We study the performance of linear and nonlinear optical schemes for the detection of weak signals for two classes of probe states. These are quadrature coherent squeezed states and the minimum uncertainty states of the generator of the transformation and the measured observable. Both for linear and nonlinear schemes we show that the generator-measurement minimum uncertainty states are far from being optimum, while the quadrature coherent squeezed states can reach maximum accuracy almost for the same amount of squeezing in both cases. The analysis is largely based on a suitable approximation treating the photon number as a continuous variable.

Time-local master equations are more generally applicable than is often recognized, but at first sight, it would seem that they can only safely be used in time intervals where the time evolution is invertible. Using the Jaynes-Cummings model, we here construct an explicit example where two different Hamiltonians, corresponding to two different noninvertible and non-Markovian time evolutions, lead to arbitrarily similar time-local master equations. This illustrates how the time-local master equation, on its own in this case, does not uniquely determine the time evolution. The example is, nevertheless, artificial in the sense that a rapid change in (at least) one of the Hamiltonians is needed. The change must also occur at a very specific instance in time. If a Hamiltonian is known not to have such very specific behavior but is "physically well behaved," then one may conjecture that a time-local master equation also determines the time evolution when it is not invertible.

We consider interacting ultracold fermions subject to Rashba spin-orbit coupling. We construct a single-branch interacting theory for the Fermi gas when the system is dilute enough so that the positive helicity branch is not occupied at all in the non-interacting ground state. We show that the theory is renormalizable in perturbation theory and therefore yields a model of polarized fermions that avoids a multi-channel treatment of the problem. Our results open the path towards a much more straightforward approach to the many-body physics of cold atoms subject to artificial vector potentials.

We consider the effect of a momentum kick on the ground state of a noninteracting two-dimensional Fermi gas subject to Rashba spin-orbit coupling. Although the total momentum is a constant of motion, the gas does not obey the rules of Galilean relativity. Upon imprinting a small overall velocity to the noninteracting gas, we find that the Fermi sea is deformed in a nontrivial way. We also consider a weakly repulsive Fermi gas and find, from its Hartree shift, that the total ground state of the system may change into a deformed, finite-momentum ground state as the repulsion is increased beyond a critical value, without the need for any external Zeeman fields. We also discuss possible experimental signatures of these effects.