We find a set of conditions to achieve complete population transfer, via coherent population trapping, from an initial state to a designated final state at a designated time in a degenerate n-state atom, where the transitions are caused by an external interaction.
We find conditions required to achieve complete population transfer, via coherent population trapping, from an initial state to a designated final state at a designated time in a degenerate $n$-state atom, where transitions are caused by an external interaction. In systems with degenerate states there is no time ordering. Analytic expressions have been found for transition probabilities in a degenerate $n$-state atom interacting with a strong external field that gives a common time dependence to all of the transition matrix elements. Except for solving a simple $n^{th}$ order equation to deter…
The method of perturbative expansion of master equation is employed to study the dissipative properties of system and of atom in the two-photon Jaynes-Cummings model (JCM) with degenerate atomic levels. The numerical results show that the degeneracy of atomic levels prolongs the period of entanglement between the atom and the field. The asymptotic value of atomic linear entropy is apparently increased by the degeneration. The amplitude of local entanglement and disentanglement is suppressed. The better the initial coherence property of the degenerate atom, the larger the coherence loss.
The storage and retrieval of a single-photon polarization q-bit by means of STIRAP through the atoms with degenerate levels is studied theoretically for arbitrary polarization of the driving laser field and arbitrary values of the angular momenta of resonant atomic levels. The dependence of the probability of long-term photon storage on the polarization of the driving field and on the initial atomic state is examined.
A five-level four-pulse phase-sensitive extended stimulated Raman adiabatic passage scheme is proposed to realize complete control of the population transfer branching ratio between two degenerate target states. The control is achieved via a three-node null eigenstate that can be correlated with an arbitrary superposition of the target states. Our results suggest that complete suppression of the yield of one of two degenerate product states, and therefore absolute selectivity in photochemistry, is achievable and predictable, even without studying the properties of the unwanted product state be…
We address ultracold $N$-atom degenerate cascade systems and show that stationary subradiant states, already observed in the semiclassical regime, also exist in a fully quantum regime and for a small number of atoms. We explicitly evaluate the amount of stationary entanglement for the two-atom configuration and show full inseparability for the three-atom case. We also show that a continuous variable description of the systems is not suitable to detect entanglement due to the nonGaussianity of subradiant states.
We find conditions required to achieve complete population transfer, via coherent population trapping, from an initial state to a designated final state at a designated time in a degenerate 3-level atom, where transitions are caused by an external interaction. Complete population transfer from an initially occupied state 1 to a designated state 2 occurs under two conditions. First, there is a constraint on the ratios of the transition matrix elements of the external interaction. Second, there is a constraint on the action integral over the interaction, or "area", corresponding to the phase shi…
The influence of dipole-dipole interaction on the entanglement between two atoms with different initial entangled W-like states in Tavis-Cummings model with degenerate two-photon transitions has been investigated. The results show that the entanglement between two atoms can be increased by means of dipole-dipole interaction and for some initial states the entanglement sudden death effect can be weakened.
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.
A simple theoretical solution to the design of a control field that generates complete population transfer from an initial state, via $N$ nondegenerate intermediate states, to one arbitrary member of $M$ ($M\leq N$) degenerate states is constructed. The full control field exploits an $(M+N-1)$-node null adiabatic state, created by designing the relative phases and amplitudes of the component fields that together make up the full field. The solution found is universal in the sense that it does not depend on the exact number of the unwanted degenerate states or their properties. The results obta…
We analyze the possibility of tomographic reconstruction of a system of three-level atoms in both non-degenerate and degenerate cases. In the non-degenerate case (when both transitions can be accessed independently) a complete reconstruction is possible. In the degenerate case (when both transitions are excited simultaneously) the complete reconstruction is achievable only for a single atom in the Sigma configuration. For multiple Sigma atoms, or even a single atom in the Lambda configuration, only partial reconstruction is possible. Examples of one and two-atom cases are explicitly considered…
Klauder's recent generalization of the harmonic oscillator coherent states [J. Phys. A 29, L293 (1996)] is applicable only in non-degenerate systems, requiring some additional structure if applied to systems with degeneracies. The author suggests how this structure could be added, and applies the complete method to the hydrogen atom problem. To illustrate how a certain degree of freedom in the construction may be exercised, states are constructed which are initially localized and evolve semi-classically, and whose long time evolution exhibits "fractional revivals."
