We calculate the dispersive force between a ground state atom and a non planar surface. We present explicit results for a corrugated surface, derived from the scattering approach at first order in the corrugation amplitude. A variety of analytical results are derived in different limiting cases, including the van der Waals and Casimir-Polder regimes. We compute numerically the exact first-order dispersive potential for arbitrary separation distances and corrugation wavelengths, for a Rubidium atom on top of a silicon or gold corrugated surface. We discuss in detail the inadequacy of the proximity force approximation, and present a simple but adequate approximation for computing the potential.
We propose, in a Ramsey interferometer, to cool the cavity field to its ground state, starting from a thermal distribution by a dispersive atom-field coupling followed by an atomic postselection. We also analyze the effect of the cavity and atomic losses. The proposed experiment can be realized with realistic parameters with high fidelity.
We calculate the van der Waals dispersive interaction between a neutral but polarizable atom and a perfectly conducting isolated sphere in the nonretarded case. We make use of two separate models, one being the semiclassical fluctuating-dipoles method, the other using ordinary quantum mechanics.
The dispersive interaction between a two-level atom and a quantized field is studied. We consider besides a time dependent linear amplification and dissipative processes. In order to solve the master equation for this system, we use superoperator techniques.
A unified approach to the calculation of dispersive forces on ground-state bodies and atoms is given. It is based on the ground-state Lorentz force density acting on the charge and current densities attributed to the polarization and magnetization in linearly, locally, and causally responding media. The theory is applied to dielectric macro- and micro-objects, including single atoms. Existing formulas valid for weakly polarizable matter are generalized to allow also for strongly polarizable matter. In particular when micro-objects can be regarded as single atoms, well-known formulas for the Ca…
We investigate the entanglement dynamics and coherence of two two-level atoms interacting with two coherent fields of two spatially separated and dissipative cavities. It is in particular shown that entanglement sudden death is obtained within a short interacting time. However, after a long interaction time a long-lived entanglement is shown, that is, the initial entanglement of two atoms could be partially preserved. In addition, the coherence of the two atoms will not be lost during the evolution.
The demonstration of an optical fiber based probe for efficiently exciting the waveguide modes of high-index contrast planar photonic crystal (PC) slabs is presented. Utilizing the dispersion of the PC, fiber taper waveguides formed from standard silica single-mode optical fibers are used to evanescently couple light into the guided modes of a patterned silicon membrane. A coupling efficiency of approximately 95% is obtained between the fiber taper and a PC waveguide mode suitably designed for integration with a previously studied ultra-small mode volume high-Q PC resonant cavity [1]. The micr…
We investigate the time evolution of statistical properties of a single mode radiation field after its interaction with a two-level atom. The entire system is described by a dispersive Jaynes-Cummings Hamiltonian assuming the atomic state evolving from an initial superposition of its excited and ground states, $\vert e\rangle +\vert g\rangle ,$ and the field evolving from an initial superposition of two excited levels, $\vert n_{1}\rangle+ \vert n_{2}\rangle$. It is found that the field evolution is periodic, the period depending on the ratio $n_{2}/n_{1}.$ The energy excitation oscillates bet…
We present a study of atom-wall interactions in non-relativistic quantum electrodynamics by functional integral methods. The Feynman-Kac path integral representation is generalized to the case when the particle interacts with a radiation field, providing an additional effective potential that contains all the interactions induced by the field. We show how one can retrieve the standard van der Waals, Casimir-Polder and classical Lifshiftz forces in this formalism for an atom in its ground state. Moreover, when electrostatic interactions are screened in the medium, we find low temperature correc…
Using the general expressions for level shifts obtained from the master equation for a small system interacting with a large one considered as a reservoir, we calculate the dispersive potentials between an atom and a wall in the dipole approximation. We analyze in detail the particular case of a two-level atom in the presence of a perfectly conducting wall. We study the van der Waals as well as the resonant interactions. All distance regimes as well as the high and low temperature regimes are considered. We show that the Casimir-Polder interaction can not be considered as a direct result of th…
We give a fully description of the dynamics of an atom dispersively coupled to a field mode in a dissipative environment fed by an external source. The competition between the unitary atom-field (which leads to entanglement) and the dissipative field-environment couplings are investigated in detail. We find the time evolution of the global atom-field system for any initial state and we show that atom-field steady state is at most classically correlated. For an initial state chosen, we evaluate the purity loss of the global system and of atomic and field subsystems as a function of time. We fin…
Optimally extracting information from measurements performed on a physical system requires an accurate model of the measurement interaction. Continuously probing the collective spin of an Alkali atom cloud via its interaction with an off-resonant optical probe is an important example of such a measurement where realistic modeling at the quantum level is possible using standard techniques from atomic physics. Typically, however, tutorial descriptions of this technique have neglected the multilevel structure of realistic atoms for the sake of simplification. In this paper we account for the full…
We present a hybrid optomechanical scheme to achieve dynamical squeezing of position quadrature of a mesoscopic mechanical oscillator, that can be externally controlled by classical fields. A membrane-in-the-middle set up is employed, in which an atom in $Λ$ configuration is considered to be trapped on either side of the membrane inside the cavity. We show that a considerable amount of squeezing (beyond the 3 dB limit) can be achieved that is not affected by the decay of the cavity and the spontaneous emission of the atom. Squeezing depends upon the initial preparation of atomic states. Furthe…
By introducing a suitable Lagrangian, a canonical quantization of the electromagnetic field in the presence of a non-dispersive bi-anisotropic inhomogeneous magnetodielectric medium is investigated. A tensor projection operator is defined and the commutation relation between the vector potential and its canonically conjugate variable is written in terms of the projection operator. The quantization method is generalized in the presence of the atomic systems. The spontaneous emission of a two-level atom located in a non-dispersive anisotropic megnetodielectric medium is studied.
