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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 595 records · Page 33
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2013

Statistical physics of black holes as quantum-mechanical systems

Some basic features of black-hole statistical mechanics are investigated, assuming that black holes respect the principles of quantum mechanics. Care is needed in defining an entropy S bh corresponding to the number of microstates of a black hole, given that the black hole interacts with its surroundings. An open question is then the relationship between this entropy and the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy S BH . For a wide class of models with interactions needed to ensure unitary quantum evolution, these interactions produce extra energy flux beyond that predicted by Hawking. Arguments are then presented that this results in an entropy S bh that is smaller than S BH . Correspondingly, in such scenarios equilibrium properties of black holes are modified. In this work, we examine questions of consistency of such an inequality; if it is not consistent, that provides significant constraints on models for quantum-mechanical black hole evolution.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Fast-forwarding quantum evolution

We investigate the problem of fast-forwarding quantum evolution, whereby the dynamics of certain quantum systems can be simulated with gate complexity that is sublinear in the evolution time. We provide a definition of fast-forwarding that considers the model of quantum computation, the Hamiltonians that induce the evolution, and the properties of the initial states. Our definition accounts for any asymptotic complexity improvement of the general case and we use it to demonstrate fast-forwarding in several quantum systems. In particular, we show that some local spin systems whose Hamiltonians can be taken into block diagonal form using an efficient quantum circuit, such as those that are permutation-invariant, can be exponentially fast-forwarded. We also show that certain classes of positive semidefinite local spin systems, also known as frustration-free, can be polynomially fast-forwarded, provided the initial state is supported on a subspace of sufficiently low energies. Last, we show that all quadratic fermionic systems and number-conserving quadratic bosonic systems can be exponentially fast-forwarded in a model where quantum gates are exponentials of specific fermionic or bosonic operators, respectively. Our results extend the classes of physical Hamiltonians that were previously known to be fast-forwarded, while not necessarily requiring methods that diagonalize the Hamiltonians efficiently. We further develop a connection between fast-forwarding and precise energy measurements that also accounts for polynomial improvements.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2018

Shortcuts to adiabaticity assisted by counterdiabatic Born–Oppenheimer dynamics

Shortcuts to adiabaticity (STA) provide control protocols to guide the dynamics of a quantum system through an adiabatic reference trajectory in an arbitrary prescheduled time. Designing STA proves challenging in complex quantum systems when the dynamics of the degrees of freedom span different time scales. Here, we introduce counterdiabatic Born–Oppenheimer dynamics (CBOD) as a framework to design STA in systems with a large separation of energy scales. CBOD exploits the Born–Oppenheimer approximation to separate the Hamiltonian into effective fast and slow degrees of freedom and calculate the corresponding counterdiabatic drivings for each sub-system. We show the validity of the CBOD technique via an example of coupled harmonic oscillators, which can be solved exactly for comparison, and further apply it to a system of two-charged particles.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2021

Power spectrum and form factor in random diagonal matrices and integrable billiards

Triggered by a controversy surrounding a universal behavior of the power spectrum in quantum systems exhibiting regular classical dynamics, we focus on a model of random diagonal matrices (RDM), often associated with the Poisson spectral universality class, and examine how the power spectrum and the form factor get affected by two-sided truncations of RDM spectra. Having developed a nonperturbative description of both statistics, we perform their detailed asymptotic analysis to demonstrate explicitly how a traditional assumption (lying at the heart of the controversy) – that the power spectrum is merely determined by the spectral form factor – breaks down for truncated spectra. This observation has important consequences as we further argue that bounded quantum systems with integrable classical dynamics are described by heavily truncated rather than complete RDM spectra. High-precision numerical simulations of semicircular and irrational rectangular billiards lend independent support to these conclusions.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2014

