We characterise the spontaneous emission time and direction from small numbers of dipole-coupled two-level atoms (2LAs) in the presence of incident fields. We show how to use adiabatic passage to admit population transfer between states in the one-quantum subspace for two and three 2LAs. Our method is a multi-atom generalisation of stimulated-Raman-adiabatic-passage (STIRAP) for a single multi-level atom. We use numerical results to justify an ansatz that enables us to give analytical expressions for the directional emission which depends on the incident fields. Our results admit a characterisation of the efficacy of population transfer in small numbers of dipole-coupled 2LAs, and are applicable to proof-of-principle experiments involving dipole-coupled 2LAs.
We derive spontaneous emission rate and line shift for two-level atoms coupled to the radiation field using causal perturbation theory. In this approach, employing the theory of distribution splitting prevents the occurrence of divergent integrals. Our method confirms the result for atomic decay rate but suggests that the cutoff frequency for the atomic line shift is determined by the atomic mass, rather than Bohr radius or electron mass.
Here we discuss an effect of dephasing induced by a weak gravitational field on the collective radiation dynamics of an atomic system in timed single-photon Dicke states. We show that a photon absorbed by the stationary system of randomly placed stationary atoms is no longer spontaneously emitted in the direction of the impinging photon. Gravity leads to broadening of the angular distribution of emission.
We discuss a simple example demonstrating that spontaneous emission from "space-time-superposed" atomic center-of-mass wave packets is nontrivially and time-dependent modified with respect to the standard dipole-pattern typical of "space-superposed" wave packets. Our approach provides an approximate description of a nonsimultaneous interaction of electromagnetic field with different parts of a wave packet.
We investigate the spontaneous emission from an inverted Y-type atomic system coupled by three coherent fields. We use the Schrödinger equation to calculate the probability amplitudes of the wave function of the system and derive an analytical expression of the spontaneous emission spectrum to trace the origin of the spectral features. Quantum interference effects, such as the spectral line narrowing, spectrum splitting and dark resonance are observed. The number of spectral components, the spectral linewidth, and relative heights can be very different depending on the physical parameters. A v…
We investigate the dynamical behavior of the atom-photon entanglement in a V-type three-level quantum system using the atomic reduced entropy. It is shown that an atom and photons are entangled at the steady-state; however disentanglement can also be achieved in an especial condition. It is demonstrated that in the presence of quantum interference induced by spontaneous emission, the reduced entropy and the atom-photon entanglement are phase-dependent. Non-stationary solution is also obtained when the quantum interference due to the spontaneous emission is completely included.
The creation of single collective excitations in atomic ensembles via spontaneous Raman emission plays a key role in several quantum communication protocols, starting with the seminal DLCZ protocol [L.-M.Duan, M.D. Lukin, J.I. Cirac, and P. Zoller, Nature {\bf 414}, 413 (2001).] This process is usually analyzed theoretically under the assumptions that the write laser pulse inducing the Raman transition is far off-resonance, and that the atomic ensemble is only homogeneously broadened. Here we study the impact of near-resonance excitation for inhomogeneously broadened ensembles on the collectiv…
In spontaneous emission an atom in an excited state undergoes a transition to the ground state and emits a single photon. Associated with the emission is a change of the atomic momentum due to photon recoil. Photon emission can be modified close to surfaces and in cavities. For an ion, localized in front of a mirror, coherence of the emitted resonance fluorescence has been reported. In free space experiments demonstrated that spontaneous emission destroys motional coherence. Here we report on motional coherence created by a single spontaneous emission event close to a mirror surface. The coher…
We propose a dissipative scheme to prepare a three-dimensional entangled state for two atoms trapped in separate coupled cavities. Our work shows that both atomic spontaneous emission and cavity decay, which are two typical obstacles in unitary-dynamics-based schemes, could be utilized as resources for high-dimensional entangled state preparation without specifying initial state and controlling time precisely. Final numerical simulation with one group of experimental parameters indicates that the performance of our scheme is better than the unitary-dynamics-based scheme.
