Stochastic master equations are often used to describe conditional spin squeezing of atomic ensemble, but are limited so far to the systems with few atoms due to the exponentially increased Hilbert space. In this article, we present an exact numerical solution of these equations for systems with identical atoms by mapping identical density matrix elements to a single quantity characterized by collective quantum numbers, and apply it to the system with hundred atoms in a bad cavity subject to a homodyne detection. We demonstrate that the spin squeezing can be vividly illustrated by the Gaussian-like distribution of the collective density matrix elements, and we examine the influence of the probe field strength and polarization, the detection efficiency, the spontaneous emission rate and the number of atoms. Our exact approach can play an important role in gauging the approximate approaches applied for systems with more atoms, such as Gaussian-state formalism and stochastic mean-field approach, and it permits also exploration of entanglement effects beyond these approaches.
Spin squeezing of collective atomic spins can be achieved conditionally via probing with light and subsequent homodyne detection, as is done in a Quantum Nondemolition measurement. Recently it has been shown that squeezing can also be created unconditionally by a properly designed dissipative dynamics. We compare the two approaches in a Gaussian description, and optimize over all Gaussian light-matter interactions. We find that in the optimal unconditional scheme based on dissipation the level of squeezing scales as $d^{-1/2}$. In contrast, the optimal conditional scheme based on measurement o…
In the preceding paper arXiv:0802.3252 [quant-ph] we treated a model given by a master equation with generalized Lindblad form, and examined the algebraic structure related to some Lie algebras and constructed an approximate solution. In this paper we apply a unitary transformation by the squeezing operator to the master equation. Then the generalized Lindblad form is tranformed to the usual Lindblad one, while the (original) Hamiltonian is tranformed to somewhat complicated one. As a result we have two different representations based on the Lie algebra su(1,1). We examine new algebraic struct…
We investigate a hybrid system consisting of an atomic ensemble trapped inside a dissipative optomechanical cavity assisted with the perturbative oscillator-qubit coupling. It is shown that such a hybrid system is very suitable for generating stationary squeezing of the mirror motion in the long-time limit under the unresolved sideband regime. Based on the approaches of master equation and covariance matrix, we discuss the respective squeezing effects in detail and find that in both approaches, simplifying the system dynamics with adiabatic elimination of the highly dissipative cavity mode is …
We investigate spin squeezing for a Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick (LMG) model coupled to a general non-Markovian environment in a finite temperature regime. Using the non-Markovian quantum state diffusion and master equation approach, we numerically study non-Markovian spin squeezing generation in LMG model. Our results show that the total spin number N, energy kBT, and certain coefficients in a LMG model can play a crucial role in generating spin squeezing. In particular, it shows that the maximum spin squeezing can be significantly enhanced when the participating environment has a relatively long mem…
Based on the time-convolutionless master-equation approach, we investigate squeezing of light field in a dissipative Jaynes-Cummings model. The results show that squeezing light can be generated when the atom transits to a ground state from an excited state, and then a collapse-revival phenomenon will occur in the squeezing of light field due to atom-cavity coupling. Enhancing the atom-cavity coupling can increase the frequency of the collapse-revival of squeezing. The stronger the non-Markovian effect is, the more obvious the collapse-revival phenomenon is. The oscillatory frequency of the sq…
We propose a feedback scheme for the production of two-mode spin squeezing. We determine a general expression for the optimal feedback, which is also applicable to the case of single-mode spin squeezing. The two-mode spin squeezed states obtained via this feedback are optimal for j=1/2 and are very close to optimal for j>1/2. In addition, the master equation suggests a Hamiltonian that would produce two-mode spin squeezing without feedback, and is analogous to the two-axis countertwisting Hamiltonian in the single mode case.
Backaction-evading measurements of mechanical motion can achieve precision below the zero-point uncertainty and quantum squeezing, which makes them a resource for quantum metrology and quantum information processing. We provide an exact expression for the conditional state of an optomechanical system in a two-tone backaction-evading measurement beyond the standard adiabatic approximation and perform extensive numerical simulations to go beyond the usual rotating-wave approximation. We predict the simultaneous presence of conditional mechanical squeezing, intra-cavity squeezing, and optomechani…
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 trajector…
Conditional homodyne detection of quadrature squeezing is compared with standard nonconditional detection. Whereas the latter identifies nonclassicality in a quantitative way, as a reduction of the noise power below the shot noise level, conditional detection makes a qualitative distinction between vacuum state squeezing and squeezed classical noise. Implications of this comparison for the realistic interpretation of vacuum fluctuations (stochastic electrodynamics) are discussed.
