It is well known that the conductivity of disordered metals is suppressed in the limit of low frequencies and temperatures by quantum corrections. Although predicted by theory to exist up to much higher energies, such corrections have so far been experimentally proven only for ≲80 meV. Here, by a combination of transport and optical studies, we demonstrate that the quantum corrections are present in the strongly disordered conductor MoC up to at least ∼4 eV, thereby extending the experimental window where such corrections were found by a factor of 50. The knowledge of both the real and imaginary parts of conductivity enables us to identify the microscopic parameters of the conduction electron fluid. We find that the conduction electron density of strongly disordered MoC is surprisingly high and we argue that this should be considered a generic property of metals on the verge of a disorder-induced localization transition.

The charge transport of a (Tomonaga-)Luttinger liquid with tunnel barriers exhibits universal scaling: the current-voltage curves measured at various temperatures collapse into a single curve upon rescaling. The exponent characterizing this single curve can be used to extract the strength of electron-electron interaction. Motivated by a recent experiment on InAs nanowires [Y. Sato et al., Phys. Rev. B 99, 155304 (2019)], we theoretically investigate the analogous behavior of a spin-orbit-coupled Luttinger liquid. We find that the scaling exponent differs for different impurity strengths, being weak (disorder potential) or strong (tunnel barriers), and their positions, either in the bulk or near the edge of the wire. For each case we quantify the exponent of the universal scaling and its modification due to the spin-orbit coupling. Our findings serve as a guide in the determination of the interaction strength of quasi-one-dimensional spin-orbit-coupled quantum wires from transport measurements.

The interplay of the magnetic field and interlayer correlations was experimentally investigated in a quasi-two-dimensional quantum magnet Cu(en)Cl2. For this purpose, extensive quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) studies of the finite-temperature properties of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet (HAF) on the rectangular and the spatially anisotropic zig-zag square lattices were performed. The QMC studies revealed the equivalency of both models for any values of magnetic fields and spatial anisotropies R=Jinterchain/Jintrachain. The analysis based on the decomposition of both lattices into local Hamiltonians confirmed the equivalence. Despite the large influence of the interlayer coupling and rather complicated distribution of the intralayer exchange pathways in Cu(en)Cl2, considering several constraints in the data analysis enabled the extraction of the main features of the low-dimensional magnetic subsystem from the specific heat and magnetization. It was found that Cu(en)Cl2 can be treated as the realization of the spin-1/2 HAF on the rectangular/zig-zag square lattice with the intralayer spatial anisotropy R≈0.2, the intrachain exchange coupling 2.20 ± 0.15 K, the saturation field 3.7 ± 0.1 T, the spin-flop field about 0.1 T, and the spin anisotropy of the orthorhombic symmetry. The possibility to investigate magnon instabilities in the strong-field regime of Cu(en)Cl2 is discussed.

The combination of an exact and Corner Transfer Matrix Renormalization Group (CTMRG) methods is used to study an influence of external electric and magnetic fields on existence of intriguing reentrant magnetic transitions in a coupled spin-electron model on a decorated square lattice. The two-dimensional (2D) decorated square lattice with localized nodal spins and delocalized electrons is taken into account. It was found that the competition among all involved interactions (the electron hopping, spin-spin and spin-electron interaction, external electric and magnetic fields) in combination with thermal fluctuations can produce new type of reentrant magnetic transitions. Depending on the model parameters the non-zero fields can stabilize or destabilize magnetic reentrance. In addition, an alternative and more effective way, for modulating the magnetic reentrance is found. An origin of intriguing low-temperature round maximum in the specific heat was explained as a consequence of rapid changes in the sublattice magnetizations, which is induced through a competition of all presented interactions.

