We consider the STIRAP process in a three-level atom. Viewed as a closed system, no geometric phase is acquired. But in the presence of spontaneous emission and/or collisional relaxation we show numerically that a non-vanishing, purely real, geometric phase is acquired during STIRAP, whose magnitude grows with the decay rates. Rather than viewing this decoherence-induced geometric phase as a nuisance, it can be considered an example of "beneficial decoherence": the environment provides a mechanism for the generation of geometric phases which would otherwise require an extra experimental control knob.
A unified theory is given of dynamically modified decay and decoherence of field-driven multilevel multipartite entangled states that are weakly coupled to zero-temperature baths or undergo random phase fluctuations. The theory allows for arbitrary local differences in their coupling to the environment. Due to such differences, the optimal driving-field modulation to ensure maximal fidelity is found to substantially differ from conventional ``Bang-Bang'' or $π$-phase flips of the single-qubit evolution.
A general theory is presented for the treatment of decoherence of a multilevel quantum system (with many degrees of freedom) interacting with multi-bath reservoir and driven by ac fields. In this approach, the system is described by a reduced density operator and the multi-bath reservoir is characterized by a number of spectral densities. The reduced density operator is governed by the master equation in which the effect of ac driving fields and the leakage to non-computational states are included. The theory is applied to the study of decoherence of a two-dimensional (2D) SQUID flux qubit cou…
We present the design and characterization of a three-Josephson-junction superconducting loop circuit with three large shunt capacitors. Used as a qubit, the circuit shows long energy-relaxation times, of the order of 40 ${ \unicode[Times]{x3BC}}$s and a spin-echo dephasing time of 9.4 ${ \unicode[Times]{x3BC}}$s. The circuit has high anharmonicity, of 2$π$$\times$3.69 GHz. We extract the multilevel relaxation and dephasing rates of the circuit used as a qutrit and discuss the possible sources for the decoherence. The high anharmonicity allows for fast qubit control with nanosecond-range gate …
An open quantum system with multiple levels coupled to a bosonic environment at zero temperature is investigated systematically using the non-Markovian quantum-state-diffusion (QSD) method [W. T. Strunz, L. Diósi, and N. Gisin, Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 1801 (1999)]. We have established exact time-local QSD equations for a set of interesting multilevel open systems, including high-spin systems, multiple-transition atomic models, and multilevel atomic models driven by time-dependent external fields. These exact QSD equations have paved the way to evaluate the dynamics of open multilevel atomic syste…
Vacuum-induced interference in light scattering by multilevel atomic chains
University of Innsbruck（因斯布鲁克大学）；Saarland University（萨尔兰大学）；Center for Quantum Technologies (QuTe), Saarland University（萨尔兰大学量子技术中心）；Università degli Studi di Milano（米兰大学）
An ensemble of multilevel atoms is a good candidate for a quantum information storage device. The information is encrypted in the collective ground state atomic coherence, which, in the absence of external excitation, is decoupled from the vacuum and therefore decoherence free. However, in the process of manipulation of atoms with light pulses (writing, reading), one inadvertently introduces a coupling to the environment, i.e. a source of decoherence. The dissipation process is often treated as an independent process for each atom in the ensemble, an approach which fails at large atomic optica…
We show that an ensemble of identical d-level atoms can be efficiently described by d-1 collective oscillator degrees of freedom in the vicinity of a product state with all atoms in the same, but otherwise arbitrary single-particle state. We apply our description to two different kinds of spin squeezing: (i) when each spin-F atom is individually squeezed without creating interatomic entanglement and (ii) when a particular collective atomic oscillator mode is squeezed via quantum non-demolition (QND) measurement and feedback. When combined in sequence, the order of the two methods is relevant i…
We consider a medium of multilevel atomic systems interacting with radiation pulses. A relatively simple technique of analytic calculations is proposed, which allows revealing all necessary conditions (with sufficient conditions to be checked separately) imposed on the interaction parameters, for which the mean dipole moment of a multilevel atomic medium vanishes, i.e., the medium becomes transparent via adiabatic interaction. The proposed technique is based on the method of quasienergies and illustrated for three- and five-level atomic systems. The necessary conditions for the propagation len…
We revisit the decoherence of the atomic state in the resonant Jaynes-Cummings model with the field initially being in a coherent state. We show that the purity of the atom exhibits oscillating Gaussian dependence on the time with a width independent of the initial atomic state. It is also shown that when the atom and the coherent state match each other in phase, the atomic decoherence is Gaussian time dependence.
