The text provides a new and comprehensive review of the remarkable properties of Coulomb liquids and solids formed on the free surface of liquid helium and other interfaces. This book is intended for graduate students and researchers in the fields of quantum liquids, electronic properties of 2D systems, and solid-state physics.

The physics of strong light-matter coupling has been addressed in different scientific communities over the last three decades. Since the early eighties, atoms coupled to optical and microwave cavities have led to pioneering demonstrations of cavity quantum electrodynamics, Gedanken experiments, and building blocks for quantum information processing, for which the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded in 2012. In the framework of semiconducting devices, strong coupling has allowed investigations into the physics of Bose gases in solid-state environments, and the latter holds promise for exploiting light-matter interaction at the single-photon level in scalable architectures. More recently, impressive developments in the so-called superconducting circuit QED have opened another fundamental playground to revisit cavity quantum electrodynamics for practical and fundamental purposes. This book aims at developing the necessary interface between these communities, by providing future researchers with a robust conceptual, theoretical and experimental basis on strong light-matter coupling, both in the classical and in the quantum regimes. In addition, the emphasis is on new forefront research topics currently developed around the physics of strong light-matter interaction in the atomic and solid-state scenarios.

The open research center project "Interdisciplinary fundamental research toward realization of a quantum computer" has been supported by the Ministry of Education, Japan for five years. This is a collection of the research outcomes by the members engaged in the project. To make the presentation self-contained, it starts with an overview by Mikio Nakahara, which serves as a concise introduction to quantum information and quantum computing. Subsequent contributions include subjects from physics, chemistry, mathematics, and information science, reflecting upon the wide variety of scientists working under this project. These contributions introduce NMR quantum computing and related techniques, number theory and coding theory, quantum error correction, photosynthesis, non-classical correlations and entanglement, neutral atom quantum computer, among others. Each of the contributions will serve as a short introduction to these cutting edge research fields.

The process of realizing the ground state of some typical (frustrated) quantum many-body systems, starting from the ‘disordered’ or excited states, can be formally mapped to the search of solutions for computationally hard problems. The dynamics through the critical point, in between, are therefore extremely crucial. In the context of such computational optimization problems, the dynamics (of rapid quenching or slow annealing), while tuning the appropriate elds or uctuations, in particular while crossing the quantum critical point, are extremely intriguing and are being investigated these days intensively. Several successful methods and tricks are now well established. This volume gives a collection of introductory reviews on such developments written by well-known experts. It concentrates on quantum phase transitions and their dynamics as the transition or critical points are crossed. Both the quenching and annealing dynamics are extensively covered. We hope these timely reviews will inspire the young researchers to join and c- tribute to this fast-growing, intellectually challenging, as well as technologically demanding eld. We are extremely thankful to the contributors for their intensive work and pleasant cooperations. We are also very much indebted to Kausik Das for his help in compiling this book. Finally, we express our gratitude to Johannes Zittartz, Series Editor, LNP, and Christian Caron of physics editorial department of Springer for their encouragement and support.

Over the last few decades, the quantum aspects of light have been explored and major progress has been made in understanding the specific quantum aspects of the interaction between light and matter. The domain of classical optics has recently seen many exciting new developments, especially in the areas of nano-optics, nano-antennas, metamaterials, and optical cloaking. Approaches based on single-molecule detection and plasmonics have provided new avenues for exploring light-matter interaction at the nanometre scale. All these topics have in common a trend to consider and use smaller and smaller objects, down to the micrometre, nanometre, and even atomic range. The summer school held in Les Houches in July 2013 treated all these subjects lying at the frontier between nanophotonics and quantum optics, in a series of lectures given by world experts

This stimulating discussion of a rapidly developing field is divided into two parts. The first features tutorials in textbook style providing self-contained introductions to the various areas relevant to atom chip research. Part II contains research reviews that provide an integrated account of the current state in an active area of research where atom chips are employed, and explore possible routes of future progress. Depending on the subject, the length of the review and the relative weight of the 'review' and 'outlook' parts vary, since the authors include their own personal view and style in their accounts.

This book reviews advances in cutting-edge micro-/nano-electrometers, and discusses the technological challenges involved in their practical implementation. The detection of electrostatic charge has a wide range of applications in ionization chambers, bio-analyte and aerosol particle instruments, mass spectrometers, scanning tunneling microscopes, and even quantum computers. Designing micro-/nano-electrometers (also known as charge sensors) for electrometry is considered vital because of the charge sensitivity and resolution issues at micro-/nano-scales. The remarkably dynamic microelectromechanical systems (MEMSs)/nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMSs), and advances in solid-state electronics, hold considerable potential for the design and fabrication of extremely sensitive charge sensors.