A conditional protocol of transferring quantum-correlation in continuous variable regime was experimentally demonstrated. The quantum-correlation in two pairs of twin beams, each characterized by intensity-difference squeezing of 7.0 dB, was transferred to two initially independent idler beams. The quantum-correlation transfer resulted in intensity-difference squeezing of 4.0 dB between two idler beams. The dependence of preparation probability and transfer fidellity on the selection bandwidth was also studied.
We consider squeezing of one component of the collective spin vector of an atomic ensemble inside an optical cavity. The atoms interact with a cavity mode, and the squeezing is obtained by probing the state of the light field that is transmitted through the cavity. Starting from the stochastic master equation, we derive the time evolution of the state of the atoms and the cavity field, and we compute expectation values and variances of the atomic spin components and the quadratures of the cavity mode. The performance of the setup is compared to spin squeezing of atoms by probing of a light fie…
Large optical nonlinearities can have numerous applications, ranging from the generation of cat-states for optical quantum computation, through to quantum sensing where the sensitivity exceeds Heisenberg scaling in the resources. However, the generation of ultra-large optical nonlinearities has proved immensely challenging experimentally. We describe a novel protocol where one can effectively generate large optical nonlinearities via the conditional application of a linear operation on an optical mode by an ancilla mode, followed by a measurement of the ancilla and corrective operation on the …
When part of the environment responsible for decoherence is used to extract information about the decohering system, the preferred {\it pointer states} remain unchanged. This conclusion -- reached for a specific class of models -- is investigated in a general setting of conditional master equations using suitable generalizations of predictability sieve. We also find indications that the einselected states are easiest to infer from the measurements carried out on the environment.
A mechanical system can be optimally controlled through continuous measurements of its position followed by feedback. We revisit the complete formalism for predicting the performance of such as system without invoking the standard rotating wave approximations and the adiabatic approximation. Using this formalism we deduce both the conditional and unconditional state of a mechanical oscillator using the optimal control and feedback that leads to mechanical cooling and mechanical squeezing. We find large discrepancies between the exact solutions and the approximate solutions stressing the import…
Teleportation is a basic primitive for quantum communication and quantum computing. We address the problem of continuous-variable (unconditional and conditional) teleportation of a pure single-photon state and a mixed attenuated single-photon state generally in a nonunity gain regime. Our figure of merit is the maximum of negativity of the Wigner function that witnesses highly non-classical feature of the teleported state. We find that negativity of the Wigner function of the single-photon state can be {\em unconditionally} teleported for arbitrarily weak squeezed state used to create the enta…
Analysis of the effects of decoherence on the radiative and squeezing properties of a coherently driven two-level atom trapped in a resonant cavity applying the corresponding master equation is presented. The atomic dynamics as well as the squeezing and statistical properties of the emitted radiation are investigated. It is found that the atom stays in the lower energy level more often at steady state irrespective of the strength of the coherent radiation and thermal fluctuations entering the cavity. Moreover, a strong external coherent radiation results the splitting of the line of the emissi…
Wave-function Monte Carlo methods are an important tool for simulating quantum systems, but the standard method cannot be used to simulate decoherence in continuously measured systems. Here we present a new Monte Carlo method for such systems. This was used to perform the simulations of a continuously measured nano-resonator in [Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 057208 (2009)].
