Quantum ricochets: surface capture, release and energy loss of fast ions hitting a polar surface at grazing incidence

A diffraction mechanism is proposed for the capture, multiple bouncing and final escape of a fast ion (keV) impinging on the surface of a polarizable material at grazing incidence. Capture and escape are effected by elastic quantum diffraction consisting of the exchange of a parallel surface wave vector G= 2p/ a between the ion parallel momentum and the surface periodic potential of period a. Diffraction- assisted capture becomes possible for glancing angles F smaller than a critical value given by Fc 2- 2./ a-| Vim|/ E, where E is the kinetic energy of the ion,. = h/ Mv its de Broglie wavelength and Vim its average electronic image potential at the distance from the surface where diffraction takes place. For F< Fc, the ion can fall into a selected capture state in the quasi- continuous spectrum of its image potential and execute one or several ricochets before being released by the time reversed diffraction process. The capture, ricochet and escape are accompanied by a large, periodic energy loss of several tens of eV in the forward motion caused by the coherent emission of a giant number of quanta h. of Fuchs- Kliewer surface phonons characteristic of the polar material. An analytical calculation of the energy loss spectrum, based on the proposed diffraction process and using a model ion-phonon coupling developed earlier (Lucas et al 2013 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 25 355009), is presented, which fully explains the experimental spectrum of Villette et al (2000 Phys. Rev. Lett. 85 3137) for Ne+ ions ricocheting on a LiF(001) surface.

Density-potential mapping in the standard and quantum electrodynamical time-dependent density functional theory

131 p.

Biomimetic Cloning of Quantum Observables

We propose a bio-inspired sequential quantum protocol for the cloning and preservation of the statistics associated to quantum observables of a given system. It combines the cloning of a set of commuting observables, permitted by the no-cloning and no-broadcasting theorems, with a controllable propagation of the initial state coherences to the subsequent generations. The protocol mimics the scenario in which an individual in an unknown quantum state copies and propagates its quantum information into an environment of blank qubits Finally, we propose a realistic experimental implementation of this protocol in trapped ions.

Quantum Simulation of Dissipative Processes without Reservoir Engineering

We present a quantum algorithm to simulate general finite dimensional Lindblad master equations without the requirement of engineering the system-environment interactions. The proposed method is able to simulate both Markovian and non-Markovian quantum dynamics. It consists in the quantum computation of the dissipative corrections to the unitary evolution of the system of interest, via the reconstruction of the response functions associated with the Lindblad operators. Our approach is equally applicable to dynamics generated by effectively non-Hermitian Hamiltonians. We confirm the quality of our method providing specific error bounds that quantify its accuracy.

Quantum Simulator for Transport Phenomena in Fluid Flows

Transport phenomena still stand as one of the most challenging problems in computational physics. By exploiting the analogies between Dirac and lattice Boltzmann equations, we develop a quantum simulator based on pseudospin-boson quantum systems, which is suitable for encoding fluid dynamics transport phenomena within a lattice kinetic formalism. It is shown that both the streaming and collision processes of lattice Boltzmann dynamics can be implemented with controlled quantum operations, using a heralded quantum protocol to encode non-unitary scattering processes. The proposed simulator is amenable to realization in controlled quantum platforms, such as ion-trap quantum computers or circuit quantum electrodynamics processors.

Quantum Emulation of Gravitational Waves

Gravitational waves, as predicted by Einstein's general relativity theory, appear as ripples in the fabric of spacetime traveling at the speed of light. We prove that the propagation of small amplitude gravitational waves in a curved spacetime is equivalent to the propagation of a subspace of electromagnetic states. We use this result to propose the use of entangled photons to emulate the evolution of gravitational waves in curved spacetimes by means of experimental electromagnetic setups featuring metamaterials.

Digital Quantum Simulation of Spin Models with Circuit Quantum Electrodynamics

Systems of interacting quantum spins show a rich spectrum of quantum phases and display interesting many-body dynamics. Computing characteristics of even small systems on conventional computers poses significant challenges. A quantum simulator has the potential to outperform standard computers in calculating the evolution of complex quantum systems. Here, we perform a digital quantum simulation of the paradigmatic Heisenberg and Ising interacting spin models using a two transmon-qubit circuit quantum electrodynamics setup. We make use of the exchange interaction naturally present in the simulator to construct a digital decomposition of the model-specific evolution and extract its full dynamics. This approach is universal and efficient, employing only resources that are polynomial in the number of spins, and indicates a path towards the controlled simulation of general spin dynamics in superconducting qubit platforms.

Scalable quantum memory in the ultrastrong coupling regime

Circuit quantum electrodynamics, consisting of superconducting artificial atoms coupled to on-chip resonators, represents a prime candidate to implement the scalable quantum computing architecture because of the presence of good tunability and controllability. Furthermore, recent advances have pushed the technology towards the ultrastrong coupling regime of light-matter interaction, where the qubit-resonator coupling strength reaches a considerable fraction of the resonator frequency. Here, we propose a qubit-resonator system operating in that regime, as a quantum memory device and study the storage and retrieval of quantum information in and from the Z(2) parity-protected quantum memory, within experimentally feasible schemes. We are also convinced that our proposal might pave a way to realize a scalable quantum random-access memory due to its fast storage and readout performances.