier and irradiated by a linearly polarized laser field. Within the Floquet formalism, the time-periodic driving is incorporated to derive analytical wave functions across the three regions of the system. By enforcing continuity conditions at the interfaces, we obtain the transmission and reflection coefficients, which are then used to evaluate the conductance via the Büttiker approach. Our results reveal that the laser field induces a rich Floquet sideband structure, whose number and strength increase with the driving parameter $α$. This leads to a significant suppression of transmission and provides an efficient mechanism to overcome Klein tunneling. Moreover, increasing the width of the irradiated region enhances the interaction between fermions and the external field, resulting in energy renormalization and the formation of Stark-like confined states. The interaction between several Floquet channels creates strong interference effects, which reduce the transmitted current even further. The results demonstrate that light-matter interaction allows for the dynamic control of quantum transport in WSe$_2$ materials. This technology allows for the development of new optoelectronic devices, including tunable quantum filters and light-controlled nanoscale transistors.

Encrypted cloning offers a means of introducing redundancy into quantum storage while respecting the no-cloning theorem: an unknown state is encoded into multiple signal-noise pairs, and only authorized subsets can recover the original information. However, the leakage properties of unauthorized subsets particularly for higher-dimensional systems (qudits) have remained unexplored. In this work, we systematically classify the informative subsets of the storage register in the qudit encrypted-cloning protocol. We focus on unauthorized subsets of size $n$ that contain exactly one qudit from each signal-noise pair. We show that the presence or absence of information leakage is determined by the solution set of a system of congruences whose coefficients depend on the dimension $d$ and on the numbers of signal and noise qudits in the subset. The reduced state is completely uninformative if and only if the congruence system admits only the trivial solution; otherwise, it retains a residual dependence on the input state through specific generalized Pauli operators. Low-dimensional examples ($n=1,2,3$) are worked out explicitly, and the complete classification is expressed in terms of a greatest-common-divisor condition. Our results extend the parity-based classification known for qubits ($d=2$) to arbitrary finite dimensions, revealing a dimension-dependent boundary of confidentiality in encrypted cloning.

The circuit dynamics constructed by traveling-wave parametric amplifiers (TWPA), using superconducting nonlinear asymmetric elements (SNAILs), are known to be approximately described by the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) or modified KdV equations in the continuum limit and admit soliton solutions. The soliton spatially modulates the effective propagation velocity of the weak probe field, which leads to the effective realization of the causal structure of the analogue event horizons in the SNAIL-TWPA circuit system. In this paper, we derive the master equation for the weak probe field where the background soliton acts as an effective potential. We show the absence of normalizable negative modes in the SNAIL-TWPA circuit system by using the language of supersymmetric quantum mechanics. We also present the first study of quasi-normal modes (QNM) of the SNAIL-TWPA analogue black-white hole system by semi-analytic and numerical methods. Based on the resultant QNM frequency, we clarify the timescale at which nonlinear dispersion becomes effective in the SNAIL-TWPA circuit system and demonstrate how ringdown is excited.

While world models learn compact representations of complex environments, they lack a physics-grounded metric to assess the structural fidelity of their latent spaces. We identify the wavelet scaling exponent $α$ as a critical diagnostic, proposing optimal representations satisfy variance equipartition ($α\approx 1/2$) -- mirroring Kolmogorov's inertial range. We establish $α= 1/2$ as a sharp transition boundary for the classical simulability of amplitude-encoded quantum kernels. Using tensor-network theory, we prove latents with $α> 1/2$ reside in an area-law phase admitting efficient classical emulation, while $α< 1/2$ triggers a volume-law phase where the Matrix Product State bond dimension $χ$ grows exponentially with qubit count $n$. Analyzing pre-trained VideoMAE latents reveals a dichotomy: spatial tokens approach the equipartition limit ($α\approx 0.423$), but permutation-invariant feature channels exhibit unstructured disorder ($α\approx -0.123$). This forces real-world latents deep into the volume-law phase, providing a data-driven necessary condition for simulation hardness. Finally, we apply Weingarten calculus to derive the exact variance of the scrambled transition probability under a 2-design ensemble. We prove this variance scales strictly as $\Var[X] = Θ(d^{-2})$. We confirm this numerically with a log-log slope of $-1.881$ ($R^2 = 0.999$), identifying a formidable shot-noise wall demanding a measurement budget of $M = Ω(d^2)$ that constrains quantum machine learning scalability.

Running a quantum circuit on current hardware involves a sequence of engineering decisions, each with tunable parameters and distinct error characteristics. Existing tools optimize each decision in isolation, leaving practitioners unable to determine how much each decision contributes to final output quality. We present QuBridge, a pipeline analysis tool that decomposes quantum computation into three decision layers and measures each layer's fidelity contribution through progressive ablation and isolation experiments. Applied to quantum teleportation under IBM-calibrated noise models, the framework surfaces three phenomena that end-to-end measurement obscures. Qubit selection narrows the worst-case fidelity band from 11.8% to under 2% with downstream layers held fixed, without changing the peak. Per-gate pulse-shape assignment adds a +0.9% residual gain whose attributed magnitude depends on upstream layout. Error-detection encoding is not uniformly advantageous, and its conditional benefit emerges for input states whose dominant error channel is detectable by the chosen code. QuBridge operates on cached calibration data without requiring live hardware access.