The entanglement character including the so-called sudden death effect between atoms in the non-degenerate two photons Tavis-Cummings model is studied by means of concurrence. The results show that the so-called sudden death effect occurs only for some kind of initial states. In other words, the phenomenon is sensitive to the initial conditions. One can expect the resurrection of the original entanglement to occur in a periodic way following each sudden death event. The length of the time interval for the zero entanglement is dependent on not only the degree of entanglement of the initial stat…
We consider the time evolution of nearly degenerate two-state systems with an external interaction. Conditions in which full population transfer is possible when the two-states become degenerate are considered. A new variation of the coupled differential equations for the probability amplitudes suggests a possible singularity in the time evolution of the system. The singularity occurs at the point in time where full control in the degenerate limit is achieved. We solve this new variation to derive more information about non-degenerate population control. The new results of numerical calculatio…
We demonstrate the trajectory measurement of the single neutral atoms deterministically using a high-finesse optical micro-cavity. Single atom strongly couples to the high-order transverse vacuum TEM_{10} mode, instead of the usual TEM_{00} mode, and the parameter of the system is (g_{10},κ,γ)=2π\times (20.5,2.6,2.6)MHz. The atoms simply fall down freely from the magneto-optic trap into the cavity modes and the trajectories of the single atoms are linear. The transmission spectrums of atoms passing through the TEM10 mode are detected by a single photon counting modules and well fitted. Thanks …
We present here a microscopic analysis of the cooperative light scattering on an atomic system consisting of Λ-type configured atoms with the spin-degenerate ground state. The results are compared with a similar system consisting of standard "two-level" atoms of the Dicke model. We discuss advantages of the considered system in context of its possible implications for light storage in a macroscopic ensemble of dense and ultracold atoms.
For a transition $F_e=0\leftrightarrow F_g=1$ driven by a linearly polarized light and probed by a circularly light, quantum coherence effects are investigated. Due to the coherence between the drive Rabi frequency and Zeeman splitting, electromagnetically induced transparency, electromagnetically induced absorption, and the transition from positive to negative dispersion are obtained, as well as the populations coherently oscillating in a wide spectral region. At the zero pump-probe detuning, the subluminal and superluminal light propagation is predicted. Finally, coherent population trapping…
Analytical solution for the stationary density matrix is derived, by using the Morris-Shore transformation, for an open Jaynes-Cummings system of a two-level atom with Zeeman sublevel degeneracy coupled to an arbitrary-polarized cavity mode. In the limit of weak excitation with the number of quantum in the system not exceeding one, we have obtained the stationary solution of the master equation up to the first order of the driving field intensity. We have also derived the analytic expressions for the excitation spectra of atomic spontaneous emission and cavity transmission. Our results show th…
We present the first measurement of two-mode squeezing between the twin beams produced by a doubly resonant optical parameter oscillator (OPO) in above threshold operation, based on parametric amplification by non degenerate four wave mixing with rubidium $^{85}$Rb. We demonstrate a maximum intensity difference squeezing of -2.7 dB (-3,5 dB corrected for losses) with a pump power of 285 mW and an output power of 12 mW for each beam, operating close to the D1 line of Rb atoms. The possibility to use open cavities combined with the high gain media can provide a strong level of noise compression,…
We present a generalization of the diagrammatic pump-probe approach to coherent backscattering (CBS) of intense laser light for atoms with degenerate energy levels. We employ this approach for a characterization of the double scattering signal from optically pumped atoms with the transition $J_g\rightarrow J_e=J_g+1$ in the helicity preserving polarization channel. We show that, in the saturation regime, the internal degeneracy becomes manifest for atoms with $J_g\geq 1$, leading to a faster decrease of the CBS enhancement factor with increasing saturation parameter than in the non-degenerate …