Many applications in quantum communication, sensing and computation need provably quantum non-Gaussian light. Recently such light, witnessed by a negative Wigner function, has been estimated using homodyne tomography from a single atom dispersively coupled to a high-finesse cavity. This opens an investigation of quantum non-Gaussian light for many experiments with atoms and solid-state emitters. However, at their early stage, an atom or emitter in a cavity system with different channels to the environment and additional noise are insufficient to produce negative Wigner functions. Moreover, hom…
We propose a reliable scheme to recover the conventional photon blockade effect in the dispersive Jaynes-Cummings model, which describes a two-level atom coupled to a single-mode cavity field in the large-detuning regime. This is achieved by introducing a transversal driving to the atom and then photonic nonlinearity is obtained. The eigenenergy spectrum of the system is derived analytically and the photon blockade effect is confirmed by numerically calculating the photon-number distributions and equal-time second-order correlation function of the cavity field in the presence of system dissipa…
We observe and measure dispersive optical non-linearities in an ensemble of cold Rydberg atoms placed inside an optical cavity. The experimental results are in agreement with a simple model where the optical non-linearities are due to the progressive appearance of a Rydberg blockaded volume within the medium. The measurements allow a direct estimation of the "blockaded fraction" of atoms within the atomic ensemble.
The role of geometry on dispersive forces is investigated by calculating the energy between different spheroidal particles and planar surfaces, both with arbitrary dielectric properties. The energy is obtained in the non-retarded limit using a spectral representation formalism and calculating the interaction between the surface plasmons of the two macroscopic bodies. The energy is a power-law function of the separation of the bodies, where the exponent value depends on the geometrical parameters of the system, like the separation distance between bodies, and the aspect ratio among minor and ma…
The quantum dynamics of two entangled two-level atoms initially in extended Werner-like (EWL) states is studied. Each of the two atoms is located within an isolated and dissipative cavity. If the interaction time of atoms and cavities is not very long, the amount of quantum discord and entanglement between two atoms decreases as the system evolves. The sudden death of quantum discord and entanglement of two atoms occurs within a short interaction time. However, after a long interaction time, quantum discord and entanglement of two atoms could be partially preserved due to the long-lived nature…
In this work we study the role of parasitic interactions and microwave crosstalk in a system of two superconducting artificial atoms interacting via a single-mode coplanar waveguide. Through a general description of the effective dynamics of the atoms, beyond the two-level approximation, we show that the atom selectivity (ability to individually address an atom) is only dependent on the resultant phasor associated to the drives used to control the system. We then exploit the benefits of such a drive-dependent selectivity to describe how the coherent population inversion occurs in the atoms sim…
We show that a collection of two-level atoms in an optical cavity beyond the rotating wave approximation and in the dispersive and strong-coupling regime constitutes a nonlinear medium and is capable of generating squeezed state of light. It is found that squeezing produced in the strong-coupling regime is significantly higher compared to that produced in the dispersive limit. On the other hand, we also show that it could be possible to observe the Dicke superradiant quantum phase transition in the dispersive regime where the vector potential term is negligible. Such a system can be an essenti…