In the Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) era, limited qubit counts and high gate error rates directly constrain circuit fidelity, making the minimization of CNOT gate counts crucial. While conventional compilers prioritize heuristic efficiency, there is a compelling need for "accuracy-first" transpilation that prioritizes gate reduction over compilation latency. We propose a framework leveraging the Digital Annealer (DA) via two complementary strategies: (1) Hybrid, which uses DA-driven global initial mapping combined with high-speed heuristic routing by Qiskit, and (2) Full DA, which solves mapping and routing as separate DA-assisted QUBO subproblems within an iterative workflow. Benchmarks demonstrate that our Hybrid approach achieves an average CNOT reduction of 13.7 % (up to 57.4 %) compared to Qiskit's highest optimization level, with the largest gains on structured circuits such as GHZ and ASP where the initial layout is decisive. The Full DA approach matches Hybrid on structured circuits and outperforms ISAAQ by 23.1 % on average (maximum 90.8 %), but degrades on circuits with random or concentrated connectivity - exposing a trade-off between QUBO size and solution quality when the entire circuit is encoded in a single annealing pass. Although these global optimizations incur higher computational overhead than pure heuristics, our results indicate that for high-precision workflows where gate noise is the primary bottleneck, DA-assisted global initial placement provides a practical "time-for-quality" trade-off for enhancing the utility of near-term quantum hardware.

Losses are ubiquitous in physics and are usually regarded as harmful in quantum information processing. Here, we propose a loss-induced scheme to achieve nonreciprocity and nonreciprocal entanglement in a superconducting platform, where two remote superconducting transmon qubits are connected via two lossy auxiliary cavities. The nonreciprocity in our scheme originates from interference between multiple lossy coupling paths. The coherent phases associated with the qubit-resonator couplings reverse sign under propagation reversal, while the loss-induced phases remain direction independent. Their combined effect leads to different interference conditions in the opposite directions, resulting in unequal effective couplings. We show that this loss-induced scheme can generate nonreciprocal quantum entanglement, indicating that loss can be utilized as a resource. Moreover, the tunability of nonreciprocity and nonreciprocal entanglement in our scheme can be manipulated by the relative phase induced by loss, allowing to tailor both reciprocal and nonreciprocal behaviors. Our results establish a direct link between engineered loss and nonreciprocal entanglement in quantum information processing and offer potential applications in scalable quantum networks.

Applied category theory provides powerful mathematical tools for modelling processes and their composition. Symmetric monoidal categories, which involve series and parallel composition, are particularly well-suited for describing the composition of processes in space and time. Also called process theories, they admit string diagrams, which constitute a visually intuitive, mathematically rigorous, expressive and flexible syntax that is applicable to wide-ranging scientific domains. In this thesis, we employ string diagrams to investigate a selection of topics in the areas of quantum foundations, computing, and natural language processing: (1) We formalise constructor theory as a process theory. In the context of quantum physics, we also demonstrate the conflict between constructor-theoretic principles of locality and composition. Moreover, we argue that if the principle of locality is rejected, categorical quantum mechanics (CQM) can be conceived as a constructor theory of quantum physics. (2) We develop a formalism for wave-based logic circuits with phase encoding. We motivate the formalism using the example of spin-wave circuits, and then demonstrate its utility in design, analysis and optimisation of Boolean logic circuits. (3) We investigate the elimination of inter-language grammatical bureaucracy in the distributional compositional circuits (DisCoCirc) framework. In particular, we develop a hybrid grammar for a restricted fragment of the Urdu language, and show that Urdu text endowed with this hybrid grammar maps surjectively to DisCoCirc text circuits. Furthermore, we show that for the same language fragment, Urdu and English text circuits become the same up to gate-level translation. The aforementioned work supports the view that a process-relational outlook in science is well-supported by applied category-theoretic tools, particularly string diagrams.

We investigate the relationship between quantum battery capacity and quantum resources in a two-qubit system consisting of mutually coupled battery and charger subsystems. We find that the battery capacity decreases monotonically with the quantum entanglement, steering, Bell nonlocality and coherence, and peaks when these four quantum resources vanish. Moreover, we reveal the capacity gap between the total system capacity and the sum of the battery and charger spin capacities, which is the residual battery capacity, and establish its positive correlation with entanglement. Furthermore, unlike the first four resources, although the battery capacity decreases monotonically with quantum imaginarity, its disappearance under system detuning does not guarantee a peak capacity, and this effect becomes more pronounced as the detuning increases. In contrast to the first five resources, the quantum state texture shows a positive correlation with battery capacity, but a negative correlation with entanglement, steering, Bell nonlocality, coherence, imaginarity, and residual battery capacity. These monotonic relationships are independent of the choice of system parameters. Our findings reveal the relationship between quantum battery capacity and quantum resources during the dynamic evolution of a quantum battery system, and advances the theory of quantum batteries and the development of quantum energy storage systems.

High-performance computing systems are rapidly evolving into heterogeneous platforms that fuse quantum accelerators with traditional classical processing units (CPUs) and graphical processing units (GPUs). This convergence calls for runtimes capable of managing both classical and quantum workloads in a unified manner. We introduce an intelligent, task-based runtime that marries the Intelligent RuntIme System (IRIS) asynchronous scheduler with a quantum programming stack through the Quantum Intermediate Representation Execution Engine (QIR-EE). Our design allows programs written in the quantum intermediate representation (QIR) to be dispatched concurrently to a variety of back-ends, including multiple quantum simulators and nascent quantum processors, enabling genuine hybrid execution on a single node. To illustrate its practicality, we partition a 4-qubit and 20-qubit circuit into three sub-circuits using quantum circuit cutting via the QCut library. Each sub-circuit is simulated independently by the QIR-EE driver within IRIS, after which a classical post-processing step merges the simulation results to recover the outcome of the original full-circuit computation. This case study demonstrates how finer task granularity can enable the parallel execution and lower the simulation burden per quantum task while preserving overall accuracy, highlighting the feasibility of our hybrid approach.