Dynamics and quantum entanglement of two-level atoms in de Sitter spacetime

In the framework of open quantum systems, we study the internal dynamics of both freely falling and static two-level atoms interacting with quantized conformally coupled massless scalar field in de Sitter spacetime. We find that the atomic transition rates depend on both the nature of de Sitter spacetime and the motion of atoms, interestingly the steady states for both cases are always driven to being purely thermal, regardless of the atomic initial states. This thermalization phenomenon is structurally similar to what happens to an elementary quantum system immersed in a thermal field, and thus reveals the thermal nature of de Sitter spacetime. Besides, we find that the thermal baths will drive the entanglement shared by the freely falling atom (the static atom) and its auxiliary partner, a same two-level atom which is isolated from external fields, to being sudden death, and the proper time for the entanglement to be extinguished is computed. We also analyze that such thermalization and disentanglement phenomena, in principle, could be understood from the perspective of table-top simulation experiment.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2021

Fermionic systems for quantum information people

The operator algebra of fermionic modes is isomorphic to that of qubits, the difference between them is twofold: the embedding of subalgebras corresponding to mode subsets and multiqubit subsystems on the one hand, and the parity superselection in the fermionic case on the other. We discuss these two fundamental differences extensively, and illustrate these through the Jordan–Wigner representation in a coherent, self-contained, pedagogical way, from the point of view of quantum information theory. Our perspective leads us to develop useful new tools for the treatment of fermionic systems, such as the fermionic (quasi-)tensor product, fermionic canonical embedding, fermionic partial trace, fermionic products of maps and fermionic embeddings of maps. We formulate these by direct, easily applicable formulas, without mode permutations, for arbitrary partitionings of the modes. It is also shown that fermionic reduced states can be calculated by the fermionic partial trace, containing the proper phase factors. We also consider variants of the notions of fermionic mode correlation and entanglement, which can be endowed with the usual, local operation based motivation, if the parity superselection rule is imposed. We also elucidate some other fundamental points, related to joint map extensions, which make the parity superselection inevitable in the description of fermionic systems.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2015

On the simulation of indistinguishable fermions in the many-body Wigner formalism

The simulation of quantum systems consisting of interacting, indistinguishable fermions is an incredible mathematical problem which poses formidable numerical challenges. Many sophisticated methods addressing this problem are available which are based on the many-body Schrödinger formalism. Recently a Monte Carlo technique for the resolution of the many-body Wigner equation has been introduced and successfully applied to the simulation of distinguishable, spinless particles. This numerical approach presents several advantages over other methods. Indeed, it is based on an intuitive formalism in which quantum systems are described in terms of a quasi-distribution function, and highly scalable due to its Monte Carlo nature. In this work, we extend the many-body Wigner Monte Carlo method to the simulation of indistinguishable fermions. To this end, we first show how fermions are incorporated into the Wigner formalism. Then we demonstrate that the Pauli exclusion principle is intrinsic to the formalism. As a matter of fact, a numerical simulation of two strongly interacting fermions (electrons) is performed which clearly shows the appearance of a Fermi (or exchange–correlation) hole in the phase-space, a clear signature of the presence of the Pauli principle. To conclude, we simulate 4, 8 and 16 non-interacting fermions, isolated in a closed box, and show that, as the number of fermions increases, we gradually recover the Fermi–Dirac statistics, a clear proof of the reliability of our proposed method for the treatment of indistinguishable particles.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2024

Universal framework for simultaneous tomography of quantum states and SPAM noise

We present a general denoising algorithm for performing simultaneous tomography of quantum states and measurement noise. This algorithm allows us to fully characterize state preparation and measurement (SPAM) errors present in any quantum system. Our method is based on the analysis of the properties of the linear operator space induced by unitary operations. Given any quantum system with a noisy measurement apparatus, our method can output the quantum state and the noise matrix of the detector up to a single gauge degree of freedom. We show that this gauge freedom is unavoidable in the general case, but this degeneracy can be generally broken using prior knowledge on the state or noise properties, thus fixing the gauge for several types of state-noise combinations with no assumptions about noise strength. Such combinations include pure quantum states with arbitrarily correlated errors, and arbitrary states with block independent errors. This framework can further use available prior information about the setting to systematically reduce the number of observations and measurements required for state and noise detection. Our method effectively generalizes existing approaches to the problem, and includes as special cases common settings considered in the literature requiring an uncorrelated or invertible noise matrix, or specific probe states.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2014

