A quantum-inspired approach to exploit turbulence structures.

Understanding turbulence is key to our comprehension of many natural and technological flow processes. At the heart of this phenomenon lies its intricate multiscale nature, describing the coupling between different-sized eddies in space and time. Here we analyze the structure of turbulent flows by quantifying correlations between different length scales using methods inspired from quantum many-body physics. We present the results for interscale correlations of two paradigmatic flow examples, and use these insights along with tensor network theory to design a structure-resolving algorithm for simulating turbulent flows. With this algorithm, we find that the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations can be accurately solved even when reducing the number of parameters required to represent the velocity field by more than one order of magnitude compared to direct numerical simulation. Our quantum-inspired approach provides a pathway towards conducting computational fluid dynamics on quantum computers.

Directional THz generation in hot Rb vapor excited to a Rydberg state.

We optically excite 85Rb atoms in a heated vapor cell to a low-lying Rydberg state 10D5/2 and observe directional terahertz (THz) beams at 3.3 THz and 7.8 THz. These THz fields are generated by amplified spontaneous emission from the 10D5/2 state to the 11P3/2 and 8F7/2 states, respectively. In addition, we observe ultraviolet (UV) light produced by four-wave mixing of optical pump lasers and the 3.3 THz field. We characterize the generated THz power over the detuning and power of pump lasers, and identify experimental conditions favoring THz and UV generation, respectively. Our scheme paves a new pathway towards generating high-power narrowband THz radiation.

A polynomial Ansatz for norm-conserving pseudopotentials.

We show that efficient norm-conserving pseudopotentials for electronic structure calculations can be obtained from a polynomial Ansatz for the potential. Our pseudopotential is a polynomial of degree ten in the radial variable and fulfils the same smoothness conditions imposed by the Troullier-Martins method (TM) (1991 Phys. Rev. B 43 1993) where pseudopotentials are represented by a polynomial of degree twenty-two. We compare our method to the TM approach in electronic structure calculations for diamond and iron in the bcc structure and find that the two methods perform equally well in calculations of the total energy. However, first and second derivatives of the total energy with respect to atomic coordinates converge significantly faster with the plane wave cutoff if the standard TM potentials are replaced by the pseudopotentials introduced here.

Coherent Microwave-to-Optical Conversion via Six-Wave Mixing in Rydberg Atoms.

We present an experimental demonstration of converting a microwave field to an optical field via frequency mixing in a cloud of cold ^{87}Rb atoms, where the microwave field strongly couples to an electric dipole transition between Rydberg states. We show that the conversion allows the phase information of the microwave field to be coherently transferred to the optical field. With the current energy level scheme and experimental geometry, we achieve a photon-conversion efficiency of ∼0.3% at low microwave intensities and a broad conversion bandwidth of more than 4 MHz. Theoretical simulations agree well with the experimental data, and they indicate that near-unit efficiency is possible in future experiments.

Magnetic monopoles and synthetic spin-orbit coupling in Rydberg macrodimers.

We show that sizable Abelian and non-Abelian gauge fields arise in the relative motion of two dipole-dipole interacting Rydberg atoms. Our system exhibits two magnetic monopoles for adiabatic motion in one internal two-atom state. These monopoles occur at a characteristic distance between the atoms that is of the order of one micron. The deflection of the relative motion due to the Lorentz force gives rise to a clear signature of the effective magnetic field. In addition, we consider nonadiabatic transitions between two near-degenerate internal states and show that the associated gauge fields are non-Abelian. We present quantum mechanical calculations of this synthetic spin-orbit coupling and show that it realizes a velocity-dependent beam splitter.

Three-body bound states in dipole-dipole interacting Rydberg atoms.

We show that the dipole-dipole interaction between three identical Rydberg atoms can give rise to bound trimer states. The microscopic origin of these states is fundamentally different from Efimov physics. Two stable trimer configurations exist where the atoms form the vertices of an equilateral triangle in a plane perpendicular to a static electric field. The triangle edge length typically exceeds R≈2 µm, and each configuration is twofold degenerate due to Kramers degeneracy. The depth of the potential wells and the triangle edge length can be controlled by external parameters. We establish the Borromean nature of the trimer states, analyze the quantum dynamics in the potential wells, and describe methods for their production and detection.