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arXiv:1003.0423 · Physical Review A

Signal enhancement and background suppression using interference and entanglement

Keith D. Kastella, R. S. Conti

Published Jan 19, 2011• 5 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We describe two-photon absorption processes excited by entangled pairs but not by nonentangled pairs of the same energy and polarization. Photon states are selected for destructive interference in the nonentangled process between different sequences of absorption via multiple intermediate states. A nonzero entangled absorption cross section is obtained by varying the entanglement time and pair delay parameters. Detailed energy and polarization requirements are derived for Rb $5{S}_{1/2}\text{\ensuremath{-}}5{D}_{3/2}$ transitions. Applications to quantum steganography, quantum illumination, and quantum key distribution are discussed.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.83.014302

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A new form of absorption spectroscopy is introduced in which the energy levels and matrix elements of virtual-state transitions in a medium are determined by the use of continuous-wave degenerate entangled photons without varying their wavelengths. Extractable spectroscopic information is embedded in the entangled-photon absorption cross section when measured over a range of entanglement and interbeam-delay times. This technique exploits the fundamental quantum interference that arises during the interaction of an entangled quantum state with a quantum system.
We investigate optimal states of photon pairs to excite a target transition in a multilevel quantum system. With the help of coherent control theory for two-photon absorption with quantum light, we infer the maximal population achievable by optimal entangled vs separable states of light. Interference between excitation pathways as well as the presence of nearby states may hamper the selective excitation of a particular target state, but we show that quantum correlations can help to overcome this problem and enhance the achievable "selectivity" between two energy levels, i.e., the relative difference in population transferred into each of them. We find that the added value of optimal entangled states of light increases with broadening linewidths of the target states.
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