We study the multipartite correlations of the multi-atom dark states, which are characterized by the atomic squeezing beyond the pairwise entanglement. It is shown that, in the photon storage process with atomic ensemble via electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) mechanism, the atomic squeezing and the pairwise entanglement can be created by adiabatically manipulating the Rabi frequency of the classical light field on the atomic ensemble. We also consider the sudden death for the atomic squeezing and the pairwise entanglement under various decoherence channels. An optimal time for gene…
We study the effects of time uncertainty in the interaction of atoms with a standing light wave. We discuss its physical origin and the possibility to observe intrinsic decoherence effects by measuring the atomic momentum distribution.
We study the suppression of noise-induced phase decoherence in a single atomic qubit by employing pulse sequences. The atomic qubit is composed of a single neutral atom in a far-detuned optical dipole trap and the phase decoherence may originate from the laser intensity and beam pointing fluctuations as well as magnetic field fluctuations. We show that suitable pulse sequences may prolongate the qubit coherence time substantially as comparing to the conventional spin echo pulse.
We investigated the Autler-Townes splitting produced by microwave transitions between atomic Rydberg states explored by optical spectroscopy from the ground electronic state. The laser-atom Hamiltonian describing the double irradiation of such a multilevel system is analysed on the basis of the Morris-Shore transformation. The application of this transformation to the microwave-dressed atomic system allows the identification of bright, dark, and spectator states associated with different configurations of atomic states and microwave polarisation. We derived synthetic spectra that show the main…
We study theoretically the decoherence of a gas of bosonic atoms induced by the interaction with a largely detuned laser beam. It is shown that for a standing laser beam decoherence coincides with the single-particle result. For a running laser beam many-particle effects lead to significant modifications.
We investigate scaling of work and efficiency of a photonic Carnot engine with the number of quantum coherent resources. Specifically, we consider a generalization of the "phaseonium fuel" for the photonic Carnot engine, which was first introduced as a three-level atom with two lower states in a quantum coherent superposition by [M. O. Scully, M. Suhail Zubairy, G. S. Agarwal, and H. Walther, Science {\bf 299}, 862 (2003)], to the case of $N+1$ level atoms with $N$ coherent lower levels. We take into account atomic relaxation and dephasing as well as the cavity loss and derive a coarse grained…
We present a quantum interference approach to preserve coherence in the external states of an atom trapped in an optical lattice. We show that this is possible by suitably choosing the initial state of the atom. We demonstrate this in context of decoherence due to spontaneous emission in an one-dimensional optical double-well lattice.
The ultimate stability of atomic clocks is limited by the quantum noise of the atoms. To reduce this noise it has been suggested to use entangled atomic ensembles with reduced atomic noise. Potentially this can push the stability all the way to the limit allowed by the Heisenberg uncertainty relation, which is denoted the Heisenberg limit. In practice, however, entangled states are often more prone to decoherence, which may prevent reaching this performance. Here we present an adaptive measurement protocol that in the presence of a realistic source of decoherence enables us to get near Heisenb…
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.