We report an interference experiment of spontaneous emission of light from two distant solid-state ensembles of atoms that are coherently excited by a short laser pulse. The ensembles are Erbium ions doped into two LiNbO3 crystals with channel waveguides, which are placed in the two arms of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. The light that is spontaneously emitted after the excitation pulse shows first-order interference. By a strong collective enhancement of the emission, the atoms behave as ideal two-level quantum systems and no which-path information is left in the atomic ensembles after emissi…
Coherent control of collective spontaneous emission in an extended atomic ensemble resonantly interacting with single-photon wave packets is analyzed. A scheme for coherent manipulation of collective atomic states is developed such that superradiant states of the atomic system can be converted into subradiant ones and vice versa. Possible applications of such a scheme for optical quantum state storage and single-photon wave packet shaping are discussed. It is shown that also in the absence of inhomogeneous broadening of the resonant line, single-photon wave packets with arbitrary pulse shape m…
We investigate, in the case of the $2\mathrm{p}-1\mathrm{s}$ transition in atomic Hydrogen, the behaviour of the spontaneously emitted electromagnetic field in spacetime. We focus on Glauber's wave function for the emitted photon, a quantity which we find is nonzero outside the lightcone at all times after the start of the emission. We identify the uncertainty on the position of the decaying electron as a source of departure from causality in the naive sense of the term. We carry out a detailed study of the emitted electric field in the mid- and far-field regions, through analytical and numeri…
We propose a very simple scheme to slow down the usual exponential decay of upper state population in an atomic two level system considerably. The scheme makes use of an additional intense field with frequency lower than the total decay width of the atomic transition. This allows for additional decay channels with the exchange of one or more low-frequency photons during an atomic transition. The various channels may then interfere with each other. The intensity and the frequency of the low-frequency field are shown to act as two different control parameters modifying the duration and the amoun…
Using the Born expansion of the Green tensor, we consider the spontaneous decay rate of an excited atom placed in the vicinity of a rectangular plate. We discuss the limitations of the commonly used simplifying assumption that the plate extends to infinity in the lateral directions and examine the effects of the atomic dipole moment orientation, atomic position, and plate boundary and thickness on the atomic decay rate. In particular, it is shown that in the boundary region, the spontaneous decay rate can be strongly modified.
Spontaneous emission and Lamb shift of atoms in absorbing dielectrics are discussed. A Green's-function approach is used based on the multipolar interaction Hamiltonian of a collection of atomic dipoles with the quantised radiation field. The rate of decay and level shifts are determined by the retarded Green's-function of the interacting electric displacement field, which is calculated from a Dyson equation describing multiple scattering. The positions of the atomic dipoles forming the dielectrics are assumed to be uncorrelated and a continuum approximation is used. The associated unphysical …
Atomic correlation effects in collapse-induced spontaneous radiation
Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati INFN（INFN 弗拉斯卡蒂国家实验室）；Centro Ricerche Enrico Fermi, Museo Storico della Fisica e Centro Studi e Ricerche ”Enrico Fermi”（恩里科·费米研究中心、物理历史博物馆及恩里科·费米研究与研究中心）；Wigner Research Center for Physics（维格纳物理学研究中心）；Eötvös Loránd University（罗兰大学）；IFIN-HH, Institutul National pentru Fizica si Inginerie Nucleara Horia Hulubei（霍里亚·胡利贝伊国家核物理与核工程研究所）
We study spontaneously generated entanglement (SGE) between two identical multilevel atoms in free space via vacuum-induced radiative coupling. We show that the SGE in two-atom systems may initially increase with time but eventually vanishes in the time scale determined by the excited state lifetime and radiative coupling strength between the two atoms. We demonstrate that a steady-state SGE can be established by incoherently pumping the excited states of the two-atom system. We have shown that an appropriate rate of incoherent pump can help producing optimal SGE. The multilevel systems offer …
We report ground-state quantum beats in spontaneous emission from a continuously driven atomic ensemble. Beats are visible only in an intensity autocorrelation and evidence spontaneously generated coherence in radiative decay. Our measurement realizes a quantum eraser where a first photon detection prepares a superposition and a second erases the "which-path" information in the intermediate state.