The measurement of top-quark spin correlations provides a key tool for probing its interactions with high precision. Owing to its extremely short lifetime ($τ\sim 10^{-25}$ s), the top quark preserves its spin polarization information, making the $t\bar{t}$ system an ideal framework for investigating quantum correlations in high-energy physics. In this work, we analyze quantum correlations in $t\bar{t}$ pairs produced in QCD using several quantum information-theoretic measures, including Bell nonlocality, quantum steering, concurrence, and geometric quantum discord. Their dependence on kinematic variables is examined in both the $gg \to t\bar{t}$ and $q\bar{q} \to t\bar{t}$ channels, with convergence toward the $gg \to t\bar{t}$ dominated regime in the ultra-relativistic limit ($β= 1$). We also investigate the effect of three effective decoherence channels (AD, PD, and PF). The AD and PD channels lead to a monotonic degradation of correlations as the decoherence parameter $p$ increases, while the PF channel exhibits a symmetric behavior around $p=1/2$. The impact of these channels on quantum teleportation is analyzed, showing that it remains above the classical threshold of $2/3$ even in the presence of noise. These results indicate that certain quantum resources can persist despite decoherence, opening new perspectives at the interface of quantum information and particle physics.

In discrete-variable black-box optimization, the number of candidate solutions grows combinatorially, while each evaluation is often expensive. Therefore, it is important to identify promising solutions efficiently within a limited number of trials. Bayesian Optimization of Combinatorial Structures (BOCS), an existing parametric method, works effectively when only a small amount of data is available. However, as the number of observations increases, BOCS tends to repeatedly propose points that have already been evaluated, which leads to search stagnation. A random-point addition strategy has been proposed to address this issue when an evaluated point is proposed, but it cannot sufficiently exploit information from promising data obtained so far. In this study, we propose a hybrid method that uses BOCS as the main search framework and generates alternative unevaluated points using a Gaussian process only when search stagnation is detected. In the Gaussian-process-based component, multiple Lower Confidence Bound (LCB) acquisition functions are adaptively selected to dynamically control the balance between exploitation and exploration. Numerical experiments using fully connected Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) and Higher-order Unconstrained Binary Optimization (HUBO) as black-box functions show that the proposed method finds solutions with better objective values than the conventional random-point addition method in both settings. Additional analyses show that its effectiveness comes from selecting points that promote search progress within Hamming-distance neighborhoods, rather than simply adding low-energy points near promising solutions. Experiments with sparse surrogate models for quantum annealer applications further suggest the importance of retaining near-fully connected representational capacity.

We present exact solutions for the non-equilibrium steady states of a class of dissipative spinless fermionic systems with arbitrary Hamiltonian pairing terms, global charging energy interactions, and uniform single particle loss on every site. Our exact solution is found by generalizing the coherent quantum absorber technique to fermionic systems, and our result establishes the existence of hidden time-reversal symmetry in driven-dissipative fermionic models. The steady state exhibits a first order phase transition in the particle density, with the resulting jump discontinuity in density persisting even for finite dissipation rates. A mean-field description of the model exhibits a bistable regime that encompasses the first-order transition line yet which fails to accurately predict its precise location via a Maxwell construction. We also show that the model's hidden time-reversal symmetry results in an Onsager symmetry of certain two-time correlation functions.

Analog quantum computation offers a route to machine learning using controllable physical dynamics as a computational resource. However, many existing approaches rely on task-specific protocols or observables that are difficult to access experimentally, limiting generality and implementation. Here we introduce Qlustering, an unsupervised clustering framework based on steady-state quantum transport in quantum networks governed by the GKSL master equation, developed through algorithm-hardware co-design. Data are encoded as input states, and cluster assignments are inferred from steady-state output currents, avoiding full state tomography in favor of accessible transport observables. The method realizes a hybrid classical-quantum workflow in which data preparation and training are performed classically, while clustering is carried out by transport dynamics. We benchmark the method on synthetic datasets, localization, and QM9 and Iris, finding competitive performance and stability over a broad range of dephasing strengths. These results show that unlabeled data structure can be extracted directly from steady-state transport observables, identifying terminal-current readout as a native, tomography-free mechanism for unsupervised learning in open quantum networks.

We report on a gate-based variational quantum classifier implemented with single photons and probabilistic gates, to emulate the standard quantum circuit model framework. We evaluate the expressive power of two deployable quantum neural networks (QNNs) by computing their effective dimension, a capacity measure grounded in a proven generalization-error bound, and compare them with classical artificial neural networks (ANNs) of equivalent trainable-parameter count. Supervised binary classification tasks are used to benchmark performance across photonic and superconducting QNNs, both of which exhibit superior converged (lower) cross-entropy loss and (higher) prediction accuracy relative to matched-parameter ANNs. For a nonlinearly separable task, our photonic QNN with a single pair of trainable parameters successfully converged (loss 0.04 and accuracy 100%), whereas the equivalent ANN failed to learn the decision boundary, saturating at random-guessing performance. We simulate photonic quantum circuits, training them on the XOR problem and a two-class Iris subset using gradient-free optimization, and assess their robustness to sampling errors under realistic noise processes including photon loss and phase-shifter imperfections. Circuits with comparatively high effective dimension were deployed remotely on a six-qubit photonic quantum processor, achieving classification accuracies of up to 100% in both online and offline learning settings. Notably, even the simplest QNN deployed, with just two trainable parameters, successfully solved tasks that classically require ANNs with at least quadruple the number of parameters, suggesting an emergent algorithmic advantage. Overall, these results demonstrate a clear proof-of-principle that gate-based QNNs can be realized and trained effectively on current photonic hardware, providing proof of algorithmic advantage on a gate-based photonic QNN.