In this paper we introduce a definition for conditional energy changes due to general quantum measurements, as the change in the conditional energy evaluated before, and after, the measurement process. By imposing minimal physical requirements on these conditional energies, we show that the most general expression for the conditional energy after the measurement is simply the expected value of the Hamiltonian given the post-measurement state. Conversely, the conditional energy before the measurement process is shown to be given by the real component of the weak value of the Hamiltonian. Our definition generalises well-known notions of distributions of internal energy change, such as that given by stochastic thermodynamics. By determining the conditional energy change of both system and measurement apparatus, we obtain the full conditional work statistics of quantum measurements, and show that this vanishes for all measurement outcomes if the measurement process conserves the total energy. Additionally, by incorporating the measurement process within a cyclic heat engine, we quantify the non-recoverable work due to measurements. This is shown to always be non-negative, thus satisfying the second law, and will be independent of the apparatus specifics for two classes of projective measurements.

In this paper we investigate the relationship between the efficiency of a cyclic quantum heat engine with the Hilbert space dimension of the thermal baths. By means of a general inequality, we show that the Carnot efficiency can be obtained only when both the hot and cold baths are infinitely large. By further introducing a specific model where the baths are constituted of ensembles of finite-dimensional particles, we further demonstrate the relationship between the engine's power and efficiency, with the dimension of the working substance and the bath particles.

We study theoretically how electron-phonon interaction affects the energies and level broadening (inverse lifetime) of Majorana bound states (MBSs) in a clean topological nanowire at low temperatures. At zero temperature, the energy splitting between the right and left MBSs remains exponentially small with increasing nanowire length L. At finite temperatures, however, the absorption of thermal phonons leads to the broadening of energy levels of the MBSs that does not decay with system length, and the coherent absorption/emission of phonons at opposite ends of the nanowire results in MBSs energy splitting that decays only as an inverse power law in L. Both effects remain exponential in temperature. In the case of quantized transverse motion of phonons, the presence of Van Hove singularities in the phonon density of states causes additional resonant enhancement of both the energy splitting and the level broadening of the MBSs. This is the most favorable case to observe the phonon-induced energy splitting of MBSs as it becomes much larger than the broadening even if the topological nanowire is much longer than the coherence length. We also calculate the charge and spin associated with the energy splitting of the MBSs induced by phonons. We consider both a spinless low-energy continuum model, which we evaluate analytically, as well as a spinful lattice model for a Rashba nanowire, which we evaluate numerically.

We show that in-plane magnetic-field-assisted spectroscopy allows extraction of the in-plane orientation and full 3D size parameters of the quantum mechanical orbitals of a single electron GaAs lateral quantum dot with subnanometer precision. The method is based on measuring the orbital energies in a magnetic field with various strengths and orientations in the plane of the 2D electron gas. From such data, we deduce the microscopic confinement potential landscape and quantify the degree by which it differs from a harmonic oscillator potential. The spectroscopy is used to validate shape manipulation with gate voltages, agreeing with expectations from the gate layout. Our measurements demonstrate a versatile tool for quantum dots with one dominant axis of strong confinement.

The concept of divisibility of dynamical maps is used to introduce an analogous concept for quantum channels by analyzing the simulability of channels by means of dynamical maps. In particular, this is addressed for Lindblad divisible, completely positive divisible and positive divisible dynamical maps. The corresponding L-divisible, CP-divisible and P-divisible subsets of channels are characterized (exploiting the results by Wolf et al. and visualized for the case of qubit channels. We discuss the general inclusions among divisibility sets and show several equivalences for qubit channels. To this end we study the conditions of L-divisibility for finite dimensional channels, especially the cases with negative eigenvalues, extending and completing the known results. Furthermore we show that transitions between every two of the defined divisibility sets are allowed. We explore particular examples of dynamical maps to compare these concepts. Finally, we show that every divisible but not infinitesimal divisible qubit channel (in positive maps) is entanglement-breaking, and open the question if something similar occurs for higher dimensions.

We address the question of quantum memory storage for quantum dynamics. In particular, we design an optimal protocol for N -> 1 probabilistic storage and retrieval of unitary channels on D-dimensional quantum systems. If we access the unknown unitary gate only N times, the optimal success probability of perfect single-use retrieval is N/(N−1+d²). The derived size of the memory system exponentially improves the known upper bound on the size of the program register needed for probabilistic programmable quantum processors. Our results are closely related to probabilistic perfect alignment of reference frames and probabilistic port-based teleportation.