We show that the adiabatic motion of ultra-cold, multi-level atoms in spatially varying laser fields can give rise to effective non-Abelian gauge fields if degenerate adiabatic eigenstates of the atom-laser interaction exist. A pair of such degenerate dark states emerges e.g. if laser fields couple three internal states of an atom to a fourth common one under pairwise two--photon-resonance conditions. For this so-called tripod scheme we derive general conditions for truly non-Abelian gauge potentials and discuss special examples. In particular we show that using orthogonal laser beams with orb…
We study the effect of quantum interference on the structure and properties of spontaneous and stimulated transitions in a degenerate V-type three-level atom with an arbitrary total momentum of each state. Explicit expressions for the factors in the terms of the relaxation operator and stimulated transition operator with account of quantum interference effects are obtained. It has been demonstrated that the condition for the dipole transition moments to be parallel is insufficient and for conventional atoms the interference cross terms are zeros for both operators. The conditions when quantum …
We analyze, in general terms, the evolution of energy levels in quantum mechanics, as a function of a coupling parameter, and demonstrate the possibility of level crossings in systems described by irreducible matrices. In long-range interactions, the coupling parameter is the interatomic distance. We demonstrate the utility of adjacency matrices and adjacency graphs in the analysis of "hidden" symmetries of a problem; these allow us to break reducible matrices into irreducible subcomponents. A possible breakdown of the no-crossing theorem for higher-dimensional irreducible matrices is indicate…
We discuss experiments to produce and detect atom correlations in a degenerate or nearly degenerate gas of neutral atoms. First we treat the atomic analog of the celebrated Hanbury Brown Twiss experiment, in which atom correlations result simply from interference effects without any atom interactions.We have performed this experiment for both bosons and fermions. Next we show how atom interactions produce correlated atoms using the atomic analog of spontaneous four-wavemixing. Finally, we briefly mention experiments on a one dimensional gas on an atom chip in which correlation effects due to b…
Atomic population transfer in an inhomogeneously broadened optical medium is analyzed for on-demand photon storage-time control in both atomic frequency comb (AFC) and phase locked echoes. In AFC the photon storage mechanism belongs to the conventional three-pulse photon echoes, while the storage time control is limited by conventional two-pulse photon echoes.
The influence of photon-momentum recoil on adiabatic population transfer in an atomic three-level lambda system is studied. It is shown that the Doppler frequency shifts, due to atomic motion can play an important role in adiabatic population transfer processes of atomic internal states by a pair of laser fields. For the limiting case of slow atoms ( Doppler shift much smaller than the photon recoil energy) the atoms occupy the same target state regardless of the order of switching of laser fields, while for the case of fast atoms interacting with the intuitive sequence of pulses, the target s…
We examine the conditions needed to accomplish stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) when the three levels (g, e and f) are degenerate, with arbitrary couplings contributing to the pump-pulse interaction (g - e) and to the Stokes-pulse interaction (e-f). We show that in general a sufficient condition for complete population removal from the g set of degenerate states for arbitrary, pure or mixed, initial state is that the degeneracies should not decrease along the sequence g, e and f. We show that when this condition holds it is possible to achieve the degenerate counterpart of conventio…
The interaction of a three level Rydberg atom of Lambda-type with a single mode optical field in far off-resonant and at large detuning regimes can be described by an effective degenerate Raman model, where the atomic state can be treated as a two-level system of degenerate states. By means of this approximation, we propose a quantum information transfer of an one-qubit state from a Rydberg atom of Lambda-type with degenerate levels to a single-mode field initially in a coherent state.
We propose a feasible experimental scheme, employing methods of population spectroscopy with two-level atoms, for a test of Bell's inequality for massive particles. The correlation function measured in this scheme is the joint atomic $Q$ function. An inequality imposed by local realism is violated by any entangled state of a pair of atoms.