Complementarity relations constrain the distribution of coherence, predictability, and openness in quantum systems. Here we show that, in open quantum systems, these local constraints acquire a geometric interpretation through quasistatic transport. For a driven dissipative qubit, the complementarity variables define cylindrical coordinates on the Bloch sphere, while openness appears geometrically as a radial deficit associated with reduction from a larger Hilbert space. Quasistatic driving induces a work connection on the resulting steady-state manifold whose curvature determines the cyclic response. Hamiltonian-aligned dissipation produces an exact work connection and vanishing cyclic work, whereas fixed pointer-basis dissipation generates non-integrable transport, finite curvature, and holonomic response. The resulting curvature admits a phase-resolved representation on the triality manifold and develops perturbatively with pointer--Hamiltonian mismatch. In the weak-mismatch limit, the curvature is governed by a competition between coherence-preserving and pure-dephasing channels, producing symmetry-related positive- and negative-curvature sectors. These results establish a direct connection between complementarity, dissipation, and geometric thermodynamic response, and show that cyclic quasistatic work provides an operational probe of nonequilibrium quantum geometry.

Laplacians on metric graphs are used to construct continuous families of Hamiltonians with different topological structure. One such family is used to demonstrate that Hamiltonians with real-valued eigenfunctions may possess non-trivial geometric Berry's phase. Connections between non-trivial Berry's phase and topology change are discussed.

We explore Krylov complexity in the BMN matrix model following a systematic reduction of it, known as the pulsating fuzzy sphere model. We present an analytical setup that allows us to calculate Lanczos coefficients in both large and small deformation limits of the matrix model.

The KAK decomposition is a fundamental tool in Lie theory and quantum computing. Despite its widespread use, the mathematical foundations remain incomplete, particularly regarding the precise conditions for the decomposition and the characterization of equivalence classes under multiplication by elements of $K$. Here, we present a mathematical theory of the KAK decomposition for connected compact semisimple Lie groups and derive the decomposition for $\mathrm{SU}(4)$. In particular, we clarify the relationship between various definitions of a Cartan decomposition in the literature and give a complete proof of a general KAK decomposition theorem. We then distinguish two distinct notions of KAK equivalence classes, double coset equivalence and projective equivalence, thereby addressing mathematical inconsistencies regarding KAK classification in the literature. Specifically, for $\mathrm{SU}(4)$, we show that local equivalence classes under multiplication by $\mathrm{SU}(2)\otimes \mathrm{SU}(2)$ are geometrically represented not by the usual "Weyl chamber" as claimed in the existing literature. Instead, the "Weyl chamber" is only recovered by the projective-local equivalence which disregards global phases. We develop a systematic theory for determining equivalence and uniqueness for both notions of equivalence. Our work establishes a rigorous Lie-theoretic foundation for the theory of quantum gates and circuits.

For more than a century, the diffraction limit has defined the resolution achievable by passive optical imaging systems. Although some resolution improvement can be gained through classical data processing of the image, it is limited by the noise arising from quantum nature of light. Minimizing the effect of this noise requires quantum treatment of optical imaging. By reformulating imaging as a problem of quantum measurement and estimation, it becomes possible to identify optimal detection strategies that recover spatial information previously thought inaccessible. This review summarizes the theoretical framework that underpins this development, from the formulation of quantum Cramér-Rao bounds and Chernoff bounds to the construction of receivers that attain them, such as those based on spatial-mode demultiplexing. We show how these methods can beat conventional imaging in the classification, localization, and imaging of sub-Rayleigh incoherent sources. We then discuss extensions to multiparameter and partially coherent scenarios, and highlight the unifying connections between estimation and discrimination tasks. Finally, we survey recent experimental demonstrations that approach quantum-limited resolution and outline emerging applications in microscopy, astronomy, and optical sensing.

We show that the entanglement entropy (EE) of one-dimensional (1d) non-interacting fermions with $U(1)$ symmetry in the presence of a quasi-periodic or disordered potential in which the occupation number is being monitored by homodyne or quantum jump protocols is always in an area-law phase so no measurement induced phase transition (MIPT) occurs. The reason for the previously claimed MIPT in these systems was a finite size effect related to the fact that the maximum lattice size $L \sim 500$ was of the order of the correlation length. By increasing the system size up to $L \leq 18000$, employing Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), and performing a careful finite size scaling analysis, we find that the critical monitoring strength is consistent with zero so no MIPT occurs. For the disordered case, these numerical results are fully supported by an analytical calculation based on mapping the problem onto a nonlinear sigma model (NLSM) with an additional mass-like term that confirms the absence of the MIPT for any monitoring or disorder strength. Another salient feature of the disordered case, in part related to a different symmetry in the NLSM, is that the correlation length in the weak disorder limit is longer than in the clean limit and increases with the disordered strength.

We develop a non-perturbative description of squeezed light generation in an arbitrary lossy structure consisting of multiple coupled microring resonators. This is applied to two ring photonic molecules where the interference of the fields in the coupled rings leads to a modification in the resonance spectrum near a shared resonance. Considering a dual-pump degenerate squeezing scheme under a five resonance approximation, we investigate two methods to suppress parasitic four-wave mixing contributions and compensate for group velocity dispersion within a primary resonator through hybridization effects with a second auxiliary resonator. In the former case, this comes from an effective splitting of the unwanted resonances supporting parasitic four-wave mixing interactions that add thermal noise to the desired degenerate squeezed state. For sufficiently strong coupling between the resonators, we demonstrate near complete suppression of such parasitic processes, resulting in near unit fidelities with the corresponding output state that would arise were the parasitic interactions neglected. In the latter case, the hybridization effectively shifts a pump resonance, realigning the desired dual-pump four-wave mixing process and leading to a significant enhancement of the signal generation and output squeezing.