We report strong electron-electron interactions in quantum wires etched from an InAs quantum well, a material generally expected to have strong spin-orbit interactions. We find that the current through the wires as a function of the bias voltage and temperature follows the universal scaling behavior of a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid. Using a universal scaling formula, we extract the interaction parameter and find strong electron-electron interactions, increasing as the wires become more depleted. We establish theoretically that the spin-orbit interaction cause only minor modifications of the interaction parameter in this regime, indicating that genuinely strong electron-electron interactions are indeed achieved in the device. Our results suggest that etched InAs wires provide a platform with both strong electron-electron interactions and the strong spin-orbit interaction.

Measurements of quantum systems inevitably involve disturbance in various forms. Within the limits imposed by quantum mechanics, there exists an ideal projective measurement that does not introduce a back action on the measured observable, known as a quantum non-demolition (QND) measurement. Here we demonstrate an all-electrical QND measurement of a single electron spin in a gate-defined quantum dot. We entangle the single spin with a two-electron, singlet–triplet ancilla qubit via the exchange interaction and then read out the ancilla in a single shot. This procedure realizes a disturbance-free projective measurement of the single spin at a rate two orders of magnitude faster than its relaxation. The QND nature of the measurement protocol enables enhancement of the overall measurement fidelity by repeating the protocol. We demonstrate a monotonic increase of the fidelity over 100 repetitions against arbitrary input states. Our analysis based on statistical inference is tolerant to the presence of the relaxation and dephasing. We further exemplify the QND character of the measurement by observing spontaneous flips (quantum jumps) of a single electron spin. Combined with the high-fidelity control of spin qubits these results will allow for various measurement-based quantum state manipulations including quantum error correction protocols.

We theoretically investigate the orbital effects of an in-plane magnetic field on the spectrum of a quantum dot embedded in a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG). We derive an effective two-dimensional Hamiltonian where these effects enter in proportion to the flux penetrating the 2DEG. We quantify the latter in detail for harmonic, triangular, and square potential of the heterostructure. We show how the orbital effects allow one to extract a wealth of information, for example, on the heterostructure interface, the quantum dot size and orientation, and the spin-orbit fields. We illustrate the formalism by extracting this information from recent measured data [L. C. Camenzind et al., arXiv:1804.00162; Nat. Commun. 9, 3454 (2018)].

Decoherence in quantum searches, and in the Grover search, in particular, has already been extensively studied, leading very quickly to the loss of the quadratic speedup over the classical case, when searching for some target (marked) element within a set of size N. The noise models used were, however, almost always global. In this paper, we study Grover search under the influence of localized partially dephasing noise of rate p. We find that, in the case when the size k of the affected subspace is much smaller than N and the target is unaffected by the noise, namely when kp≪√N, the quadratic speedup is retained. Once these restrictions are not met, the quadratic speedup is lost. If the target is affected by the noise, the noise rate needs to scale as 1/√N to keep the speedup. We also observe an intermediate region, where if k∼N^μ and the target is unaffected, the speedup seems to obey N^μ, which for μ>0.5 is worse than the quantum, but better than the classical case. We also put obtained results for quantum searches into perspective of quantum walks and searches on graphs.

Some beautiful identities involving hook contents of Young diagrams have been found in the field of quantum information processing, along with a combinatorial proof. We here give a representation theoretic proof of these identities and a number of generalizations. Our proof is based on trace identities for elements belonging to a class of permutation centralizer algebras. These algebras have been found to underlie the combinatorics of composite gauge invariant operators in quantum field theory, with applications in the AdS/CFT correspondence. Based on these algebras, we discuss some analogies between quantum information processing tasks and the combinatorics of composite quantum fields and argue that this can be fruitful interface between quantum information and quantum field theory, with implications for AdS/CFT.