In contrast to the traditional Spontaneous Generated Coherence (SGC), Field Generated Coherence (FGC)-based atomic scheme is presented for spontaneous emission cancellation. It is easy to achieve externally controllable experimental trapping condition in this 4-field-driven 5-level atomic system. Consequently, due to the FGC the decay from the central dressed \emph{bare-energy-state} of the set of upper three closely spaced hyperfine decaying states of Sodium D2 line is completely cancelled under the trapping condition, exhibiting a novel phenomenon of a \textit{dark bare-energy-state}% . Exte…
When a three-level atomic wavepacket is obliquely incident on a "edium slab" consisting of two far-detuned laser beams, there exists lateral shift between reflection and incident points at the surface of a "medium slab", analogous to optical Goos-Hanchen effect. We evaluate lateral shifts for reflected and transmitted waves via expansion of reflection and transmission coefficients, in contrast to the stationary phase method. Results show that lateral shifts can be either positive or negative dependent on the incident angle and the atomic internal state. Interestingly, a giant lateral shift of …
We investigate the effects of spontaneous scattering on the evolution of entanglement of two atomic samples, probed by phase shift measurements on optical beams interacting with both samples. We develop a formalism of conditional quantum evolutions and present a wave function analysis implemented in numerical simulations of the state vector dynamics. This method allows to track the evolution of entanglement and to compare it with the predictions obtained when spontaneous scattering is neglected. We provide numerical evidence that the interferometric scheme to entangle atomic samples is only ma…
We study cooperative single-photon spontaneous emission from N multilevel atoms for different atomic distributions in optical vector theory. Instead of the average approximation for interatomic distance or the continuum approximation (sums over atoms replaced by integrals) for atomic distribution, the positions of every atom are taken into account by numerical calculation. It is shown that the regularity of atomic distribution has considerable influence on cooperative spontaneous emission. For a small atomic sample (compared with radiation wavelength), to obtain strong superradiance not only n…
On the basis of general theoretical results developed previously in [I. M. Sokolov et al., J. Exp. Theor. Phys. 112, 246 (2011)], we analyze spontaneous decay of a single atom inside cold atomic clouds under conditions when the averaged interatomic separation is less or comparable with the wavelength of quasi resonant radiation. Beyond the decay dynamics we analyze shifts of resonance as well as distortion of the spectral shape of the atomic transition.
We derive a markovian master equation for the internal dynamics of an ensemble of two-level atoms including all effects related to the quantization of their motion. Our equation provides a unifying picture of the consequences of recoil and indistinguishability of atoms beyond the Lamb-Dicke regime on both their dissipative and conservative dynamics, and applies equally well to distinguishable and indistinguishable atoms. We give general expressions for the decay rates and the dipole-dipole shifts for any motional states, and we find closed-form formulas for a number of relevant states (Gaussia…
We study a quantum electrodynamics (QED) system made of an two-level atom and a semi-infinite rectangular waveguide, which behaves as a perfect mirror in one end. The spatial dependence of the atomic spontaneous emission has been included in the coupling strength relevant to the eigenmodes of the waveguide. The role of retardation is studied for the atomic transition frequency far away from the cutoff frequencies. The atom-mirror distance introduces different phases and retardation times into the dynamics of the atom interacting resonantly with the corresponding transverse modes. It is found t…
Spin Grid States for Quantum Metrology in Atomic Clocks Limited by Spontaneous Emission
Leibniz Universität Hannover（汉诺威莱布尼茨大学）；University of Innsbruck（因斯布鲁克大学）；Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences（奥地利科学院量子光学与量子信息研究所）
Spontaneous emission can create coherences in a multilevel atom having close lying levels, subject to the condition that the atomic dipole matrix elements are non-orthogonal. This condition is rarely met in atomic systems. We report the possibility of bypassing this condition and thereby creating coherences by letting the atom with orthogonal dipoles to interact with the vacuum of a pre-selected polarized cavity mode rather than the free space vacuum. We derive a master equation for the reduced density operator of a model four level atomic system, and obtain its analytical solution to describe…