We investigate the vacuum and thermal fluctuations of a neutral massless scalar field living in Minkowski spacetime and interacting with a finite number of point-like obstacles, modelled by zero-range potentials. The system is described rigorously in terms of self-adjoint realizations of the Laplacian, under assumptions ensuring the absence of instabilities. Using the relative zeta-function technique, we determine the renormalized connected partition function and derive explicit expressions for the thermodynamic observables, characterizing both their low- and high-temperature behaviours. Furthermore, we derive of a convergent Born series expansion for the Casimir energy, which identifies multiple-scattering processes as the mechanism underlying vacuum forces. The latter decompose into pairwise contributions directed along the lines joining the obstacles, with intensities depending non-locally on the full configuration. We also present some numerical results for identical obstacles, indicating that the Casimir forces are always attractive in this context.

We investigate the benefits of partially upgrading optical networks with hollow-core fibers for QKD-classical communication coexistence. Results show that upgrading 40% of links in a metro topology can reduce the number of quantum modules by up to 49%.

We introduce a hybrid oscillator-qubit formulation of linear combination of Hamiltonian simulation (LCHS) for solving linear ordinary differential equations. Instead of representing the quadrature rule with a discrete-variable (DV) ancilla register in qubit-only LCHS, the method encodes the LCHS kernel in a continuous-variable (CV) ancillary mode, thereby eliminating the explicit $O(\log M_a)$ ancilla-qubit overhead, where $M_a$ is the number of discretized integral terms in the DV quadrature rule. We derive analytical error bounds for two main approximation mechanisms for the ideal kernel state preparation, showing superalgebraic convergence for Schwartz-class kernels in the truncation cutoff $N$. The required CV non-Gaussianity is captured by the finite squeezed-Fock kernel state, which generically has stellar rank $N-1$, identifying the truncation cutoff as a discrete measure of the oracle's non-Gaussian resource. For the hybrid oscillator-qubit evolution, we also obtain a product-formula bound showing that a $p$th-order formula requires $O(t^{1+1/p}(Γ_{p,N}/ε_t)^{1/p})$ Trotter steps to reach error $ε_t$, where $Γ_{p,N}$ collects Pauli commutator terms weighted by powers of the truncated position-operator norm $\|\hat{x}\|_N$. We further derive a perturbation bound for the probability of obtaining the required oscillator measurement outcome, showing that an $ε$-close implementation of the ideal LCHS oracle in operator norm induces only an $O(ε)$ perturbation in the postselection probability. In the heat-equation benchmarks, the Law--Eberly protocol achieves end-to-end solution fidelity at least 99.90%. A comparison with a matrix-product-state-based DV LCHS implementation further shows that, the hybrid construction uses a substantially more compact oracle description with reduce circuit cost.

We demonstrate how crystalline symmetry lowering, as for instance through strain, allows elemental superconductors such as vanadium and niobium to realize spin-singlet orbitally polarized Cooper pairs composed of electrons with identical orbital moments. Using superconducting density functional theory, we show that lowering of trigonal symmetry to $C_s$, thus keeping only a single mirror plane, activates interorbital pairing in bulk and (111) surfaces, with a pronounced surface enhancement. In a magnetic field, the resulting orbitally polarized superconducting state leads to a novel transverse magnetic response. For in--plane field orientations that break the remaining mirror symmetry, a sizable orbital magnetization emerges perpendicular to the applied field. We show that this effect is a direct consequence of equal--orbital-moment Cooper pairing, providing an experimentally accessible signature of this state. Our results establish strained elemental superconductors as a minimal material platform for superconducting orbitronics.

In our previous article [arXiv:2307.12552], we introduced local topological order (LTO) axioms for abstract quantum spin systems which allow one to access topological order via a boundary algebra construction. Using the LTO axioms, we produced a canonical pure state on the quasi-local algebra, which gives a net of von Neumann algebras associated to a poset of cones in $\mathbb{R}^n$. In this article, motivated by [arXiv:2509.23734], we introduce an axiom for LTOs which ensures Haag duality for cone-like regions using Tomita-Takesaki theory. We prove this axiom is satisfied for all known topologically ordered commuting projector models. We thus get an independent proof of Haag duality for the Levin-Wen string net models originally proved in [arXiv:2509.23734]. We also give a reflection positivity axiom for LTOs, connecting to the recent article [arXiv:2510.20662]. We again prove this axiom is satisfied for all known topologically ordered commuting projector models about some $\mathbb{Z}/2$-reflection symmetry.

We develop a Ginzburg--Landau theory for superconducting thin films under quantum confinement. Starting from the microscopic BCS free energy and the recently developed confinement theory of metallic thin films, explicit analytical expressions are derived for the Ginzburg--Landau coefficients, coherence length, penetration depth, electronic mean free path, and Ginzburg--Landau parameter in confined geometries. The central result is that quantum confinement directly renormalizes the intrinsic superconducting coherence length through confinement-induced modifications of the electronic density of states and Fermi energy. This effect is absent in conventional thin-film transport theories based solely on surface scattering. As a consequence, confinement simultaneously suppresses the coherence length and enhances the penetration depth, thereby driving superconductors toward progressively stronger type-II behavior with decreasing film thickness. The theory predicts a crossover regime in which confinement-induced renormalization of superconducting length scales and transport scattering become strongly intertwined. Comparison with recent penetration-depth measurements in Al thin films shows that the observed enhancement of the penetration depth originates from the interplay between confinement-induced renormalization of the coherence length and suppression of the effective mean free path by surface and disorder scattering. The results establish a direct connection between quantum confinement and superconducting electrodynamics in confined metallic films.

