No Arabic abstract
We investigate the collective scattering of coherent light from a thermal alkali-metal vapor with temperatures ranging from 350 to 450 K, corresponding to average atomic spacings between $0.7 lambda$ and $0.1 lambda$. We develop a theoretical model treating the atomic ensemble as coherent, interacting, radiating dipoles. We show that the two-time second-order correlation function of a thermal ensemble can be described by an average of randomly positioned atomic pairs. Our model illustrates good agreement with the experimental results. Furthermore, we show how fine-tuning of the experimental parameters may make it possible to explore several photon statistics regimes.
Entanglement measures quantify nonclassical correlations present in a quantum system, but can be extremely difficult to calculate, even more so, when information on its state is limited. Here, we consider broad families of entanglement criteria that are based on variances of arbitrary operators and analytically derive the lower bounds these criteria provide for two relevant entanglement measures: the best separable approximation (BSA) and the generalized robustness (GR). This yields a practical method for quantifying entanglement in realistic experimental situations, in particular, when only few measurements of simple observables are available. As a concrete application of this method, we quantify bipartite and multipartite entanglement in spin-squeezed Bose-Einstein condensates of $sim 500$ atoms, by lower bounding the BSA and the GR only from measurements of first and second moments of the collective spin operator.
Enhancement of the sensitivities of optical magnetometers, atomic clocks and atom interferometers and other quantum metrology devices requires introducing new physical processes to improve on their present achievements. Many body collective correlations among the atoms, spins or, in general, quantum systems may prove to be a suitable method. As these correlations introduce interference terms in the intensity of the scattering amplitudes, they may enhance the signal as $N(N-1)$ for N correlated quantum systems. These correlations enhance the signal to noise ratio by a factor of $N^2$ and contribute to better sensitivity in quantum metrology. Moreover atomic correlation may provide quantum noise limit, Heisenberg limit. In the present communication excitation exchange induced by photons in a cavity between two atoms is calculated and clearly exhibits correlation and collective effects. A novel operator is introduced that expresses photon-induced excitation exchange that takes in account energy conservation, $V_{ij}=hat{a}^dagsigma_isigma_j^daghat{a}$, $sigma_i=left|grightrangle_{i}leftlangle eright|_{i}$ is lowering operator of $i$-th atom, and $hat{a}^dag,hat{a}$ are photon creation and annihilation operators. Here $i$ and $j$ stand for two atoms. This operator describes real or virtual photon assisted dipole-dipole interaction. Moreover, it conserves the total number of excitations in the joint em field and the quantum system. Experimental challenges are suggested.
We illustrate the existence of single-excitation bound states for propagating photons interacting with $N$ two-level atoms. These bound states can be calculated from an effective spin model, and their existence relies on dissipation in the system. The appearance of these bound states is in a one-to-one correspondence with zeros in the single-photon transmission and with divergent bunching in the second-order photon-photon correlation function. We also formulate a dissipative version of Levinsons theorem for this system by looking at the relation between the number of bound states and the winding number of the transmission phases. This theorem allows a direct experimental measurement of the number of bound states using the measured transmission phases.
We consider an ensemble of atoms with $Lambda$-type level structure trapped in a single-mode cavity, and propose a geometric scheme of coherent manipulation of quantum states on the subspace of zero-energy states within the quantum Zeno subspace of the system. We find that the particular subspace inherits the decoherence-free nature of the quantum Zeno subspace and features a symmetry-protected degeneracy, fulfilling all the conditions for a universal scheme of arbitrary unitary operations on it.
Fully inverted atoms placed at exactly the same location synchronize as they deexcite, and light is emitted in a burst (known as Dickes superradiance). We investigate the role of finite interatomic separation on correlated decay in mesoscopic chains, and provide an understanding in terms of collective jump operators. We show that the superradiant burst survives at small distances, despite Hamiltonian dipole-dipole interactions. However, for larger separations, competition between different jump operators leads to dephasing, suppressing superradiance. Collective effects are still significant for arrays with lattice constants of the order of a wavelength, and lead to a photon emission rate that decays nonexponentially in time. We calculate the two-photon correlation function and demonstrate that emission is correlated and directional, as well as sensitive to small changes in the interatomic distance. These features can be measured in current experimental setups, and are robust to realistic imperfections.