We investigate the quantum recoil force acting on an excited atom close to the surface of a nonreciprocal photonic topological insulator (PTI). The main atomic emission channel is the unidirectional surface-plasmon propagating at the PTI-vacuum interface, and we show that it enables a spontaneous lateral recoil force that scales at short distance as $1/d^4$, where $d$ is the atom-PTI separation. Remarkably, the sign of the recoil force is polarization and orientation-independent, and it occurs in a translation-invariant homogeneous system in thermal equilibrium. Surprisingly, the recoil force …
Local field effects on the rate of spontaneous emission and Lamb shift in a dense gas of atoms are discussed taking into account correlations of atomic center-of-mass coordinates. For this the exact retarded propagator in the medium is calculated in independent scattering approximation and employing a virtual-cavity model. The resulting changes of the atomic polarizability lead to modifications of the medium response which can be of the same order of magnitude but of opposite sign than those due to local field corrections of the dielectric function derived by Morice, Castin, and Dalibard [Phys…
Focusing on the $2\mathrm{p}-1\mathrm{s}$ transition in atomic Hydrogen, we investigate through first order perturbation theory the time evolution of the survival probability of an electron initially taken to be in the excited ($2\mathrm{p}$) state. We examine both the results yielded by the standard dipole approximation for the coupling between the atom and the electromagnetic field -for which we propose a cutoff-independent regularisation- and those yielded by the exact coupling function. In both cases, Fermi's golden rule is shown to be an excellent approximation for the system at hand: we …
We investigate the spontaneous emission of a two-level system, e.g. an atom or atomlike object, coupled to a single-end, i.e., semi-infinite, one-dimensional photonic waveguide such that one end behaves as a perfect mirror while light can pass through the opposite end with no back-reflection. Through a quantum microscopic model we show that such geometry can cause non-exponential and long-lived atomic decay. Under suitable conditions, a bound atom-photon stationary state appears in the atom-mirror interspace so as to trap a considerable amount of initial atomic excitation. Yet, this can be rel…
The role of spontaneous emission in the interaction between a two-level atom and a pumped micro-cavity in the strong coupling regime is discussed in this paper. Especially, using a quantum Monte-Carlo simulation, we investigate atomic spatial coherence. It is found that atomic spontaneous emission destroys the coherence between neighboring lattice sites, while the cavity decay does not. Furthermore, our computation of the spatial coherence function shows that the in-site locality is little affected by the cavity decay, but greatly depends on the cavity pump amplitude.
The design of an experiment on the spontaneous crystallization of a laser-cooled, but thermal atomic cloud into a hexagonally structured phase is discussed. Atomic interaction is mediated by the dipole potential of an optical lattice formed spontaneously in a multi-mode degenerate cavity from single-mode longitudinal pumping. The length scale of the structure is given by the diffractive dephasing between the spontaneous sidebands and the on-axis pump. A linear stability indicates that the transition can be observed in a cavity of moderate finesse compatible with having the cavity mirrors outsi…
Spontaneous decay of an excited atomic state is a fundamental process that originates from the interaction between matter and vacuum modes of the electromagnetic field. The rate of decay can thus be engineered by modifying the density of final states of the joint atom-photon system. Imposing suitable boundary conditions on the electromagnetic field has been shown to alter the density of vacuum modes near the atomic transition, resulting in modified atomic decay rates. Here we report the first experimental demonstration of suppression of atomic radiative decay by reducing the density of availab…
In this work, we consider atomic spontaneous emission in a system consisting of two identical two-level atoms interacting dispersively with the quantized electromagnetic field in a high-Q cavity. We investigate the destructive effect of the atomic decay on the generation of maximally entangled states, following the proposal by Zheng S B and Guo G C (2000 Phys. Rev. Lett. 85 2392). In particular, we analyze the fidelity of teleportation performed using such a noisy channel and calculatethe maximum spontaneous decay rate we may have in order to realize teleportation.