We use the vacuum Rabi splitting to perform quantum nondemolition (QND) measurements that prepare a conditionally spin-squeezed state of a collective atomic psuedo-spin. We infer a 3.4(6) dB improvement in quantum phase estimation relative to the standard quantum limit for a coherent spin state composed of uncorrelated atoms. The measured collective spin is composed of the two-level clock states of nearly 10^6 Rb-87 atoms confined inside a low finesse F = 710 optical cavity. This technique may improve atomic sensor precision and/or bandwidth, and may lead to more precise tests of fundamental p…
In the absence of decay, the conditional dynamics for an opensystem is often describable by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. This study investigates spin squeezing (SS) in non-Hermitian one-axis twisting (OAT) model. Somewhat surprisingly, SS close to the limit of Hermitian two-axis counter twisting (TACT) Hamiltonian is achievable for some parameters, which significantly improves upon the optimal value realizable by Hermitian OAT model. The drawback is like with all conditional schemes, it takes on average longer time to evolve into steady state, and the probability of no decay or success decreas…
We discuss the theory and experimental considerations of a quantum feedback scheme for producing deterministically reproducible spin squeezing. Continuous nondemolition atom number measurement from monitoring a probe field conditionally squeezes the sample. Simultaneous feedback of the measurement results controls the quantum state such that the squeezing becomes unconditional. We find that for very strong cavity coupling and a limited number of atoms, the theoretical squeezing approaches the Heisenberg limit. Strong squeezing will still be produced at weaker coupling and even in free space (t…
We give a detailed theoretical derivation of the quantum master equation for the coherent Ising machine. This is a quantum computational network with feedback, that solves NP hard combinatoric problems, including the traveling salesman problem and various extensions and analogs. There are two types of master equation that are obtained, either conditional on the feedback current or unconditional. We show that both types can be accurately simulated in a scalable way using stochastic equations in the positive-P phase-space representation. This depends on the nonlinearity present, and we use param…
We consider a system subject to a quantum optical master equation at finite temperature and study a class of conditional dynamics obtained by monitoring its totally or partially purified environment. More specifically, drawing from the notion that the thermal state of the environment may be regarded as the local state of a lossy and noisy two-mode squeezed state, we consider conditional dynamics ("unravellings") resulting from the homodyne detection of the two modes of such a state. Thus, we identify a class of unravellings parametrised by the loss rate suffered by the environmental two-mode s…
This dissertation studies spin squeezing, entanglement and decoherence in large ensembles of cold, trapped alkali atoms with hyperfine spin f interacting with optical fields. Restricting the state of each atom to a qutrit embedded in the 2f+1 dimensional hyperfine spin enables us to efficiently model the coherent and dissipative dynamics of the ensemble. This formalism also allows us to explore the effects of local control on the internal hyperfine spins of the atoms. State preparation using such control increases the entangling power of the atom-light interface for f>1/2. Subsequent control o…
Employing the master equation for a three-level laser driven by coherent light and coupled to a squeezed vacuum reservoir, we obtain stochastic differential equations associated with the normal ordering. Using the solutions of the stochastic differential equations, we calculate the quadrature variance, the squeezing spectrum, the mean photon number, and the variance of the photon number. It turns out that the degree of squeezing increases with the linear gain coefficient or the squeeze parameter. It is also found that the driving coherent light decreases the mean photon number.
We study the transverse-field Ising model with infinite-range coupling and spontaneous emission on every site. We find that there is spin squeezing in steady state due to the presence of the transverse field. This means that there is still entanglement, despite the decoherence from spontaneous emission. We analytically calculate fluctuations beyond mean-field theory using a phase-space approach, which involves converting the master equation into a Fokker-Planck equation for the Wigner function. Our calculations are relevant to current experiments with trapped ions.
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 f…
We consider a class of states in an ensemble of two-level atoms: a superposition of two distinct atomic coherent states, which can be regarded as atomic analogues of the states usually called Schrodinger cat states in quantum optics. According to the relation of the constituents we define polar and nonpolar cat states. The properties of these are investigated by the aid of the spherical Wigner function. We show that nonpolar cat states generally exhibit squeezing, the measure of which depends on the separation of the components of the cat, and also on the number of the constituent atoms. By so…
Cavity and circuit QED study light-matter interaction at its most fundamental level. Yet, this interaction is most often neglected when considering the coupling of this system with an environment. In this paper, we show how this simplification, which leads to the standard quantum optics master equation, is at the root of unphysical effects. Including qubit relaxation and dephasing, and cavity relaxation, we derive a master equation that takes into account the qubit-resonator coupling. Special attention is given to the ultrastrong coupling regime, where the failure of the quantum optical master…
We introduce a method for the conditional generation of nonclassical states of light in a cavity. We consider two-level atoms traveling along the transverse direction to the cavity axis and show that by conditioning on one of the output measurements nonclassical field states are generated. The two-level atoms are prepared in the ground state and we conditioned on the events in which they are also detected in the ground state. Nonclassical properties of the cavity mode are identified and characterized. This includes: quadrature squeezing, sub-Poissonian photon-number distributions, and negative…
We propose to take advantage of the weak coupling of ground-state helium-3 nuclear spin to its environment to produce long-lived macroscopic quantum states, nuclear spin squeezed states, in a gas cell at room temperature. To perform a quantum non-demolition measurement of a transverse component of the polarized collective nuclear spin, we maintain a population in helium-3 metastable state with a discharge. The collective spin associated to $F=1/2$ metastable level hybridizes with the ground state one by metastability exchange collisions. To access nuclear spin fluctuations, one continuously me…
In this paper we give fully analytical description of the dynamics of a collection of $N$-Frenkel excitons in high density regime dispersively coupled to a single mode cavity field, in the presence of both exciton and cavity-field dissipations. By using excitonic operators as q-deformed bosonic operators for the system, we solve analytically the Liouville equation for the density operator at zero temperature and investigate the influence of the number of excitons and the effect of both dissipations on dynamical behavior of the system. We use the solution of master equation to explore the dissi…
We apply the stochastic master equations (quantum filter) derived by Gough et al. (Proc. 50th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 2011) to a system consisting of a cavity driven by a multimode single photon field. In particular, we analyse the conditional dynamics for the problem of cross phase modulation in a doubly resonant cavity. Through the exact integration of the stochastic equations, our results reveal features of the problem unavailable from previous models.