In recent years the interest in studying interactions of Rydberg atoms or ensembles thereof with optical and microwave frequency fields has steadily increased, both in the context of basic research and for potential applications in quantum information processing. We present measurements of the dispersive interaction between an ensemble of helium atoms in the 37s Rydberg state and a single resonator mode by extracting the amplitude and phase change of a weak microwave probe tone transmitted through the cavity. The results are in quantitative agreement with predictions made on the basis of the d…
We study the von Neumann entropy of the partial trace of a system of two two-level atoms (qubits) in a dispersive cavity where the atoms are interacting collectively with a single mode electromagnetic field in the cavity. We make a contrast of this entanglement entropy with the spin squeezing property of the system. We find a close relationship between this von Neumann entropy and the spin squeezing of the system. We observe that this entanglement entropy attains its maximum value when the spin squeezing in the system goes to its maximum and is zero when the spin squeezing in the system vanish…
We dispersively interface an ensemble of one thousand atoms trapped in the evanescent field surrounding a tapered optical nanofiber. This method relies on the azimuthally-asymmetric coupling of the ensemble with the evanescent field of an off-resonant probe beam, transmitted through the nanofiber. The resulting birefringence and dispersion are significant; we observe a phase shift per atom of $\sim$\,1\,mrad at a detuning of six times the natural linewidth, corresponding to an effective resonant optical density per atom of 0.027. Moreover, we utilize this strong dispersion to non-destructively…
We theoretically investigate the dispersive interaction of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) trapped inside an optomechanical cavity with a moving end mirror in the presence of the laser phase noise (LPN) as well as the atomic collisions. We assume that the effective frequency of the optical mode is much greater than those of the mechanical and the Bogoliubov modes of the movable mirror and the BEC . In the adiabatic approximation where the damping rate of the cavity is faster than those of the other modes, the system behaves as an effective two-mode model in which the atomic and mechanical mod…
The paper reports on the optical detection and spectroscopy of ultracold atoms near a gold surface. A probe light field is used to excite surface plasmon polaritons. The refractive index of the atomic gas shifts the plasmon resonance and changes the reflected light power. Thus, the sensitivity of the detection is plasmonically enhanced. Absorption of photons from the evanescent wave is avoided by detuning the laser from atomic resonance which makes the detection scheme potentially nondestructive. The spectrum of the signal is determined by a Fano resonance. We show that atoms can be detected n…
An electronically excited atom or molecule located outside but near a planar optical waveguide can decay by spontaneous emission of a photon into a guided mode of the waveguide. We outline a QED theory for calculating the probability for this process and describe general physical insights from that theory. A couple of representative examples are discussed in detail.
Reading out the state of superconducting artificial atoms typically relies on dispersive coupling to a readout resonator. For a given system noise temperature, increasing the circulating photon number $\bar{n}$ in the resonator enables a shorter measurement time and is therefore expected to reduce readout errors caused by spontaneous atom transitions. However, increasing $\bar{n}$ is generally observed to also increase these transition rates. Here we present a fluxonium artificial atom in which we measure an overall flat dependence of the transition rates between its first two states as a func…
We study entanglement dynamics in dispersive optomechanical systems consisting of two optical modes and a mechanical oscillator inside an optical cavity. The two optical modes interact with the mechanical oscillator, but not directly with each other. The appearance of optical entanglement witnesses non-classicality of the oscillator. We study the dependence of the entanglement dynamics with the optomechanical coupling, the mean photon number in the cavity and the oscillator temperature. An experimental realization with ultracold atomic ensembles is proposed.
