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arXiv:1706.07069 · Physical Review A

Driving-induced population trapping and linewidth narrowing via the quantum Zeno effect

Charles N. Christensen, Jake Iles-Smith, Torkil S. Petersen, Jesper Mørk, Dara P. S. McCutcheon

Published Jun 6, 2018• 4 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We investigate the suppression of spontaneous emission from a driven three-level system embedded in an optical cavity via a manifestation of the quantum Zeno effect. Strong resonant coupling of the lower two levels to an external optical field results in a decrease of the decay rate of the third upper level. We show that this effect has observable consequences in the form of emission spectra with subnatural linewidths, which should be measurable using, for example, quantum dot--cavity systems in currently obtainable parameter regimes, and may find use in applications requiring the control of single-photon arrival times and wave-packet extent. These results suggest an underappreciated link between the Zeno effect, dressed states, and Purcell enhancement.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.97.063807

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We investigate the suppression of spontaneous emission from a driven three-level system embedded in an optical cavity via a manifestation of the quantum Zeno effect. Strong resonant coupling of the lower two levels to an external optical field results in a decrease of the decay rate of the third upper level. We show that this effect has observable consequences in the form of emission spectra with subnatural linewidths, which should be measurable using, for example, quantum dot--cavity systems in currently obtainable parameter regimes, and may find use in applications requiring the control of single-photon arrival times and wave-packet extent. These results suggest an underappreciated link between the Zeno effect, dressed states, and Purcell enhancement.
We calculate the spontaneous-emission spectrum and the spectrum of weakly driven fluorescence for a two-level atom coupled to a resonant-cavity mode. For strong atom-cavity coupling the spectra split into two peaks that can have subnatural linewidths. If the cavity linewidth is negligible, the spontaneous-emission spectrum has half the radiative linewidth of the atom; the spectrum of weakly driven fluorescence shows an additional 36% squeezing-induced narrowing. These effects can be observed using coupled-field and collective-polarization oscillators excited in a cavity containing N two-level atoms.
We investigate the steady-state spontaneous emission spectrum of a three-level atom driven by two coherent fields and the absorption spectrum of a weak probe passing through a collection of such driven atoms. We find that the fluorescence spectrum is strongly affected by the decay rates of all the levels involved in the atomic evolution and not just by the decay parameters of the specific transition whose emission spectrum is being monitored. In particular, the spectral components can acquire very different widths and peak heights relative to the case of the standard resonance fluorescence in which a two-level system is driven by a single near-resonant field. An external probe signal passing through the gas of three-level atoms may be absorbed or amplified, as in the standard two-level case, but under specific operating conditions, amplification (or absorption) occurs over the entire range where the atomic response is appreciable. In this case the existence of amplification or absorption is controlled solely by the population difference between two dressed states of the system. We provide numerical results in support of our arguments for arbitrary values of the atomic and field parameters and also develop an analytic description in the limit of strong driving fields that leads to explicit line-shape and linewidth formulas.
The decay characteristics of two-state Rydberg atoms are investigated in a microwave cavity driven simultaneously by two strong rf fields. Tuning one of the driving fields leads to sharp resonances in the decay rate of the upper atomic level. Their width may become smaller than the cavity linewidth and transit time broadening. We present a theoretical model, interpreting the resonances as cavity-induced decay of Floquet states of the composite atom-field system. The observed phenomena arise from the interplay of cavity-modified Bloch-Siegert shifts and dynamic enhancement of spontaneous emission at single-photon and multiphoton resonances.
We investigated the dynamically modified interaction between Rydberg atoms and a single mode of a microwave cavity driven by a strong external field.With a monochromatic injected field we observed dynamic suppression of spontaneous emission, when the intracavity Rabi frequency exceeds the cavity linewidth.We discuss a theoretical model using non-Markovian decay rates, which is in excellent agreement with experiment.When a bichromatic driving field is used, enhanced decay reappears in narrow resonance zones as the detunings and injected intensities are varied.These results are interpreted in terms of cavity-modified transitions between the Floquet states of a two-level atom.Striking aspects of these transitions are their small linewidth and an asymmetry between emission and absorption.
We show an optical wave-mixing scheme that generates quantum light by means of a single three-level atom. The atom couples to an optical cavity and two laser fields that together drive a cycling current within the atom. Weak driving in combination with strong atom-cavity coupling induces transitions in a harmonic ladder of dark states, accompanied by single-photon emission via a quantum Zeno effect and suppression of atomic excitation via quantum interference. For strong driving, the system can generate coherent or Schrödinger cat-like fields with frequencies distinct from those of the applied lasers.
We study the influence of quantum interference on the spontaneous emission from an excited two-level atom when either the atomic upper or lower level is coupled by a coherent field to a third, usually higher-lying, state. In the case of the upper level coupling, destructive quantum interference between two competing decay amplitudes produces a dark line in the emission spectrum, a phenomenon that should not be confused with the well known population trapping, and a narrowing of one of the two side lobes that make up the spectral profile. Quantum interference is absent, instead, in the case of the lower level coupling, and the spectrum modified by the external driving field is just the incoherent superposition of two Lorentzian lines. We suggest a physical interpretation of these results. In addition, we compare the analytic predictions of the simplest nontrivial versions of these models with more realistic but nonanalytic descriptions and show, numerically, that the interference effects persist in the upper level case even when additional complications are taken into account.