This paper identifies exact probabilistic simulation cost as the natural quantitative measure of quantum advantage for finite automata under strict cutpoints. It gives sharp simulation laws for two representative models. A one-way finite automaton with $c$ classical states and a $q$-dimensional quantum register has exact probabilistic simulation cost $Θ(cq^2)$, while an $n$-dimensional measure-once one-way quantum finite automaton has worst-case cost $Θ(n^2)$. The proofs develop a prepare--test framework, in which prefixes generate the relevant real operator degrees of freedom and suffixes convert them into strict-cutpoint tests. The same obstruction is recast through finite sign-rank matrices, clarifying the role of Forster's spectral method. Placed beside the surrounding two-way separations, these results give a clean hierarchy of finite-automata quantum advantage.

Quantum computers are increasingly accessible, yet demonstrations of physically meaningful simulations for real materials remain scarce. In our work we simulate low-energy magnetic excitations, specifically spin-wave spectra, of chromium tri-halide monolayers. Starting from ab-initio electronic structure calculations for these two-dimensional magnets, we derive an effective spin model and simulate low-energy spin excitations using a real-time propagation of the spin system on the commercial quantum computing cloud platform IQM Resonance. The results for systems with up to 48 qubits are validated against classical benchmarks. While some spectral features remain challenging for today's NISQ devices, our simulation achieves good agreement at quasi-constant wall-time scaling, compared to the exponential scaling of classical methods. Our results demonstrate that, even in the absence of quantum advantage, useful quantum simulations of real materials are becoming possible for domain experts via commercial cloud access to quantum computers.

Decoded Quantum Interferometry (DQI) is a recently introduced quantum algorithm that reduces discrete optimization to decoding with potential advantages over the best known polynomial-time classical algorithms for certain Max-LINSAT problems. In its original formulation, however, DQI treats all constraints uniformly and cannot exploit the weight structure present in most optimization problems of interest. In this work, we develop a theory of DQI for weighted optimization problems, focusing on the weighted Max-LINSAT problem over a prime field. Grouping constraints into $N$ blocks by distinct weights, we introduce \emph{multivariate DQI states} built from $N$-variable polynomials of bounded total degree, and derive a closed-form asymptotic expression for both their optimal expectation value and their concentration behavior. We give an explicit preparation circuit using a single decoder call, and extend the analysis to imperfect decoding. We also show that, for certain weighted OPI problems, multivariate DQI outperforms a natural weighted analogue of Prange's algorithm, which serves as the weighted counterpart of the classical benchmark used in the unweighted setting. Finally, we extend the ideas to Hamiltonian DQI, obtaining approximate Gibbs states for commuting Pauli Hamiltonians with block structure.

Time-independent scattering methods are widely used to analyze transport in periodic $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric systems. However, their predictions become unphysical when the system supports time-growing bound states (TGBSs), which manifest as $S$-matrix poles in the first quadrant of the complex wave-number plane. Here, we analytically delineate the region of physical relevance for a $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric chain of $N$ unit cells with gain/loss strength $γ$. We derive the TGBS onset threshold $γ_c = 2\sin[π/(4N)]$, which scales as $π/(2N)$ for large $N$ and vanishes in the thermodynamic limit. Enlarging the structure thus enriches stationary scattering phenomenology but inevitably triggers TGBSs at weaker gain/loss. Time-dependent wave-packet simulations confirm this analytical boundary quantitatively. Applying this criterion, we show that many previously reported predictions of gain-loss-induced localization, reflectionless transport, and coherent perfect absorbers and lasers in large periodic structures fall outside the physically relevant regime. $S$-matrix pole analysis is therefore an indispensable prerequisite for interpreting time-independent scattering predictions in periodic non-Hermitian systems.

We report on a fundamental disparity between stochastic noise models and algorithmic performance in NISQ-era classifiers. Utilizing the ibm_kingston processor, we characterize the "Kingston Constant" ($κ\approx 0.07$), representing a 93% signal magnitude collapse. Despite this decay, we demonstrate that the Hadamard Test Perceptron maintains a 93.9% MNIST accuracy, validating our proposed Hadamard Resilience Law. However, a systemic divergence -- the "Coherence Gap" ($Δρ\approx 0.91$) -- emerges at high feature depths ($N=256$), where physical hardware collapses while stochastic simulations remain resilient. This gap identifies coherent phase errors, rather than depolarizing noise, as the primary barrier to scaling quantum linear layers. Furthermore, experimental results on the ibm_kingston processor reveal a "Coherence Wall" at $N=256$, where circuit depth ($D \approx 10k$) exceeds the hardware's resilient depth limit ($D_{max} \approx 3.5k$). We provide a refined hardware-aware model that accounts for this coherence-induced signal decay, establishing a predictive boundary for robust quantum linear layers on current NISQ devices.