Quantum degenerate molecules represent a new paradigm for fundamental studies and practical applications. Association of already quantum degenerate atoms into molecules provides a crucial shortcut around the difficulty of cooling molecules to ultracold temperatures. Whereas association can be induced with either laser or magnetic fields, photoassociation requires impractical laser intensity to overcome poor overlap between the atom pair and molecular wavefunctions, and experiments are currently restricted to magnetoassociation. Here we model realistic production of a quantum degenerate gas of …
We report on the realization of a novel degenerate mixture of ultracold fermionic lithium and chromium atoms. Based on an all-optical approach, with an overall duty-cycle of about 13 seconds, we produce large and degenerate samples of more than 2$\times 10^5$ $^6$Li atoms and $10^5$ $^{53}$Cr atoms, with both species exhibiting normalized temperatures of about $T/T_{F}$=0.25. Additionally, through the exploitation of a crossed bichromatic optical dipole trap, we can controllably vary the density and degree of degeneracy of the two components almost independently, and widely tune the lithium-to…
The quantum dynamics of the electromagnetic light mode of an optical cavity filled with a coherently driven Fermi gas of ultracold atoms strongly depends on geometry of the Fermi surface. Superradiant light generation and self-organization of the atoms can be achieved at low pumping threshold due to resonant atom-photon Umklapp processes, where the fermions are scattered from one side of the Fermi surface to the other by exchanging photon momenta. The cavity spectrum exhibits sidebands, that, despite strong atom-light coupling and cavity decay, retain narrow linewidth, due to absorptionless tr…
We propose the use of periodic arrays of permanent magnetic films for producing magnetic lattices of microtraps for confining, manipulating and controlling small clouds of ultracold atoms and quantum degenerate gases. Using analytical expressions and numerical calculations we show that periodic arrays of magnetic films can produce one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) magnetic lattices with non-zero potential minima, allowing ultracold atoms to be trapped without losses due to spin flips. In particular, we show that two crossed layers of periodic arrays of parallel rectangular magnets …
First-order phase transition in atom-molecule quantum degenerate mixtures with coherent three-body recombination
Missouri University of Science and Technology(密苏里科技大学);Ben-Gurion University of the Negev(内盖夫本古里安大学);Harvard & Smithsonian(哈佛大学与史密森尼学会);University of Chicago(芝加哥大学)
We theoretically examine a zero-temperature system of Fermi degenerate atoms coupled to bosonic molecules via collisionless rapid adiabatic passage across a Feshbach resonance, focusing on saturation of the molecular conversion efficiency at the slowest magnetic-field sweep rates. Borrowing a novel MANY-FERMION Fock-state theory, we find that a proper model of the magnetic-field sweep can systematically remove saturation. We also debunk the common misconception that many-body effects are responsible for molecules existing above the two-body threshold.
We investigate the influence of two resonant laser beams on the mechanical properties of degenerate atomic gases. The control and probe beams of light are considered to have Orbital Angular Momenta (OAM) and act on the three-level atoms in the Electromagnetically Induced Transparency (EIT) configuration. The theory is based on the explicit analysis of the quantum dynamics of cold atoms coupled with two laser beams. Using the adiabatic approximation, we obtain an effective equation of motion for the atoms driven to the dark state. The equation contains a vector potential type interaction as wel…
We report on the first experimental setup based on a 2D-/3D-MOT scheme to create both Bose-Einstein condensates and degenerate Fermi gases of several ytterbium isotopes. Our setup does not require a Zeeman slower and offers the flexibility to simultaneously produce ultracold samples of other atomic species. Furthermore, the extraordinary optical access favors future experiments in optical lattices. A 2D-MOT on the strong 1S0-1P1 transition captures ytterbium directly from a dispenser of atoms and loads a 3D-MOT on the narrow 1S0-3P1 intercombination transition. Subsequently, atoms are transfer…
Pauli blocking of spontaneous emission is responsible for the stability of atoms. Higher electronic orbitals cannot decay to lower-lying states if they are already occupied -- this is Pauli blocking due to occupation of internal states. Pauli blocking also occurs when free atoms scatter light elastically (Rayleigh scattering) and the final external momentum states are already occupied. A suppression of the total rate of light scattering requires a quantum-degenerate Fermi gas with a Fermi energy larger than the photon recoil energy. This has been predicted more than 30 years ago, but never rea…
We theoretically examine the creation of a Fermi-degenerate gas of molecules via a photoassociation or Feshbach resonance applied to a degenerate Bose-Fermi mixture of atoms. This problem raises an interest because, unlike bosons, fermions in general do not behave cooperatively, so that the collective conversion of, say, two million atoms into one million molecules is not to be expected. Nevertheless, we find that the coupled Fermi system displays collective Rabi-like oscillations and adiabatic passage between atoms and molecules, thereby mimicking Bose-Einstein statistics. Cooperative associa…
