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arXiv:2106.00019 · Physical Review X

Emergent Dark States from Superradiant Dynamics in Multilevel Atoms in a Cavity

Asier Piñeiro Orioli, James K. Thompson, Ana María Rey

Published Mar 21, 2022• 67 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We investigate the collective decay dynamics of atoms with a generic multilevel structure (angular momenta F ↔ F 0 ) coupled to two light modes of different polarization inside a cavity.In contrast to twolevel atoms, we find that multilevel atoms can harbor eigenstates that are perfectly dark to cavity decay even within the subspace of permutationally symmetric states (collective Dicke manifold).The dark states arise from destructive interference between different internal transitions and are shown to be entangled.Remarkably, the superradiant decay of multilevel atoms can end up stuck in one of these dark states, where a macroscopic fraction of the atoms remains excited.This opens the door to the preparation of entangled dark states of matter through collective dissipation that are useful for quantum sensing and quantum simulation.Our predictions should be readily observable in current optical cavity experiments with alkaline-earth atoms or Raman-dressed transitions.

DOI
10.1103/physrevx.12.011054

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We investigate the collective decay dynamics of atoms with a generic multilevel structure (angular momenta F ↔ F 0 ) coupled to two light modes of different polarization inside a cavity.In contrast to twolevel atoms, we find that multilevel atoms can harbor eigenstates that are perfectly dark to cavity decay even within the subspace of permutationally symmetric states (collective Dicke manifold).The dark states arise from destructive interference between different internal transitions and are shown to be entangled.Remarkably, the superradiant decay of multilevel atoms can end up stuck in one of these dark states, where a macroscopic fraction of the atoms remains excited.This opens the door to the preparation of entangled dark states of matter through collective dissipation that are useful for quantum sensing and quantum simulation.Our predictions should be readily observable in current optical cavity experiments with alkaline-earth atoms or Raman-dressed transitions.
We describe a method to create and store scalable and long-lived entangled spin-squeezed states within a manifold of many-body cavity dark states using collective emission of light from multilevel atoms inside an optical cavity. We show that the system can be tuned to generate squeezing in a dark state where it will be immune to superradiance. We also show more generically that squeezing can be generated using a combination of superradiance and coherent driving in a bright state, and subsequently be transferred via single-particle rotations to a dark state where squeezing can be stored. Our findings, readily testable in current optical cavity experiments with alkaline-earth-like atoms, can open a path for dissipative generation and storage of metrologically useful states in optical transitions.
We utilize multilevel atoms trapped in a driven resonant optical cavity to produce scalable multimode squeezed states for quantum sensing and metrology. While superradiance or collective dissipative emission by itself has been typically a detrimental effect for entanglement generation in optical cavities, in the presence of additional drives it can also be used as an entanglement resource. In a recent work [B. Sundar, D. Barberena, A. M. Rey, and A. Pi\~neiro Orioli, companion paper, Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 033601 (2024)], we described a protocol for the dissipative generation of two-mode squeezing in the dark state of a six-level system with only one relevant polarization. There we showed that up to two quadratures can be squeezed. Here, we develop a generalized analytic treatment to calculate the squeezing in any multilevel system where atoms can collectively decay by emitting light into two polarization modes in a cavity. We show that in this more general system up to four spin squeezed quadratures can be obtained. We study how finite-size effects constrain the reachable squeezing, and analytically compute the scaling with NNN. Our findings are readily testable in current optical cavity experiments with alkaline-earth-like atoms.
We present a cross-cavity system in which steady-state superradiance is achieved using solely collective dissipative dynamics. Two cavities symmetrically couple an ensemble of four-level atoms by driving transitions between two electronic states and two motional states along perpendicular cavity axes. Both cavities operate in the bad-cavity regime: one cavity mediates collective atomic decay, while the other cavity, together with a coherent drive, mediates collective pumping via an off-resonant Raman transition. With this, we find steady-state superradiant states that possess nonclassical properties, such as super-Poissonian photon statistics. The system thus requires a beyond mean-field description, and so we develop an exact master equation simulation technique utilizing strong symmetries of the system's jump operators. Because superradiant decay is accompanied by a momentum impulse along the corresponding cavity axis, the system exhibits substantial hybrid entanglement between the atoms' spin and motional degrees of freedom at steady state. We also demonstrate that heralded measurements of the two cavity outputs prepare a state with significant particle-particle entanglement with prospects for quantum-enhanced acceleration sensing.
We propose an effective model leveraging cavity superradiance to achieve entanglement between two spatially separated two-level atomic ensembles trapped in a standing-wave optical cavity. This model is based on permutational symmetry breaking, which leads to the emergence of entangled quantum dark states with nonzero excitations but vanishing decay rate. This steady-state entanglement is created by purely dissipative dynamics, unlike the superradiance of permutationally symmetric two-level atoms, whose steady state is the ground state. Furthermore, we show that the entanglement is significantly enhanced near critical points in the superradiance potential because of the extremely high two-mode squeezing factor between two atomic ensembles. We also discuss spin squeezing in each atomic ensemble in the vicinity of specific critical points in the potential. These findings may play an important role in the generation of correlations immune to dissipation in separated atomic modes.
Dicke superradiance by an ensemble of quantum emitters produces a collective burst of radiation, but no entanglement in the mixed state of the emitters. We show that adding a local kinetic constraint between the emitters generates extensive mixed-state entanglement, while otherwise preserving all key features of Dicke superradiance. Specifically, for any local Boolean constraint, we analytically derive a lower bound for the emission rate which implies a peak intensity ∝N2\propto N^2∝N2 and a peak time ∝(log⁡N)/N\propto (\log N)/N∝(logN)/N with number of spins NNN. This effect enables the superradiantly accelerated preparation of entangled dark states. Hereby, Hilbert-space fragmentation of the Dicke ladder leads to an exponentially branching decay tree that generates a hierarchy of dark states. Importantly, these disconnected manifolds include exponentially many long-range entangled singlet dark states. The explored kinetic constraints and superradiant dynamics can be realized in neutral-atom arrays coupled to an optical cavity, and we suggest a simple and accessible witness to detect the predicted mixed-state entanglement in such experiments. Moreover, we show that entanglement generation is robust against atomic decay and collective dephasing, and should be observable under recently reported experimental conditions. Our results, thereby, offer a general framework and experimentally viable approach for the dissipative engineering of entangled dark states enhanced by superradiance.
Quantum Optics An excited atom will naturally decay to the ground state, with the exciting and emitted photons forming the basis for the optical protocols in quantum communication and computation. Within an ensemble of atoms, this emission process can proceed constructively, resulting in faster ensemble decay in an effect known as superradiance. In contrast to the superradiant process, Ferioli et al. report subradiance in an ensemble of excited rubidium atoms, where collective behavior between the decaying atoms proceeds destructively, thereby extending the lifetime of the excited atom ensemble in what can be described as a dark state. Engineering such dark states could provide a route to storing light. The reduced linewidth could also be useful in metrology applications. Phys. Rev. X 11 , 021031 (2021).