We study non-classical and spectral properties of a strongly driven single-atom laser engineered within a photonic crystal that facilitates a frequency-dependent reservoir. In these studies, we apply a dressed atom model approach to derive the master equation of the system and study the properties of the dressed laser under the frequency dependent transition rates. By going beyond the secular approximation in the dressed-atom cavity field interaction, we find that if, in addition, the non-secular terms are included into the dynamics of the system, then non-linear processes can occur that lead …
We derive stochastic master equations for a quantum system interacting with a Bose field prepared in a superposition of continuous-mode coherent states. To determine a conditional evolution of the quantum system we use a collision model with an environment given as an infinite chain of not interacting between themselves qubits prepared initially in a entangled state being a discrete analogue of a superposition of coherent states of the Bose field. The elements of the environment chain interact with the quantum system in turn one by one and they are subsequently measured. We determine a conditi…
A simple algebraic procedure is described for deriving Maxwell-Bloch-type equations from single-atom cavity quantum electrodynamics (cavity QED) master equations via orthogonal projection onto a manifold of semiclassical states. In particular the usual Maxwell-Bloch Equations are obtained--up to a state-dependent correction factor of order unity--straightforwardly from the unconditional Jaynes-Cummings master equation. The technique of projecting onto a semiclassical manifold can also be applied with conditional master equations (quantum filters), leading to stochastic simulation models that i…
1 First Lecture: Basics 1.1 Physical Derivation of the Master Equation 1.2 Some Simple Implications 1.3 Steady State 1.4 Action to the Left 2 Second Lecture: Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors of L 2.1 A Simple Case First 2.2 The General Case 3 Third Lecture: Completeness of the Damping Bases 3.1 Phase Space Functions 3.2 Completeness of the Eigenvectors of L 3.3 Positivity Conservation 3.4 Lindblad Form of Liouville Operators 4 Fourth Lecture: Quantum-Optical Applications 4.1 Periodically Driven Damped Oscillator 4.2 Conditional and Unconditional Evolution 4.3 Physical Signicance of Statistical Ope…
We formulate a multiple-encounter model of the radical pair mechanism that is based on a random coupling of the radical pair to a minimal model environment. These occasional pulse-like couplings correspond to the radical encounters and give rise to both dephasing and recombination. While this is in agreement with the original model of Haberkorn and its extensions that assume additional dephasing, we show how a nonlinear master equation may be constructed to describe the conditional evolution of the radical pairs prior to the detection of their recombination. We propose a nonlinear master equat…
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 derive a Born-Markov master equation describing the dissipation induced by a bath of lossy but coherently driven two-level systems (TLS) coupled to a bosonic system via Jaynes-Cummings interaction. We analytically derive all the master equation rates. We characterize these rates for the particular case of a single-mode system coupled to identical TLS. We study the steady state of the system and its exotic properties stemming from the non-thermal stationary state of the driven TLS bath. These properties include dissipative amplification, bath-induced linear instability, and both coherent and…
We analyze and compare three different schemes that can be used to generate entanglement between spin qubits in optically-active single solid-state quantum systems. Each scheme is based on first generating entanglement between the spin degree of freedom and either the photon number, the time bin, or the polarization degree of freedom of photons emitted by the systems. We compute the time evolution of the entanglement generation process by decomposing the dynamics of a Markovian master equation into a set of propagation superoperators conditioned on the cumulative detector photon count. We then…
