No Arabic abstract
Recently it was shown that the quantum behavior of an intense cavity field can be revealed by measuring the steady atomic correlations between two ideal atoms, which interact with the same leaking cavity mode. Considering a weak atom-field coupling regime and large average number of photons in the cavity mode ($bar{n}$), one expects that a semiclassical theory could explain the whole dynamics of the system. However, this system presents the generation of correlations between the atoms, which is a signature of the quantumness of the cavity field even in the limit of $bar{n} gg 1$ [Phys. Rev. Lett. textbf{107}, 153601 (2011)]. Here, we extend this result by investigating the relaxation time for such a system. We have shown that the relaxation time of the system varies proportionally to $bar{n}$ for a coherent driving, but it is inversely proportional to $bar{n}$ for an incoherent pumping. Thus, the time required to observe the manifestation of the quantum aspects of a cavity field on the atomic correlations diverges as $bar{n}$ tends to macroscopic values due to a coherent driving, while it goes to zero for incoherent pumping. For a coherent driving, we can also see that this system presents metastability, i.e., firstly the atomic system reaches a quasi-stationary state which last for a long time interval, but eventually it reaches the real steady state. We have also discussed the effects of small atomic decay. In this case, the steady correlations between the atoms disappear for long times, but the intense cavity field is still able to generate atomic correlations at intermediate times. Then, considering a real scenario, we would be able to monitor the quantumness of a cavity field in a certain time interval.
We investigate how to experimentally detect a recently proposed measure to quantify macroscopic quantum superpositions [Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 220401 (2011)], namely, macroscopic quantumness $mathcal{I}$. Schemes based on overlap measurements for harmonic oscillator states and for qubit states are extensively investigated. Effects of detection inefficiency and coarse-graining are analyzed in order to assess feasibility of the schemes.
We present the conditional time evolution of the electromagnetic field produced by a cavity QED system in the strongly coupled regime. We obtain the conditional evolution through a wave-particle correlation function that measures the time evolution of the field after the detection of a photon. A connection exists between this correlation function and the spectrum of squeezing which permits the study of squeezed states in the time domain. We calculate the spectrum of squeezing from the master equation for the reduced density matrix using both the quantum regression theorem and quantum trajectories. Our calculations not only show that spontaneous emission degrades the squeezing signal, but they also point to the dynamical processes that cause this degradation.
To reveal the role of the quantumness in the Otto cycle and to discuss the validity of the thermodynamic uncertainty relation (TUR) in the cycle, we study the quantum Otto cycle and its classical counterpart. In particular, we calculate exactly the mean values and relative error of thermodynamic quantities. In the quasistatic limit, quantumness reduces the productivity and precision of the Otto cycle compared to that in the absence of quantumness, whereas in the finite-time mode, it can increase the cycles productivity and precision. Interestingly, as the strength (heat conductance) between the system and the bath increases, the precision of the quantum Otto cycle overtakes that of the classical one. Testing the conventional TUR of the Otto cycle, in the region where the entropy production is large enough, we find a tighter bound than that of the conventional TUR. However, in the finite-time mode, both quantum and classical Otto cycles violate the conventional TUR in the region where the entropy production is small. This implies that another modified TUR is required to cover the finite-time Otto cycle. Finally, we discuss the possible origin of this violation in terms of the uncertainty products of the thermodynamic quantities and the relative error near resonance conditions.
The reliability of quantum channels for transmitting information is of profound importance from the perspective of quantum information. This naturally leads to the question as how well a quantum state is preserved when subjected to a quantum channel. We propose a measure of quantumness of channels based on non-commutativity of quantum states that is intuitive and easy to compute. We apply the proposed measure to some well known noise channels, both Markovian as well as non-Markovian and find that the results are in good agreement with those from a recently introduced $l_1$-norm coherence based measure.
Spontaneous emission of radiation is one of the fundamental mechanisms by which an excited quantum system returns to equilibrium. For spins, however, spontaneous emission is generally negligible compared to other non-radiative relaxation processes because of the weak coupling between the magnetic dipole and the electromagnetic field. In 1946, Purcell realized that the spontaneous emission rate can be strongly enhanced by placing the quantum system in a resonant cavity -an effect which has since been used extensively to control the lifetime of atoms and semiconducting heterostructures coupled to microwave or optical cavities, underpinning single-photon sources. Here we report the first application of these ideas to spins in solids. By coupling donor spins in silicon to a superconducting microwave cavity of high quality factor and small mode volume, we reach for the first time the regime where spontaneous emission constitutes the dominant spin relaxation mechanism. The relaxation rate is increased by three orders of magnitude when the spins are tuned to the cavity resonance, showing that energy relaxation can be engineered and controlled on-demand. Our results provide a novel and general way to initialise spin systems into their ground state, with applications in magnetic resonance and quantum information processing. They also demonstrate that, contrary to popular belief, the coupling between the magnetic dipole of a spin and the electromagnetic field can be enhanced up to the point where quantum fluctuations have a dramatic effect on the spin dynamics; as such our work represents an important step towards the coherent magnetic coupling of individual spins to microwave photons.