In spontaneous Raman process in atomic cell at high gain, both the Stokes field and the accompanying collective atomic excitation (atomic spin wave) are coherent. We find that, due to the spontaneous nature of the process, the phases of the Stokes field and the atomic spin wave change randomly from one realization to another but are anti-correlated. The phases of the atomic ensembles are read out via another Raman process at a later time, thus realizing phase memory in atoms. The observation of phase correlation between the Stokes field and the collective atomic excitations is an important ste…
The production of single photons using rephased amplified spontaneous emission is examined. This process produces single photons on demand with high efficiency by detecting the spontaneous emission from an atomic ensemble, then applying a population-inverting pulse to rephase the ensemble and produce a photon echo of the spontaneous emission events. The theoretical limits on the efficiency of the production are determined for several variants of the scheme. For an ensemble of uniform optical density, generating the initial spontaneous emission and its echo using transitions of different streng…
We investigate spontaneous emission of a two-level atom with an arbitrarily polarized electric dipole in front of a flat dielectric surface. We treat the general case where the atomic dipole matrix element is a complex vector, that is, the atomic dipole can rotate with time in space. We calculate the rates of spontaneous emission into evanescent and radiation modes and study the angular densities of the rates in the space of wave vectors for the field modes. We show that, when the ellipticity of the atomic dipole is not zero, the angular density of the spontaneous emission rate of the atom may…
The detrimental effect of spontaneous emission on the performance of control schemes designed to achieve population inversion between the ground state and a highly excited atomic state are studied using computer simulations.
We describe the light-matter interaction of a single two level atom with the electromagnetic vacuum in terms of field and dipole variables by considering homodyne detection of the emitted fields. Spontaneous emission is then observed as a continuous fluctuating force acting on the atomic dipole. The effect of this force may be compensated and even reversed by feedback.
As a contribution to quantum optics in the vicinity of surfaces we study the single atom spontaneous emission in a linear chain of two-level atoms. The electromagnetic field is thereby treated with the help of integro-differential equations which take into account the interaction with the other atoms in the chain. The life time of the excited atom, the frequency shift of the atomic transition and the angular distribution of emitted photons are worked out. They depend on the position of the emitting atom. As compared with the single atom in free space, considerable modifications occur for atoms…
Studying the spontaneous emission of a V-type three-level atom embedded in a photonic crystal (PC) by fractional calculus, we found that the atomic excited states in the anisotropic PC can be expressed as a superposition of four dressed states analytically. Through detuning two allowed atomic transition energies with respect to the photonic band edge, the coupling between these two transitions leads to three dynamic regimes, namely non-Markovian decay, damped quantum interference and quantum interference, classified by the numbers of contributed bounded dressed states. From the degree of quant…
Spontaneous emission of a two--level atom in free space is modified by other atoms in its vicinity leading to super- and sub-radiance. In particular, for atomic distances closer than the transition wavelength the maximally entangled antisymmetric superposition state of two individually excited atomic dipole moments possesses no total dipole moment and will not decay spontaneously at all. Such a two-atom dark state does not exist, if the atoms possess alternative decay channels towards other atomic lower energy states. However, we show here that for any atomic state with $N-1$ independent spont…
We study the spontaneous emission of an excited atom close to an optical nanofiber and the resulting scattering forces. For a suitably chosen orientation of the atomic dipole, the spontaneous emission pattern becomes asymmetric and a resonant Casimir--Polder force parallel to the fiber axis arises. For a simple model case, we show that the such a lateral force is due to the interaction of the circularly oscillating atomic dipole moment with its image inside the material. With the Casimir--Polder energy being constant in the lateral direction, the predicted lateral force does not derive from a …
We show how the dynamics of collisions between cold atoms can be manipulated by a modification of spontaneous emission times. This is achieved by placing the atomic sample in a resonant optical cavity. Spontaneous emission is enhanced by a combination of multiparticle entanglement together with a higher density of modes of the modified vacuum field, in a situation akin to superradiance. A specific situation is considered and we show that this effect can be experimentally observed as a large suppression in trap-loss rates.