We present a scheme to generate steady-state atomic spin squeezing in a cavity QED system using cavity-mediated Raman transitions to engineer effective atom-photon interactions, which include both linear and nonlinear (dispersive) atom-cavity couplings, on a potentially equal footing. We focus on a regime where the dispersive coupling is very large and find that the steady state of the system can in fact be a strongly spin-squeezed Dicke state, $|N/2,0\rangle$, of the atomic ensemble. These states offer Heisenberg-limited metrological properties and feature genuine multipartite entanglement am…
In contrast to the free-space evolution of an atom governed by a multi-mode interaction with the surrounding electromagnetic vacuum, the evolution of a cavity-QED system can be characterized by just three parameters, (i) atom-cavity coupling strength g, (ii) cavity relaxation rate κ, and (iii) atomic decay rate into the non-cavity modes γ. In the case of an atom inserted into a planar resonator with an input beam coupled from the outside, it has been shown by Koshino [Phys. Rev. A 73, 053814 (2006)] that these three parameters are determined not only by the atom and cavity characteristics, but…
Systems in the dispersive regime of cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) are approaching the limits of validity of the dispersive approximation. We present a model which takes into account nonlinear corrections to the dressing of the atom by the field. We find that in the presence of pure dephasing, photons populating the cavity act as a heat bath on the atom, inducing incoherent relaxation and excitation. These effects are shown to reduce the achievable signal-to-noise ratio in cavity QED realizations where the atom is measured indirectly through cavity transmission and in particular in circu…
It is shown that under certain dynamical conditions a material wave packet displays coherent, non-dispersive accelerated evolution in gravitational field over a modulated atomic mirror. The phenomenon takes place as a consequence of simultaneous presence of the dynamical localization and the coherent Fermi acceleration for the same modulation amplitude. It is purely a quantum mechanical effect as the windows of modulation strengths supporting dynamical localization and Fermi acceleration overlap for larger effective Plank constant. Present day experimental techniques make it feasible to realiz…
Non dispersive electronic Rydberg wave packets may be created in atoms illuminated by a microwave field of circular polarization. We discuss the spontaneous emission from such states and show that the elastic incoherent component (occuring at the frequency of the driving field) dominates the spectrum in the semiclassical limit, contrary to earlier predictions. We calculate the frequencies of single photon emissions and the associated rates in the "harmonic approximation", i.e. when the wave packet has approximately a Gaussian shape. The results agree well with exact quantum mechanical calculat…
In this work we discuss the atomic states in a vertical optical lattice in proximity of a surface. We study the modifications to the ordinary Wannier-Stark states in presence of a surface and we characterize the energy shifts produced by the Casimir-Polder interaction between atom and mirror. In this context, we introduce an effective model describing the finite size of the atom in order to regularize the energy corrections. In addition, the modifications to the energy levels due to a hypothetical non-Newtonian gravitational potential as well as their experimental observability are investigate…
We study the strong coupling between photons and atoms that can be achieved in an optical nanofiber geometry when the interaction is dispersive. While the Purcell enhancement factor for spontaneous emission into the guided mode does not reach the strong-coupling regime for individual atoms, one can obtain high cooperativity for ensembles of a few thousand atoms due to the tight confinement of the guided modes and constructive interference over the entire chain of trapped atoms. We calculate the dyadic Green's function, which determines the scattering of light by atoms in the presence of the fi…
We show that combination of a linearly polarized resonant microwave field and a parallel static electric field may be used to create a non-dispersive electronic wavepacket in Rydberg atoms. The static electric field allows for manipulation of the shape of the elliptical trajectory the wavepacket is propagating on. Exact quantum numerical calculations for realistic experimental parameters show that the wavepacket evolving on a linear orbit can be very easily prepared in a laboratory either by a direct optical excitation or by preparing an atom in an extremal Stark state and then slowly switchin…
Planar squeezed states, i.e. quantum states which are squeezed in two orthogonal spin components, have recently attracted attention due to their applications in atomic interferometry and quantum information [Q. Y. He et al, New J. Phys. 14, 093012 (2012)]. While canonical variables such as quadratures of the radiation field can be squeezed in at most one component, simultaneous squeezing in two orthogonal spin components can be achieved due to the angular momentum commutation relations. We present a novel scheme for planar squeezing via quantum non-demolition (QND) measurements in spin-1 syste…
Various parameters of a trapped collection of cold and ultracold atoms can be determined non--destructively by measuring the phase shift of an off--resonant probe beam, caused by the state dependent index of refraction of the atoms. The dispersive light--atom interaction, however, gives rise to a differential light shift (AC Stark shift) between the atomic states which, for a nonuniform probe intensity distribution, causes an inhomogeneous dephasing between the atoms. In this paper, we investigate the effects of this inhomogeneous light shift in non--destructive measurement schemes. We interpr…
We have created a quantum three-level ladder system with the cavity dispersive energy level in a superconducting circuit quantum electrodynamics system consisting of a transmon qubit and a cavity, and have directly observed the Autler-Townes splitting effect instead of representing it by the probability of the qubit being at each level. A coupler tone is applied on the transition between the second excited state of transmon and cavity dispersive level, while the cavity spectrum is probed. A doublet transmission and anormalous dispersion spectrum of the cavity level is clearly shown. The invers…
