We propose a realistic scheme for measuring the micromaser linewidth by monitoring the phase diffusion dynamics of the cavity field. Our strategy consists in exciting an initial coherent state with the same photon number distribution as the micromaser steady-state field, singling out a purely diffusive process in the system dynamics. After the injection of a counter-field, measurements of the population statistics of a probe atom allow us to derive the micromaser linewidth. Our proposal aims at solving a classic and relevant decoherence problem in cavity quantum electrodynamics, allowing to establish experimentally the distinctive features appearing in the micromaser spectrum due to the discreteness of the electromagnetic field.
Phase transitions occur in a wide range of physical systems and are characterized by the abrupt change of a physical observable in response to the variation of an external control parameter. Phase transitions are not restricted to equilibrium situations but can also be found in nonequilibrium settings, both for classical and quantum mechanical systems. Here, we investigate a nonequilibrium phase transition in a single-electron micromaser consisting of a microwave cavity that is driven by the electron transport in a double quantum dot. For weak electron-photon couplings, only a tiny fraction of…
It was known that a novel quantum communication protocol surpassing the shot noise limit can be proposed by an atomic indirect measurement based on the Jaynes-Cummings model. Moreover, the quantum communication with the atomic indirect measurement can nearly achieve the Helstrom bound as well as the accessible information when message is transmitted by an ideal coherent state. Here, we show that the atomic indirect measurement is robust against the phase-diffusion noise. By considering the error probability of discriminating received signal, we show that the atomic indirect measurement can als…
We study the effect of frequent projective measurements on the dynamics of quantum self-sustaining systems, by considering the prototypical example of the quantum Van der Pol oscillator. Quantum fluctuations are responsible for phase diffusion which progressively blurs the semiclassical limit cycle dynamics and synchronization, either to an external driving, or between two coupled self-sustained oscillators. We show that by subjecting the system to repeated measurements of heterodyne type at an appropriate repetition frequency one can significantly suppress phase diffusion without spoiling the…
Quantum diffusion, as developed in the 1990s, could explain how a system, subject to measurement, goes into an eigenstate of the measured observable. Here it is shown that quantum diffusion theory can be interpreted as a result within linear relativistic quantum mechanics. Thus, in contrast to what is widely believed, quantum measurement can be analyzed within the theory of quantum mechanics itself.