Energy-storage singularities in quantum batteries are often associated with equilibrium quantum criticality. Here we show that, in quench-driven many-body batteries, such singularities can originate from dynamical criticality in momentum space. Using the transverse-field Ising chain as a representative free-fermion quantum battery, we develop a momentum-resolved description of the charging process. The long-time stored energy forms a dephasing plateau whose dependence on the quench strength becomes nonanalytic when a real dynamical critical momentum emerges. More generally, for free-fermion two-band quantum batteries, each momentum sector acts as an independent coherent charging channel, and the condition for a dynamical quantum phase transition (DQPT) is equivalent to perfect normalized charging of the critical mode. At the critical times, this mode has a vanishing Loschmidt amplitude, maximal normalized stored energy, and zero instantaneous power at the turning point between energy absorption and backflow. We further show that the single-mode charging signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) develops sharp signatures at the same critical times, providing a direct charging-based probe of DQPT. Thus, nonequilibrium criticality does not simply enhance the total stored energy or power, which remain shaped by noncritical modes, but reorganizes energy storage by selecting optimal microscopic charging channels. Our results establish a mode-resolved connection between DQPT and quantum-battery charging, suggesting a route toward controlling many-body energy storage through dynamical criticality.

Quantum optimization algorithms are inherently probabilistic, yet they are most often used to search for a single high-quality solution. In this paper, we instead study hypergraph partitioning problems in which the desired output is itself a probability distribution over partitions. We introduce a distributional perspective on hypergraph partitioning motivated by maximin and minimax objectives such as Fair Cut Cover, and we show how these objectives align naturally with the measurement distribution produced by QAOA. To motivate the formulation, we introduce a workforce-scheduling-inspired toy problem, the Greatest Expected Imbalance problem, in which the goal is to minimize the worst expected imbalance across hyperedges. We then develop QAOA-based quantum solvers that represent distributional solutions natively through quantum states, together with quadratic hypergraph objectives suitable for standard and multi-objective QAOA. These formulations connect balanced hypergraph partitioning, polarized community discovery, and distributional fairness under a unified quantum optimization framework. For comparison, we provide optimal polynomial-time classical approximation algorithms based on semidefinite programming and hyperplane rounding. Experiments on real-world and synthetic hypergraphs demonstrate that low-depth multi-angle QAOA can outperform these classical approximation baselines on the proposed objectives, highlighting the potential of quantum algorithms for optimization problems where the solution is a distribution rather than a single partition.

Integrated photonic technologies have recently shown significant advances, enabling the possibility to implement reconfigurable interferometers with increasing size. One of the main tasks to fully exploit the capabilities of reconfigurable integrated interferometers is the possibility to precisely program their operation to perform a desired target unitary. While recipes are known for circuit layouts based on a cascade of beam-splitter and phase-shifter operations, a methodology applicable for reconfigurable continuously-coupled waveguide arrays is currently missing. Here, we devise a machine learning based approach for this task, using a black box methodology that does not rely on precise a-priori modeling of the circuit internal architectures. We verify the effectiveness and the robustness of this approach via numerical simulations on different continuously-coupled waveguides layouts, either with planar or 3D structures. The proposed method makes use of a limited number of single- and two-photon measurements, making it suitable for optical quantum information processing. The obtained results open the perspective of employing this methodology as an effective tool to program the operation of integrated interferometers designed via different architectures.

We develop a unified spectral-semigroup framework that connects real-time and imaginary-time quantum dynamics through analytic continuation. Within this formulation, evolution is expressed as an exponential reweighting of spectral components generated by a single operator $\mathcal{G}$, placing unitary and dissipative dynamics on equal footing within a common spectral structure. The mapping naturally induces a nonlocal fractional operator in time, giving rise to a contractive semigroup governed by a square-root spectral deformation and identifying imaginary-time evolution as an effective fractional low-pass filter. While exponential attenuation suppresses high-frequency components, the inverse transformation remains systematically controllable within a well-defined spectral window. In this regime, stable reconstruction of low-energy and coarse-grained dynamical features is achieved, establishing a predictive relation between imaginary-time evolution and recoverable information. This leads to a quantitative description of a bandwidth-resolved asymmetry between forward propagation and inverse recovery. Across systems with continuous and discrete spectra, few-level coherence, and non-Hermitian generators, we demonstrate that spectral structure governs reconstruction fidelity in a unified manner. In particular, non-Hermitian and open-system settings reveal that irreversibility emerges as a geometry- and scale-dependent feature of the spectrum, tied to both damping and eigenstate non-orthogonality. These results recast analytic continuation as a structured, scale-dependent filtering process with quantifiable and systematically accessible reconstruction limits, providing a unified perspective on the interplay between dynamics, spectral geometry, and information recovery.

In this article, we solved the time--independent one--dimensional Klein--Gordon equation in the presence of $α$--attractor potential using the Log derivative method. We calculated the reflection coefficient $\mathcal{R}$ and the transmission coefficient $\mathcal{T}$, showing that the superradiance phenomenon is present. In order to demonstrate the accuracy of our method, we performed a comparison with the analytical solution for the hyperbolic tangent potential.

Examining and controlling the interaction between semiconductor quantum qubits and their environment can boost semiconductor quantum technologies, which have many applications in table-top quantum computing hardware. Electron beams in electron microscopes have opened up a new avenue for the quantum-coherent probing of semiconductor excitations and strong-coupling effects. Here, I provide a brief overview of recent advancements in electron-beam probes for investigating quantum coherence in semiconductors and two-dimensional materials, complemented by my perspective on using electron beams to manipulate the entanglement and correlations between quantum systems.