To resist decoherence from destroying the phase factor of qubit state, it is important to use decoherence-free states for processing, transmitting and storing quantum information in quantum computing and quantum communication. We propose a practical scheme using four atoms with decoherence-free states in a single-mode cavity to realize the entanglement and fundamental quantum logic gates. The transmission of quantum information can be made directly from one atom to another, in which the cavity is only virtually excited. The possible application and the experimental requirement of our proposal …
The complex internal atomic structure involved in radiative transitions has an effect on the spectrum of fluctuations (noise) of the transmitted light. A degenerate transition has different properties in this respect than a pure two-level transition. We investigate these variations by studying a certain transition between two degenerate atomic levels for different choices of the polarization state of the driving laser. For circular polarization, corresponding to the textbook two-level atom case, the optical spectrum shows the characteristic Mollow triplet for strong laser drive, while the corr…
Large scale quantum information processing requires stable and long-lived quantum memories. Here, using atom-photon entanglement, we propose an experimentally feasible scheme to realize decoherence-free quantum memory with atomic ensembles, and show one of its applications, remote transfer of unknown quantum state, based on laser manipulation of atomic ensembles, photonic state operation through optical elements, and single-photon detection with moderate efficiency. The scheme, with inherent fault-tolerance to the practical noise and imperfections, allows one to retrieve the information in the…
We propose a wave packet basis for storing and processing several qubits of quantum information in a single multilevel atom. Using radially localized wave packet states in the Rydberg atom, we construct an orthogonal basis that is related to the usual energy level basis by a quantum Fourier transform. A transform-limited laser pulse that is short compared with the classical Kepler period of the system interacts mainly with the wave packet state localized near the atomic core, allowing selective control in this basis. We argue that wave packet control in this regime is useful for multilevel qua…
A theoretical model describing the Raman scattering process in atomic vapors is constructed. The treatment investigates the low-excitation regime suitable for modern experimental applications. Despite the incorporated decoherence effects (possibly mode dependent) it allows for a direct separation of the time evolution from the spatial degrees of freedom. The impact of noise on the temporal properties of the process is examined. The model is applied in two experimentally relevant situations of ultra-cold and room-temperature atoms. The spatial eigenmodes of the Stokes photons and their coupling…
We report characterization of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) resonances in the D1 line of Rb-87 under various experimental conditions. The dependence of the EIT linewidth on the power of the pump field was investigated, at various temperatures, for the ground states of the lambda-system associated with different hyperfine levels of the atomic 5S_1/2 state as well as magnetic sublevels of the same hyperfine level. Strictly linear behavior was observed in all cases. A theoretical analysis of our results shows that dephasing in the ground state is the main source of decoherence, w…
In this paper, by exploiting the weak measurement and quantum measurement re- versal (WMQMR) procedure, we propose a scheme to show how one can protect the geometric quantum discord (GQD) of a two-qutrit V-type atomic system each of which interacts with a dissipative reservoir independently. We examine the scheme for the GQD of the initial two-qutrit Werner and Horodecki states for different classes of weak mea- surement strengthes. It is found out that the presented protocol enables us to suppress decoherence due to the amplitude damping (AD) channel and preserve the quantum dis- cord of the …
Heralded entanglement between collective excitations in two atomic ensembles is probabilistically generated, stored, and converted to single photon fields. By way of the concurrence, quantitative characterizations are reported for the scaling behavior of entanglement with excitation probability and for the temporal dynamics of various correlations resulting in the decay of entanglement. A lower bound of the concurrence for the collective atomic state of 0.9\pm 0.3 is inferred. The decay of entanglement as a function of storage time is also observed, and related to the local dynamics.
In most proposals for the generation of entanglement in large ensembles of atoms via projective measurements, the interaction with the vacuum is responsible for both the generation of the signal that is detected and the spin depolarization or decoherence. In consequence, one has to usually work in a regime where the information aquisition via detection is sufficiently slow (weak measurement regime) such as not to strongly disturb the system. We propose here a four-wave mixing scheme where, owing to the pumping of the atomic system into a dark state, the polarization of the ensemble is not crit…
Violations of a Bell inequality are reported for an experiment where one of two entangled qubits is stored in a collective atomic memory for a user-defined time delay. The atomic qubit is found to preserve the violation of a Bell inequality for storage times up to 21 microseconds, 700 times longer than the duration of the excitation pulse that creates the entanglement. To address the question of the security of entanglement-based cryptography implemented with this system, an investigation of the Bell violation as a function of the cross-correlation between the generated nonclassical fields is …
We present a fully analytical solution of the dynamics of two strongly-driven atoms resonantly coupled to a dissipative cavity field mode. We show that an initial atom-atom entanglement cannot be increased. In fact, the atomic Hilbert space divides into two subspaces, one of which is decoherence free so that the initial atomic entanglement remains available for applications, even in presence of a low enough atomic decay rate. In the other subspace a measure of entanglement, decoherence, and also purity, are described by a similar functional behavior that can be monitored by joint atomic measur…
Electromagnetically-induced transparency has become an important tool to control the optical properties of dense media. However, in a broad class of systems, the interplay between inhomogeneous broadening and the existence of several excited levels may lead to a vanishing transparency. Here, by identifying the underlying physical mechanisms resulting in this effect, we show that transparency can be strongly enhanced. We thereby demonstrate a 5-fold enhancement in a room-temperature vapor of alkali-metal atoms via a specific shaping of the atomic velocity distribution.