Noise in a quantum system is fundamentally governed by the statistics and the many-body state of the underlying particles. Whereas for bosonic particles the correlated noise observed for e.g. photons or bosonic neutral atoms can still be explained within a classical field description with fluctuating phases, the anticorrelations in the detection of fermionic particles have no classical analogue. The observation of such fermionic antibunching is so far scarce and has been confined to electrons and neutrons. Here we report on the first direct observation of antibunching of neutral fermionic atom…
We study the propagation of a hole in degenerate (paramagnetic) spin environments. This canonical problem has important connections to a number of physical systems, and is perfectly suited for experimental realization with ultra-cold atoms in an optical lattice. At the short-to-intermediate timescale that we can access using a stochastic-series-type numeric scheme, the propagation turns out to be distinctly non-diffusive with the proba- bility distribution featuring minima in both space and time due to quantum interference, yet the motion is not ballistic, except at the beginning. We discuss p…
We use a gray molasses operating on the D$_1$ atomic transition to produce degenerate quantum gases of $^{6}$Li with a large number of atoms. This sub-Doppler cooling phase allows us to lower the initial temperature of 10$^9$ atoms from 500 to 40 $μ$K in 2 ms. We observe that D$_1$ cooling remains effective into a high-intensity infrared dipole trap where two-state mixtures are evaporated to reach the degenerate regime. We produce molecular Bose-Einstein condensates of up to 5$\times$10$^{5}$ molecules and weakly-interacting degenerate Fermi gases of $7\times$10$^{5}$ atoms at $T/T_{F}<0.1$ wi…
We study coherence effects in an atom having three metastable levels and single life-time broadened upper state. Two laser fields couple ground states to an excited one and an radio-frequency (rf) field operates between ground state levels. We consider the case when the common level for the rf-field and one of the laser field (to which we refer as the probing field) transitions is twice degenerate. We predict a novel type of dark states (we call them non Raman dark states), which in contrary to Raman resonances, do not require the fulfillment of the two-photon resonance condition. We realize t…
We investigate the transient response of the generated light from Four-Wave Mixing (FWM) in the diamond configuration using a step-down field excitation. The transients show fast decay times and oscillations that depend on the detunings and intensities of the fields. A simplified model taking into account the thermal motion of the atoms, propagation, absorption and dispersion effects shows qualitative agreement with the experimental observations with the energy levels in rubidium (5S1/2, 5P1/2, 5P3/2 and 6S1/2). The atomic polarization comes from all the contributions of different velocity cla…
Recently a scheme has been proposed for generating the 2D Rashba-type spin-orbit coupling (SOC) for ultracold atomic bosons in a bilayer geometry [S.-W. Su et al, Phys. Rev. A \textbf{93}, 053630 (2016)]. Here we investigate the superfluidity properties of a degenerate Fermi gas affected by the SOC in such a bilayer system. We demonstrate that a Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) state appears in the regime of small to moderate atom-light coupling. In contrast to the ordinary SOC, the FFLO state emerges in the bilayer system without adding any external fields or spin polarization. As the …
Ultracold and quantum degenerate gases held near conductive surfaces can serve as sensitive, high resolution, and wide-area probes of electronic current flow. Previous work has imaged transport around grain boundaries in a gold wire by using ultracold and Bose-Einstein condensed atoms held microns from the surface with an atom chip trap. We show that atom chip microscopy may be applied to useful purpose in the context of materials exhibiting topologically protected surface transport. Current flow through lithographically tailored surface defects in topological insulators (TI)---both idealized …
We survey results on the creation of heteronuclear Fermi molecules by tuning a degenerate Bose-Fermi mixture into the neighborhood of an association resonance, either photoassociation or Feshbach, as well as the subsequent prospects for Cooper-like pairing between atoms and molecules. In the simplest case of only one molecular state, corresponding to either a Feshbach resonance or one-color photoassociation, the system displays Rabi oscillations and rapid adiabatic passage between a Bose-Fermi mixture of atoms and fermionic molecules. For two-color photoassociation, the system admits stimulate…
We report and propose a simple scheme to achieve the ultrafast and selective population transfer in four-level atoms by utilizing a single frequency chirped few-cycle pulse. It is demonstrated that the almost complete population may be transferred to the preselected state of atoms just by manipulating the so called chirp offset parameter. The robustness of the scheme against the variation of laser pulse parameters is also investigated. The proposed scheme may also be useful for the selective population transfer in molecules.