Dynamics of exciton-polaritonic condensate under incoherent pumping is studied using the non-Markovian stochastic Gross-Pitaevskii equation with the pseudo-differential dispersion term. This term corresponds to the lower energy branch of polaritons. It is shown that an increasing of the pumping spot area leads to the appearance of various spatial structures whose properties depend on the duration of the dynamical memory. In the regime of short memory time, condensate can form an extended state that spans outside the pumping area. We conclude that onset of such extended states is related to the specific form of the dispersion term causing the ``traffic jam'' effect. The case of long memory time corresponds to enhanced condensate formation, when increasing of the pumping area leads to appearance of angular condensate structures which partially suppress emission of matter waves from the pumping area.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning have been widely adopted both in the industry and in everyday life, but at the cost of high compute demands. Recent studies show that implementing machine learning in physical systems in the deep quantum regime could not only lead to faster information processing, but also to perform tasks that are out of reach for classical systems. Here, we report a quantum reservoir processing device capable of performing both quantum and classical machine learning tasks. The implementation is realized with a programmable silicon chip excited with single photons, a highly scalable and adaptable photonics technology. We successfully implement a variety of quantum tasks, including quantum state tomography and measurement of entanglement via negativity. Moreover, we implement a method of mitigation of experimental imperfections which results in a significant improvement in accuracy in comparison to the same system operating in the classical regime. Our results demonstrate a method to overcome a crucial bottleneck of quantum technologies by providing a practical way of probing quantum states.

The renormalization group (RG) in statistical physics focuses on ground-state properties of equilibrium systems. However, it is unclear how it should be generalized to nonunitary quantum dynamics caused by dissipation and measurement backaction, in which the notion of conserved energy is absent. Here, we extend the RG to cover nonunitary quantum dynamics governed by quantum operations. By performing coarse-graining in real time, we find that the competition between decoherence and coherent dynamics plays a decisive role in the behavior of the RG flow. In particular, we find that chaotic behavior without fixed points emerges in the RG flow when coherent dynamics is dominant, with the parity-time transition serving as a prototypical example. The measurement-induced parity-time transition belongs to the universality class of the one-dimensional Yang-Lee edge singularity, which serves as a guide for experimentally realizing imaginary fields in lattice spin systems with a quantum system.

Thanks to feeble interactions, neutrinos show special advantages in the field of quantum information (QM). The properties of quantum correlations (QCs) are fundamental for neutrino-based QM. In this paper, we investigate the influence of the Kerr--Newman metric on QCs by varying the metric parameters, namely the mass $M$, angular momentum per unit mass $a$, and charge $Q$. Both radial and non-radial neutrino propagation are considered under the weak-field approximation. The results show that, for inward propagation in the Kerr--Newman metric, the oscillation probabilities and QCs differ significantly from those obtained in the Schwarzschild metric. In the case of radial outward propagation, the angular momentum $a$ increases the oscillation period of the neutrino survival probability $P_{ee}$, entanglement, and nonlocality, whereas the charge $Q$ decreases the corresponding periods. For non-radial propagation, the modulation effects of $M$ and $a$ on the oscillation patterns of both probabilities and QCs become more pronounced. As $M$ increases, the oscillation probability remains within a higher-value range, whereas tripartite entanglement exhibits the opposite trend. Furthermore, our results reveal that, despite differences in their variation ranges, entanglement and coherence exhibit highly consistent oscillation behaviors in both radial and non-radial propagation cases. These findings provide broader quantitative support for the potential use of neutrinos as quantum information resources.

The Bayesian inverse of a quantum channel $\mathcal{E}$ is a channel $\mathcal{F}$ in the reverse direction of $\mathcal{E}$ that yields time-symmetric correlations for sequential measurements performed on open quantum systems. Such an operational form of time-reversal symmetry for open quantum systems is quite remarkable, as the dynamics of open quantum systems are inherently irreversible due to system-environment interactions. Similar to the Petz map, a Bayesian inverse $\mathcal{F}$ is defined with respect to a fiducial reference state $ρ$ for the channel $\mathcal{E}$. However, Bayesian inverses do not always exist, and it is often a non-trivial task to determine the set of states $ρ$ for which a Bayesian inverse of $\mathcal{E}$ exists. In this work, we solve the general problem of quantum Bayesian inversion for unital channels acting on a single qubit. Our analysis is streamlined by demonstrating that finding a Bayesian inverse for a unital qubit channel may be reduced to finding a Bayesian inverse of a Pauli channel, which is simply a mixture of unitary channels associated with the Pauli matrices. As such, we provide a complete description of when operational time-reversal symmetry is attainable for sequential measurements of a single qubit in the presence of unital noise.

A fundamental symmetry of the non-Hermitian operators describing wave-propagation in time-varying media imbue such systems with non-trivial topology. This topology may be measured directly in a wide range of experimental settings as a quantised real part of the Berry phase, contrasting unconstrained geometric gain or loss. This topological index is provided explicitly for practical examples, including a non-Hermitian analogue of the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model.

In this paper, we present SCALAR (Symbolic Conjecture and LLM-Assisted Reasoning), a neurosymbolic framework for automated conjecture generation in quantum circuit analysis built on top of the CUDA-Q open source framework. The system integrates quantum simulation, symbolic conjecture generation, and LLM-based interpretation. We evaluate SCALAR on 82 MaxCut instances from the MQLib benchmark dataset and extend the analysis to 2,000 randomly generated graphs across four topologies: regular, Erdos-Renyi, Barabasi-Albert, and Watts-Strogatz. The framework generates conjectured bounds relating optimal QAOA parameters to graph invariants, including known relationships such as periodicity constraints on the phase separation parameter $γ$. SCALAR also recovers previously reported parameter transfer phenomena across structurally similar instances. Additionally, the system identifies correlations between graph structural features and optimization landscape properties, which we characterize through invariant-based descriptors. Using CUDA-Q tensor network simulator, we scale experiments to instances of up to 77 qubits. We discuss the accuracy, generality, and limitations of the generated conjectures, including sensitivity to graph class and quantum circuit depth.