We analyze the time evolution of an initial spatial coherence for a two level atom whose internal degrees of freedom interact with a single mode of a cavity field. When the qubit-field subsystem is taken as an environment, the translational dynamics experiences a decoherence process which may be encoded in a decoherence factor D. We find that the field statistics affects D through the alternative paths the system-environment may follow along their entanglement, while eventual field phase properties give rise to an imaginary part of D which is related to the atomic translation. From the decoher…
It is shown how possible corrections to ordinary quantum mechanics described by the Lindblad equation might be detected by exploiting the great precision of atomic clocks.
We investigate the decoherence of a superposition of symmetric collective internal states of an atomic ensemble due to inhomogeneous coupling to external control fields. For asymptotically large system, we find the characteristic decoherence rate scales as $\sqrt{N}$ with $N$ being the total number of atoms. Our results shed new light on attempts for quantum information processing and storage with atomic ensembles.
We derive scaling laws for the spin decoherence of neutral atoms trapped near conducting and superconducting plane surfaces. A new result for thin films sheds light on the measurement of Y.J. Lin, I. Teper, C. Chin, and V. Vuletić [Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{92}, 050404 (2004)]. Our calculation is based on a quantum-theoretical treatment of electromagnetic radiation near metallic bodies [P.K. Rekdal, S. Scheel, P.L. Knight, and E.A. Hinds, Phys. Rev. A \textbf{70}, 013811 (2004)]. We show that there is a critical atom-surface distance that maximizes the spin relaxation rate and we show how this …
We solve the dynamics of an open quantum system where N strongly driven two-level atoms are equally coupled on resonance to a dissipative cavity mode. Analytical results are derived on decoherence, entanglement, purity, atomic correlations and cavity field mean photon number. We predict decoherence-free subspaces for the whole system and the N-qubit subsystem, the monitoring of quantum coherence and purity decay by atomic populations measurements, the conditional generation of atomic multi-partite entangled states and of cavity cat-like states. We show that the dynamics of atoms prepared in st…
We study the contributions of off-resonant transitions to the dynamics of a system of N multilevel atoms sharing one excitation and interacting with the quantized vector electromagnetic field. The Rotating Wave Approximation significantly simplifies the derivation of the equations of motion describing the collective atomic dynamics, but it leads to an incorrect expression for the dispersive part of the atom-atom interaction terms. For the case of two-level atoms and a scalar electromagnetic field, it turns out that the atom-atom interaction can be recovered correctly if integrals over the phot…
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…
Implementation of quantum logical gates for multilevel system is demonstrated through decoherence control under the quantum adiabatic method using simple phase modulated laser pulses. We make use of selective population inversion and Hamiltonian evolution with time to achieve such goals robustly instead of the standard unitary transformation language.
We provide an intuitive interpretation of the optical Stern-Gerlach effect (OSGE) in the dressed-state point of view. We also analyze the effect of atomic damping in an experiment on the OSGE. We show that the atomic damping also causes the wave packet splitting, in a non-mechanical fashion, as opposed to the coherent process that is mechanical.
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…
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 …
A three-level atom in the $Λ$-configuration coupled to a microcavity is studied. The two transitions of the atom are assumed couple to different counterpropagating mode pairs in the cavity. We analyze the dynamics both, in the strong-coupling and the bad cavity limit. We find that compared to a two-level setup, the third atomic state and the additional control field modes crucially modify the system dynamics and enable more advanced control schemes. All results are explained using appropriate dressed state and eigenmode representations. As potential applications, we discuss optical switching a…
We report an investigation to establish the physical mechanisms responsible for decoherence in the generation of photon pairs from atomic ensembles, via the protocol of Duan et. al for long distance quantum communication [Nature (London) 414, 413 (2001)] and present the experimental techniques necessary to properly control the process. We develop a theory to model in detail the decoherence process in experiments with magneto-optical traps. The inhomogeneous broadening of the ground state by the trap magnetic field is identified as the principal mechanism for decoherence. In conjunction with ou…
Two-photon processes that involve different sub-levels of the ground state of an atom, are highly sensitive to depopulation and decoherence within the ground state. For example, the spectral width of electromagnetically induced transparency resonances in $Λ-$type system, are strongly affected by the ground state depopulation and decoherence rates. We present a direct measurement of decay rates between hyperfine and Zeeman sub-levels in the ground state of $^{87}$Rb vapor. Similar to the relaxation-in-the-dark technique, pumping lasers are used to pre-align the atomic vapor in a well defined qu…
We derive a model to describe decoherence of atomic clouds in atom-chip traps taking the excited states of the trapping potential into account. We use this model to investigate decoherence for a single trapping well and for a pair of trapping wells that form the two arms of an atom interferometer. Including the discrete spectrum of the trapping potential gives rise to a decoherence mechanism with a decoherence rate $Γ$ that scales like $Γ\sim 1/r_0^4$ with the distance $r_0$ from the trap minimum to the wire.