Scattering problems in the fractional quantum mechanics governed by the 2D space-fractional Schrödinger equation

The 2D space-fractional Schrödinger equation in the time-independent and time-dependent cases for the scattering problems in the fractional quantum mechanics is studied. We define the Green's functions for the two cases and give the mathematical expression of them in infinite series form and in terms of some special functions. The asymptotic formulas of the Green's functions are also given, and applied to get the approximate wave functions for the fractional quantum scattering problems. These results contain those in the standard (integer) quantum mechanics as special cases, and can be applied to study the complex quantum systems.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2023

Cryogenic Control Circuitry for Superconducting Qubits

Superconducting qubits have reached the point where system designers are worried about the heat that control wiring brings into the cryostat. To continue scaling cryogenic quantum systems, control solutions that work inside the cold space must be explored. One possibility is to use control electronics that is native to superconductivity, so called single-flux-quantum (SFQ) circuitry, to form an interface between qubits and whatever other electronics is needed to control eventual quantum systems. To begin exploring the utility of SFQ as control circuitry, we performed modeling and experiments on qubit readout using ballistic fluxons which are SFQ in the limit of ballistic fluxon transport. Our modeling results show that a flavor of qubit, the fluxonium, can be read out using ballistic fluxons. We designed test samples to prove some of the key concepts needed for such a readout but were ultimately unable to getting a working demonstration. The lack of testing success was due to challenges in fabrication and running short of time to perform testing rather than a fundamental problem with our analysis.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2017

Bending strain engineering in quantum spin hall system for controlling spin currents

Quantum spin Hall system can exhibit exotic spin transport phenomena, mediated by its topological edge states. The concept of bending strain engineering to tune the spin transport properties of a quantum spin Hall system is demonstrated. Here, we show that bending strain can be used to control the spin orientation of counter-propagating edge states of a quantum spin system to generate a non-zero spin current. This physics mechanism can be applied to effectively tune the spin current and pure spin current decoupled from charge current in a quantum spin Hall system by control of its bending curvature. Moreover, the curved quantum spin Hall system can be achieved by the concept of topological nanomechanical architecture in a controllable way, as demonstrated by the material example of Bi/Cl/Si(111) nanofilm. This concept of bending strain engineering of spins via topological nanomechanical architecture affords a promising route towards the realization of topological nano-mechanospintronics.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Alpha-decay width of a near proton-threshold resonance in the 7 Li( α, α ) channel

We investigate the alpha-decay width of a near proton-threshold resonance in 11 B by the excitation functions of 7 Li(α, α) and 7 Li(α, α’) reactions. This resonance is an example of loosely bound atomic nuclei, understood as small open quantum systems, that exhibit properties significantly influenced by their coupling to the continuum. The present experiment focuses on the formation of a specific state in 11 B at excitation energy in the region near 11.4 MeV by bombarding a 7 Li target with a 4 He beam at energies ranging from 3.92 to 4.56 MeV in the laboratory frame. The study provides data complementary to previous observations of the proton emission in the β-decay of the neutron-rich halo nucleus 11 Be. An R-matrix fit to the data provides resonance energy and partial widths consistent with J π =1/2 + for a narrow near-threshold state in 11 B at 11.400(20) MeV, that is 171(20) keV above the proton emission threshold, with partial α-decay width Γ α =2.5$^{+3.5}_{–1.5}$ keV in elastic scattering and Γ α' =15.8$^{+1.9}_{–0.4}$ keV in inelastic scattering. These findings contribute to the understanding of the structure of this open quantum system resonance.

