Synthetic Topological Vacua of Yang-Mills Fields in Bose-Einstein Condensates.

Topological vacua are a family of degenerate ground states of Yang-Mills fields with zero field strength but nontrivial topological structures. They play a fundamental role in particle physics and quantum field theory, but have not yet been experimentally observed. Here we report the first theoretical proposal and experimental realization of synthetic topological vacua with a cloud of atomic Bose-Einstein condensates. Our setup provides a promising platform to demonstrate the fundamental concept that a vacuum, rather than being empty, has rich spatial structures. The Hamiltonian for the vacuum of topological number n=1 is synthesized and the related Hopf index is measured. The vacuum of topological number n=2 is also realized, and we find that vacua with different topological numbers have distinctive spin textures and Hopf links. Our Letter opens up opportunities for exploring topological vacua and related long-sought-after instantons in tabletop experiments.

Measurement of Spin Chern Numbers in Quantum Simulated Topological Insulators.

The topology of quantum systems has become a topic of great interest since the discovery of topological insulators. However, as a hallmark of the topological insulators, the spin Chern number has not yet been experimentally detected. The challenge to directly measure this topological invariant lies in the fact that this spin Chern number is defined based on artificially constructed wave functions. Here we experimentally mimic the celebrated Bernevig-Hughes-Zhang model with cold atoms, and then measure the spin Chern number with the linear response theory. We observe that, although the Chern number for each spin component is ill defined, the spin Chern number measured by their difference is still well defined when both energy and spin gaps are nonvanished.

Hybrid superconductor-atom quantum interface with Raman chirped shortcut to adiabatic passage.

Realization of the highly efficient hybrid atom-photon gates is vital to the quantum interface that integrates atoms and superconducting resonators. Here we propose a scheme to realize the hybrid state transfer and controlled-PHASE gate based on Raman chirped shortcut to adiabatic passage. The scheme is fast to protect the quantum state from the decoherence effects in the hybrid interface, as well as is robust due to the geometric phase. We show that this two-qubit gate is more resilient than the Raman pulse and Raman chirped adiabatic passage against the variations in the vacuum coupling strength and two-photon detuning. Its fast and robust features make it especially suitable for long-term storage and optical readout of superconducting qubits, and moreover, entanglement swapping between two disparate components.

Geometric Rydberg quantum gate with shortcuts to adiabaticity.

We propose a controlled-PHASE gate for neutral atoms in which one of the qubit state components adiabatically evolves along the multiple-atom eigenstate formed by the chirped laser pulse coupling to Rydberg states and intrinsic dipole-dipole exchange interactions and, consequently, accumulates an interaction-induced geometric phase. The geometric Rydberg gate is not limited by an adiabatic condition, which is sped up by shortcuts to adiabaticity (STA). Analyses show that an STA scheme is more robust than a non-adiabatic case against the variations of control parameters and faster than an adiabatic case, which protects from the decay of Rydberg states. Furthermore, an intermediate value of dipole-dipole interaction strength is enough for our scheme.

Detecting topological exceptional points in a parity-time symmetric system with cold atoms.

We reveal a novel topological property of the exceptional points in a two-level parity-time symmetric system and then propose a scheme to detect the topological exceptional points in the system, which is embedded in a larger Hilbert space constructed by a four-level cold atomic system. We show that a tunable parameter in the presented system for simulating the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian can be tuned to sweep the eigenstates through the exceptional points in parameter space. The non-trivial Berry phases of the eigenstates obtained in this loop from the exceptional points can be measured by the atomic interferometry. Since the proposed operations and detection are experimentally feasible, our scheme may pave a promising way to explore the novel properties of non-Hermitian systems.

Experimental realization of stimulated Raman shortcut-to-adiabatic passage with cold atoms.

Accurate control of a quantum system is a fundamental requirement in many areas of modern science ranging from quantum information processing to high-precision measurements. A significantly important goal in quantum control is preparing a desired state as fast as possible, with sufficiently high fidelity allowed by available resources and experimental constraints. Stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) is a robust way to realize high-fidelity state transfer but it requires a sufficiently long operation time to satisfy the adiabatic criteria. Here we theoretically propose and then experimentally demonstrate a shortcut-to-adiabatic protocol to speed-up the STIRAP. By modifying the shapes of the Raman pulses, we experimentally realize a fast and high-fidelity stimulated Raman shortcut-to-adiabatic passage that is robust against control parameter variations. The all-optical, robust and fast protocol demonstrated here provides an efficient and practical way to control quantum systems.