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arXiv:2212.03431 · Physical Review Research

Weak-measurement-induced heating in Bose-Einstein condensates

Emine Altuntaş, Ian B. Spielman

Published Jun 23, 2023• 5 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Ultracold atoms are an ideal platform for understanding system-reservoir dynamics of many-body systems. Here, we study quantum back-action in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates, weakly interacting with a far-from resonant, i.e., dispersively interacting, probe laser beam. The light scattered by the atoms can be considered as a part of quantum measurement process, whereby the change in the system state derives from measurement back-action. We experimentally quantify the resulting back-action in terms of the deposited energy. We model the interaction of the system and environment with a generalized measurement process, leading to a Markovian reservoir. Further, we identify two systematic sources of heating and loss: a stray optical lattice and probe-induced light-assisted collisions (an intrinsic atomic process). The observed heating and loss rates are larger for blue detuning than for red detuning, where they are oscillatory functions of detuning with increased loss at molecular resonances and reduced loss between molecular resonances.

DOI
10.1103/physrevresearch.5.023185

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Ultracold atoms are an ideal platform for understanding system-reservoir dynamics of many-body systems. Here, we study quantum back-action in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates, weakly interacting with a far-from resonant, i.e., dispersively interacting, probe laser beam. The light scattered by the atoms can be considered as a part of quantum measurement process, whereby the change in the system state derives from measurement back-action. We experimentally quantify the resulting back-action in terms of the deposited energy. We model the interaction of the system and environment with a generalized measurement process, leading to a Markovian reservoir. Further, we identify two systematic sources of heating and loss: a stray optical lattice and probe-induced light-assisted collisions (an intrinsic atomic process). The observed heating and loss rates are larger for blue detuning than for red detuning, where they are oscillatory functions of detuning with increased loss at molecular resonances and reduced loss between molecular resonances.
Abstract A fundamental tenet of quantum mechanics is that measurements change a system’s wavefunction to that most consistent with the measurement outcome, even if no observer is present. Weak measurements produce only limited information about the system, and as a result only minimally change the system’s state. Here, we theoretically and experimentally characterize quantum back-action in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates interacting with a far-from resonant laser beam. We theoretically describe this process using a quantum trajectories approach where the environment measures the scattered light and present a measurement model based on an ideal photodetection mechanism. We experimentally quantify the resulting wavefunction change in terms of the contrast of a Ramsey interferometer and control parasitic effects associated with the measurement process. The observed back-action is in good agreement with our measurement model; this result is a necessary precursor for achieving true quantum back-action limited measurements of quantum gases.
We investigate a non-destructive homodyne measurement of atomic condensates using off-resonant optical laser beam that interacts with atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). The interaction between laser beam and the atomic BEC creates entangled states of atom and light that are destroyed in a homodyne detection of light. The destruction of the entangled states causes back-action on the atomic states. We derive expression for the measurement operator on the atomic states due to the photon measurement. We characterize the back-action by calculating quantities such as the Q-function and observe the variation of the measured state with the strength of the light-BEC interaction.
Continuously measured interacting quantum systems almost invariably heat, causing loss of quantum coherence. Here, we study Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) subject to repeated weak measurement of the atomic density and describe several protocols for generating a feedback signal designed to remove excitations created by measurement back-action. We use a stochastic Gross-Pitaevskii equation to model the system dynamics and find that a feedback protocol utilizing momentum-dependent gain and filtering can effectively cool both one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional systems. The performance of these protocols is quantified in terms of the steady-state energy, entropy, and condensed fraction. These are the first feedback cooling protocols demonstrated in two dimensions, and in one dimension our optimal protocol reduces the equilibrium energy by more than a factor of 100 as compared with a previous cooling protocol developed using the same methodology. We also use this protocol to quench-cool 1D BECs from noncondensed highly excited states and find that they rapidly condense into a far-from-equilibrium state with energy orders of magnitude higher than the equilibrium ground-state energy for that condensate fraction. We explain this in terms of the near integrability of our 1D system, whereby efficiently cooled low-momentum modes are effectively decoupled from the energetic ``reservoir'' of the higher-momentum modes. We observe that the quench-cooled condensed states can have nonzero integer winding numbers described by quantized supercurrents.
In the present thesis we study several schemes where the detection of the emitted light from an atomic ensemble gives information about the state of the atoms. In chapter 1 we review the basic theory for the light matter interaction in second quantized form. In chapter 2 we show how conservative potentials for the atoms, such as dispersive optical lattices, can be realized experimentally due to the dispersive interaction with a far detuned laser We then review some basic properties of the physics of a particle in a periodic potential. We show that the ground state and the lowest lying excitations of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a dispersive optical lattice can be described by the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian. In chapter 3 we study the photonic bandstructure of a chain of fixed pointlike atoms in a biperiodic configuration. We calculate the photonic spectra and the probe transmission if the atoms are in free space and inside a standing wave optical resonator. In chapter 4 we consider light scattering from ultracold atoms in an optical lattice where we calculate the photonic scattering cross section as a function of energy and direction of emission along the Mott-insulator-superfluid phase transition. We take into account the finite tunneling rate for the atoms, when evaluating the scattering cross section of the photons and the effect of photon recoil onto the atoms. In chapter 5 we consider a gas of ultracold atoms trapped at two spatially separated regions in space. Using a two Raman lasers to couple atoms out of the systems we show that it is possible to measure the mean value of the atomic field operator of the two systems by measuring the scattered light intensity of one of the Raman lasers. We show how this setup might be used to measure the temperature of a Bose-Einstein condensate and to monitor the superfluid to Mott-insulator phase transition for a gas of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice.
We analyze in detail the heating of bosonic atoms in an optical lattice due to incoherent scattering of light from the lasers forming the lattice. Because atoms scattered into higher bands do not thermalize on the time scale of typical experiments, this process cannot be described by the total energy increase in the system alone (which is determined by single-particle effects). The heating instead involves an important interplay between the atomic physics of the heating process and the many-body physics of the state. We characterize the effects on many-body states for various system parameters, where we observe important differences in the heating for strongly and weakly interacting regimes, as well as a strong dependence on the sign of the laser detuning from the excited atomic state. We compute heating rates and changes to characteristic correlation functions based on both perturbation-theory calculations and a time-dependent calculation of the dissipative many-body dynamics. The latter is made possible for one-dimensional systems by combining time-dependent density-matrix-renormalization-group methods with quantum trajectory techniques.
In this paper, we investigate theoretically the back-action evading measurement of the collective mode of an interacting atomic Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) trapped in an optical cavity that is driven coherently by a pump laser with a modulated amplitude. It is shown that, for a specified kind of amplitude modulation of the driving laser, one can measure a generalized quadrature of the collective mode of the BEC indirectly through the output cavity field with a negligible back-action noise in the good-cavity limit. Nevertheless, the on-resonance added noise of measurement is suppressed below the standard quantum limit (SQL), even in the bad cavity limit. Moreover, the measurement precision can be controlled through the s -wave scattering frequency of atomic collisions.