11B↗
DOE OSTI2025

Feynman path integrals for discrete-variable systems: Walks on Hamiltonian graphs

We propose a natural, parameter-free, discrete-variable formulation of Feynman path integrals. We show that for discrete-variable quantum systems, Feynman path integrals take the form of walks on the graph whose weighted adjacency matrix is the Hamiltonian. By working out expressions for the partition function and transition amplitudes of discretized versions of continuous-variable quantum systems, and then taking the continuum limit, we explicitly recover Feynman's continuous-variable path integrals. We also discuss the implications of our result.

Feynman diagrams↗
DOE OSTI2025

Accuracy Guarantees and Quantum Advantage in Analog Open Quantum Simulation with and without Noise

Many-body open quantum systems, described by Lindbladian master equations, are a rich class of physical models that display complex equilibrium and out-of-equilibrium phenomena which remain to be understood. In this paper, we theoretically analyze noisy analog quantum simulation of geometrically local open quantum systems and provide evidence that this problem both is hard to simulate on classical computers and could be approximately solved on near-term quantum devices. First, given a noiseless quantum simulator, we show that the dynamics of local observables and the fixed-point expectation values of rapidly mixing local observables in geometrically local Lindbladians can be obtained to a precision of ϵ in time that is poly ( ϵ − 1 ) and uniform in system size. Furthermore, we establish that the quantum simulator would provide a superpolynomial advantage, in run-time scaling with respect to the target precision and either the evolution time (when simulating dynamics) or the Lindbladian’s decay rate (when simulating fixed points), over any classical algorithm for these problems, assuming BQP ≠ BPP . We then consider the presence of noise in the quantum simulator in the form of additional geometrically local Lindbladian terms. We show that the simulation tasks considered in this paper are stable to errors; i.e., they can be solved to a noise-limited, but system-size independent, precision. Finally, we establish that, assuming BQP ≠ BPP , there are stable geometrically local Lindbladian simulation problems such that, as the noise rate on the simulator is reduced, classical algorithms must take time superpolynomially longer in the inverse noise rate to attain the same precision as the analog quantum simulator. Published by the American Physical Society 2025

Kashyap, Vikram (ORCID:0000000208195207)↗
DOE OSTI2024

Quantum for Energy Systems and Technologies

Quantum information science (QIS) is creating a transformative opportunity to improve processes for energy production, distribution, and consumption. In this presentation, we will show the works that are currently pursued into two major directions, (i) quantum sensing and (ii) quantum computing is undergoing in order to find applications in the areas of carbon captures, critical minerals and gas sensing applications.

Paudel, Hari P.↗
DOE OSTI2021

Lieb-Robinson Light Cone for Power-Law Interactions

The Lieb-Robinson theorem states that information propagates with a finite velocity in quantum systems on a lattice with nearest-neighbor interactions. What are the speed limits on information propagation in quantum systems with power-law interactions, which decay as 1 / r α at distance r ? Here, we present a definitive answer to this question for all exponents α > 2 d and all spatial dimensions d . Schematically, information takes time at least r min { 1 , α - 2 d } to propagate a distance r . As recent state transfer protocols saturate this bound, our work closes a decades-long hunt for optimal Lieb-Robinson bounds on quantum information dynamics with power-law interactions.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2022

Do atoms age?

Time evolution generically entangles a quantum state with environmental degrees of freedom. The resulting increase in entropy changes the properties of that quantum system leading to “aging”. It is interesting to ask if this familiar property also applies to simple, single particle quantum systems such as the decay of a radioactive particle. We propose a test of such aging in an ion clock setup where we probe for temporal changes to the energies of the electronic state of an ion containing a radioactive nucleus. Such effects are absent in standard quantum mechanics and this test is thus a potent null test for violations of quantum mechanics. As a proof of principle, we show that these effects exist in causal non-linear modifications of quantum mechanics.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