The van der Waals interaction between two ground-state atoms is calculated for two electrically or magnetically polarizable particles embedded in a dispersive magneto-dielectric medium. Unlike previous calculations which infer the atom-atom interaction from the dilute-medium limit of the macroscopic, many-body van der Waals interaction, the interaction is calculated directly for the system of two atoms in a magneto-dielectric medium. Two approaches are presented, the first based on the quantized electromagnetic field in a dispersive medium without absorption and the second on Green functions t…
We obtain a lower bound on the sum of two orthogonal spin component variances in a plane. This gives a novel planar uncertainty relation which holds even when the Heisenberg relation is not useful. We investigate the asymptotic, large $J$ limit, and derive the properties of the planar quantum squeezed states that saturate this uncertainty relation. These states extend the concept of spin squeezing to any two conjugate spin directions. We show that planar quantum squeezing can be achieved experimentally as the ground state of a Bose-Einstein condensate in two coupled potential wells with a crit…
The recoil of atoms in arrays due to the emission or absorption of photons is studied for sub-wavelength interatomic spacing. The atoms in the array interact with each other through collective dipole-dipole interactions and with the incident laser field in the low intensity limit. Shining uniform light on the array gives rise to patterns of excitation and recoil in the array. These arise due to the interference of different eigenmodes of excitation. The relation between the recoil and the decay dynamics is studied when the array is in its excitation eigenstates. The recoil experienced by a sub…
We consider the forces exerted by a pulse of plane-wave light on a single atom. The leading edge of the pulse exerts a dispersive force on the atom, and this modifies the atomic momentum while the atom is enveloped in the light. The standard view of the optical dipole force indicates that red-detuned light should attract the atom towards high intensity. This should increase the average momentum per photon to $\textbf{p}_{0} n$, where $\textbf{p}_{0}$ is the photon momentum in free space and $n$ is the average refractive index due to the presence of the atom in the light. We show, however, that…
A collective system of atoms in a high quality cavity can be described by a nonlinear interaction which arises due to the Lamb shift of the energy levels due to the cavity vacuum [Agarwal et al., Phys. Rev. A 56, 2249 (1997)]. We show how this collective interaction can be used to perform quantum logic. In particular we produce schemes to realize CNOT gates not only for two-qubit but also for three-qubit systems. We also discuss realizations of Toffoli gates. Our effective Hamiltonian is also realized in other systems such as trapped ions or magnetic molecules.
We propose a total measure of multi-particle quantum correlation in a system of N two-level atoms (N qubits). We construct a parameter that encompasses all possible quantum correlations among N two-level atoms in arbitrary symmetric pure states and define its numerical value to be the total measure of the net atom-atom correlations. We use that parameter to quantify the total quantum correlations in atomic Schrödinger cat states, which are generated by the dispersive interaction in a cavity. We study the variation of the net amount of quantum correlation as we vary the number of atoms from N=2…
We studied the dispersive dissipation of denegerate-level atom interacting with a single linearly-polarized mode field. It is found that the degeneracy of the atomic level affects the dissipation bahavior of the system as well as the subsystems. The degeneracy of the atomic level augment the periods of entanglement and increase the degree of the maxima statistical mixture states.
The Casimir effect in a dispersive and absorbing multilayered system is considered adopting the (net) vacuum-field pressure point of view to the Casimir force. Using the properties of the macroscopic field operators appropriate for absorbing systems and a convenient compact form of the Green function for a multilayer, a straightforward and transparent derivation of the Casimir force in a lossless layer of an otherwise absorbing multilayer is presented. The resulting expression in terms of the reflection coefficients of the surrounding stacks of layers is of the same form as that obtained by Zh…
We show how one can prepare and detect entanglement and Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) steering between two distinguishable groups (modes) of atoms in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) atom interferometer. Our paper extends previous work that developed criteria for two-mode entanglement and EPR steering based on the reduced variances of two spins defined in a plane. Observation of planar spin squeezing will imply entanglement, and sufficient planar spin squeezing implies EPR steering, between the two groups of atoms. By using a two-mode dynamical model to describe BEC interferometry experiments,…
We present a detailed analytical and numerical analysis of the inelastic coherent backscattering spectrum of laser light incident on cold atoms. We identify frequency domains where the interference contribution can be positive \emph{as well as} negative -- or exhibits dispersive character. These distinctive features are explained by reciprocity arguments and dressed state two-photon scattering amplitudes.
We describe a system for long-distance distribution of quantum entanglement, in which coherent light with large average photon number interacts dispersively with single, far-detuned atoms or semiconductor impurities in optical cavities. Entanglement is heralded by homodyne detection using a second bright light pulse for phase reference. The use of bright pulses leads to a high success probability for the generation of entanglement, at the cost of a lower initial fidelity. This fidelity may be boosted by entanglement purification techniques, implemented with the same physical resources. The nee…
For a bosonic (fermionic) open system in a bath with many bosons (fermions) modes, we derive the exact non-Markovian master equation in which the memory effect of the bath is reflected in the time dependent decay rates. In this approach, the reduced density operator is constructed from the formal solution of the corresponding Heisenberg equations. As an application of the exact master equation, we study the active probing of non-Markovianity of the quantum dissipation of a single boson mode of electromagnetic (EM) field in a cavity QED system. The non-Markovianity of the bath of the cavity is …