A formalism for studying spontaneous decay of an excited two-level atom in the presence of dispersing and absorbing dielectric bodies is developed. An integral equation, which is suitable for numerical solution, is derived for the atomic upper-state-probability amplitude. The emission pattern and the power spectrum of the emitted light are expressed in terms of the Green tensor of the dielectric-matter formation including absorption and dispersion. The theory is applied to the spontaneous decay of an excited atom at the center of a three-layered spherical cavity, with the cavity wall being mod…
We discuss the connection between quantum interference effects in optical beams and radiation fields emitted from atomic systems. We illustrate this connection by a study of the first- and second-order correlation functions of optical fields and atomic dipole moments. We explore the role of correlations between the emitting systems and present examples of practical methods to implement two systems with non-orthogonal dipole moments. We also derive general conditions for quantum interference in a two-atom system and for a control of spontaneous emission. The relation between population trapping…
Atom-field interactions near optical interfaces have a wide range of applications in quantum technology. Motivated by this, this paper revisits the spontaneous emission of atomic dipoles in the presence of a two sided semi-transparent mirror. First we review the main properties of the quantised electromagnetic field near a semi-transparent mirror. To do so, we employ a quantum mirror image detector method which maps the experimental setup which we consider here onto analogous free space scenarios. We emphasise that the local density of states of the electromagnetic field depends on the reflect…
We propose what we believe to be a novel type of optical source for ultra-cold atomic Far Off-Resonance optical-dipole Traps (FORTs). The source is based on an Erbium Amplified Spontaneous Emission (ASE) source that seeds a high power Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA). The main interest of this source is its very low coherence length, thus allowing an incoherent superposition of several trapping beams without any optical interference. The behavior of the superimposed beams is then a scalar sum greatly simplifying complex configurations. As an illustration, we report an estimation of the inte…
The ability to harness light-matter interactions at the few-photon level plays a pivotal role in quantum technologies. Single photons - the most elementary states of light - can be generated on-demand in atomic and solid state emitters. Two-photon states are also key quantum assets, but achieving them in individual emitters is challenging because their generation rate is much slower than competing one-photon processes. We demonstrate that atomically thin plasmonic nanostructures can harness two-photon spontaneous emission, resulting in giant far-field two-photon production, a wealth of resonan…
We investigate the procedure of Schmidt modes extraction in systems with continuous variables. An algorithm based on singular value matrix decomposition is applied to the study of entanglement in an "atom-photon" system with spontaneous radiation. Also, this algorithm is applied to the study of a bi-photon system with spontaneous parametric down conversion with type-II phase matching for broadband pump. We demonstrate that dynamic properties of entangled states in an atom-photon system with spontaneous radiation are defined by a parameter equal to the product of the fine structure constant and…
This paper presents a quantum mechanical treatment for both atomic and field fluctuations of an atomic ensemble interacting with propagating fields, either in Electromagnetically Induced Transparency or in a Raman situation. The atomic spin noise spectra and the outgoing field spectra are calculated in both situations. For suitable parameters both EIT and Raman schemes efficiently preserve the quantum state of the incident probe field in the transfer process with the atoms, although a single pass scheme is shown to be intrinsically less efficient than a cavity scheme.
Spontaneous symmetry breaking has revolutionized the understanding in numerous fields of modern physics. Here, we theoretically demonstrate the spontaneous time-reversal symmetry breaking in a cavity quantum electrodynamics system in which an atomic ensemble interacts coherently with a single resonant cavity mode. The interacting system can be effectively described by two coupled oscillators with positive and negative mass when the two-level atoms are prepared in their excited states. The occurrence of symmetry breaking is controlled by the atomic detuning and the coupling to the cavity mode, …
The spontaneous creation and persistence of ground-state coherence in an ensemble of intracavity Rb atoms has been observed as a quantum beat. Our system realizes a quantum eraser, where the detection of a first photon prepares a superposition of ground-state Zeeman sublevels, while detection of a second erases the stored information. Beats appear in the time-delayed photon-photon coincidence rate (intensity correlation function). We study the beats theoretically and experimentally as a function of system parameters, and find them remarkably robust against perturbations such as spontaneous emi…
We demonstrate a new type of weak measurement based on the dynamics of spontaneous emission. The pointer in our scheme is given by the Lorentzian distribution characterizing atomic exponential decay via emission of a single photon. We thus introduce weak measurement, so far demonstrated nearly exclusively with laser beams and Gaussian statistics, into the quantum regime of single emitters and single quanta, enabling the exploitation of a wide class of sources that are abundant in nature. We describe a complete analogy between our scheme and weak measurement with conventional Gaussian pointers.…
We report on the storage of orbital angular momentum of light in a cold ensemble of cesium atoms. We employ Bragg diffraction to retrieve the stored optical information impressed into the atomic coherence by the incident light fields. The stored information can be manipulated by an applied magnetic field and we were able to observe collapses and revivals due to the rotation of the stored atomic Zeeman coherence for times longer than 15 $μs$.