We present a first-principles derivation of spatial atomic-sublevel decoherence near dielectric and metallic surfaces. The theory is based on the electromagnetic-field quantization in absorbing dielectric media. We derive an expression for the time-variation of the off-diagonal matrix element of the atomic density matrix for arbitrarily shaped substrates. For planar multilayered substrates we find that for small lateral separations of the atom's possible positions the spatial coherence decreases quadratically with the separation and inversely to the squared atom-surface distance.
By periodical two-step modulation, we demonstrate that the dynamics of multilevel system can still evolve even in multiple large detunings regime, and provide the effective Hamiltonian (of interest) for this system. We then illustrate this periodical modulation in quantum state engineering, including achieving direct transition from the ground state to the Rydberg state or the desired superposition of two Rydberg states without satisfying two-photon resonance condition, switching between Rydberg blockade regime and Rydberg antiblockade regime, stimulating distinct atomic transitions by the sam…
The symmetric collective states of an atomic spin ensemble (i.e., many-body states that are invariant under particle exchange) are not preserved by decoherence that acts identically but individually on members of the ensemble. We develop a class of collective states in an ensemble of N spin-1/2 particles that is invariant under symmetric local decoherence and find that the dimension of the Hilbert space spanned by these collective states scales only as N^2. We then investigate the open system dynamics of experimentally relevant non-classical collective atomic states, including Schroedinger cat…
The optical properties of sub-wavelength arrays of atoms or other quantum emitters have attracted significant interest recently. For example, the strong constructive or destructive interference of emitted light enables arrays to function as nearly perfect mirrors, support topological edge states, and allow for exponentially better quantum memories. In these proposals, the assumed atomic structure was simple, consisting of a unique electronic ground state. Within linear optics, the system is then equivalent to a periodic array of classical dielectric particles, whose periodicity supports the em…
In an externally driven multilevel quantum system observation that the NEXT jump has not yet happened affects its future development. In previous work [Phys. Rev. A36, 929 (1987)] it was shown that this class of measurement makes it possible to observe remarkably long dark intervals -- or intermittency -- in the atomic fluorescence of an atom with 3 or more levels. Those calculations were carried out when the driven oscillations or Rabi flopping between the ground state and a strongly fluorescing state were fast compared to its lifetime. In systems with solid state Qubits the accessible parame…
We consider four two-level atoms interacting with independent non-Markovian reservoirs with detuning. We mainly investigate the effects of the detuning and the length of the reservoir correlation time on the decoherence dynamics of the multipartite entanglement. We find that the time evolution of the entanglement of atomic and reservoir subsystems is determined by a parameter, which is a function of the detuning and the reservoir correlation time. We also find that the decay and revival of the entanglement of the atomic and reservoir subsystems are closely related to the sign of the decay rate…
We study dynamics of nonclassical correlations by exactly solving a model consisting of two atomic qubits with spontaneous emission. We find that the nonclassical correlations defined by different measures give different qualitative characterizations of those correlations. The relative behaviors of those correlation measures are presented explicitly for various quantum states in the two-qubit atomic system. In particular, we find that the robustness of quantum correlations can be greatly enhanced by performing appropriate local unitary operations on the initial state of the system.
The Lindblad approach to continuous quantum measurements is applied to a system composed of a two-level atom interacting with a stationary quantized electromagnetic field through a dispersive coupling fulfilling quantum nondemolition criteria. Two schemes of measurements are examined. The first one consists in measuring the atomic electric dipole, which indirectly allows one to infer the photon distribution inside the cavity. The second one schematizes a measurement of photon momentum, which permits to describe the atomic level distribution. Decoherence of the corresponding reduced density mat…
Pair collisions in atomic gases lead to decoherence and decay. Assuming that all the atoms in the gas are equally likely to collide one is led to consider Lindbladian of mean field type where the evolution in the limit of many atoms reduces to a single qudit Lindbladian with quadratic non-linearity. We describe three smoking guns for non-linear evolutions: Power law decay and dephasing rates; Dephasing rates that take a continuous range of values depending on the initial data and finally, anomalous flow of the Bloch ball towards a hemisphere.
