No Arabic abstract
We study the generation of spin-squeezing in arrays of long-lived dipoles subject to collective emission, coherent drive, elastic interactions, and spontaneous emission. Counter-intuitively, it is found that the introduction of spontaneous emission leads to an enhancement of the achievable spin-squeezing, relative to that which emerges in the steady-state of the purely collective dynamics for the same model parameters. This behavior is connected to the dynamical self-tuning of the system through a dissipative phase transition that is present in the collective system alone. Our findings will be applicable to next-generation quantum sensors harnessing correlated quantum matter, including cavity-QED and trapped ion systems.
Quantum spin squeezing is an important resource for quantum information processing, but its squeezing degree is not easy to preserve in an open system with decoherence. Here, we propose a scheme to implement single-photon-triggered spin squeezing with decoherence reduction in an open system. In our system, a Dicke model (DM) is introduced into the quadratic optomechanics, which can be equivalent to an effective DM manipulated by the photon number. Besides, the phonon mode of the optomechanical system is coupled to a squeezed vacuum reservoir with a phase matching, resulting in that the thermal noise caused by the environment can be suppressed completely. We show that squeezing of the phonon mode triggered by a single photon can be transferred to the spin ensemble totally, and pairwise entanglement of the spin ensemble can be realized if and only if there is spin squeezing. Importantly, when considering the impact of the environment, our system can obtain a better squeezing degree than the optimal squeezing that can be achieved in the traditional DM. Meanwhile, the spin squeezing generated in our system is immune to the thermal noise. This work offers an effective way to generate spin squeezing with a single photon and to reduce decoherence in an open system, which will have promising applications in quantum information processing.
The traversal of an elliptically polarized optical field through a thermal vapour cell can give rise to a rotation of its polarization axis. This process, known as polarization self-rotation (PSR), has been suggested as a mechanism for producing squeezed light at atomic transition wavelengths. In this paper, we show results of the characterization of PSR in isotopically enhanced Rubidium-87 cells, performed in two independent laboratories. We observed that, contrary to earlier work, the presence of atomic noise in the thermal vapour overwhelms the observation of squeezing. We present a theory that contains atomic noise terms and show that a null result in squeezing is consistent with this theory.
We study the three-dimensional nature of the quantum interface between an ensemble of cold, trapped atomic spins and a paraxial laser beam, coupled through a dispersive interaction. To achieve strong entanglement between the collective atomic spin and the photons, one must match the spatial mode of the collective radiation of the ensemble with the mode of the laser beam while minimizing the effects of decoherence due to optical pumping. For ensembles coupling to a probe field that varies over the extent of the cloud, the set of atoms that indistinguishably radiates into a desired mode of the field defines an inhomogeneous spin wave. Strong coupling of a spin wave to the probe mode is not characterized by a single parameter, the optical density, but by a collection of different effective atom numbers that characterize the coherence and decoherence of the system. To model the dynamics of the system, we develop a full stochastic master equation, including coherent collective scattering into paraxial modes, decoherence by local inhomogeneous diffuse scattering, and backaction due to continuous measurement of the light entangled with the spin waves. This formalism is used to study the squeezing of a spin wave via continuous quantum nondemolition (QND) measurement. We find that the greatest squeezing occurs in parameter regimes where spatial inhomogeneities are significant, far from the limit in which the interface is well approximated by a one-dimensional, homogeneous model.
The compatibility of cavity-generated spin-squeezed atomic states with atom-interferometric sensors that require freely falling atoms is demonstrated. An ensemble of $500,000$ spin-squeezed atoms in a high-finesse optical cavity with near-uniform atom-cavity coupling is prepared, released into free space, recaptured in the cavity, and probed. Up to $sim$10 dB of metrologically-relevant squeezing is retrieved for 700 microsecond free-fall times, and decaying levels of squeezing are realized for up to 3 millisecond free-fall times. The degradation of squeezing results from loss of atom-cavity coupling homogeneity between the initial squeezed state generation and final collective state read-out. A theoretical model is developed to quantify this degradation and this model is experimentally validated.
Non-Gaussian states, and specifically the paradigmatic Schrodinger cat state, are well-known to be very sensitive to losses. When propagating through damping channels, these states quickly loose their non-classical features and the associated negative oscillations of their Wigner function. However, by squeezing the superposition states, the decoherence process can be qualitatively changed and substantially slowed down. Here, as a first example, we experimentally observe the reduced decoherence of squeezed optical coherent-state superpositions through a lossy channel. To quantify the robustness of states, we introduce a combination of a decaying value and a rate-of-decay of the Wigner function negativity. This work, which uses squeezing as an ancillary Gaussian resource, opens new possibilities to protect and manipulate quantum superpositions in phase space.