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Journal of Physics A Mathematical and General

Quantum stochastic differential equations: an application to the electron shelving effect

Alberto Barchielli

Published Dec 21, 1987• 43 citations
Publisher

Abstract

By means of a physically interesting example, it is shown how the mathematical theory of quantum stochastic calculus can be used in modelling physical systems. The example is the so-called electron shelving effect. The fluorescent light emitted by a single atom or ion presents periods of darkness if two transitions, one weak and one strong, are simultaneously driven. By a previously developed theory of counting processes, based on quantum stochastic differential equations, the full statistics of the emitted photons is obtained. In particular, the results on the duration of bright and dark periods, previously obtained by Cohen-Tannoudji and Dalibard (1986), are completely confirmed.

DOI
10.1088/0305-4470/20/18/034

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By means of a physically interesting example, it is shown how the mathematical theory of quantum stochastic calculus can be used in modelling physical systems. The example is the so-called electron shelving effect. The fluorescent light emitted by a single atom or ion presents periods of darkness if two transitions, one weak and one strong, are simultaneously driven. By a previously developed theory of counting processes, based on quantum stochastic differential equations, the full statistics of the emitted photons is obtained. In particular, the results on the duration of bright and dark periods, previously obtained by Cohen-Tannoudji and Dalibard (1986), are completely confirmed.
We consider a three-level atomic system driven strongly on one transition and weakly on the other. The excited state on the weak transition is assumed to be metastable. We give an analysis of the fluorescence from the strong transition in terms of the elementary probability density p[0{p}_{[0}p[0​,t)(t1{\mathrm{t}}_{1}t1​,t2{t}_{2}t2​,..., tn{t}_{n}tn​) which gives us the probability density that exactly n photons are emitted at times t1{t}_{1}t1​,t2{t}_{2}t2​,...,tn{t}_{n}tn​ by the atom in the time interval [0,t). We show that p[0{p}_{[0}p[0​,t) essentially factorizes into products of conditional densities c\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}(\ensuremath{\tau}) that, given a photon is emitted at time zero, the next photon emission occurs at time \ensuremath{\tau}. This enables a simulation of the individual photon emissions to be given which shows directly the existence of prolonged dark windows in the fluorescence corresponding to the shelving of the electron in the metastable state or ``quantum jumps.''
The basic integrator processes of quantum stochastic calculus, namely, creation, conservation, and annihilation, are introduced in the Hilbert space of square integrable Brownian functionals. Stochastic integrals with respect to these processes and a quantum Itô’s formula are described. As an application two examples of quantum stochastic differential equations are discussed. A continuous time version of Stinespring’s theorem on completely positive maps in C *-algebras is exploited to formulate the notion of a quantum Markov process and indicate how classical Markov processes are woven into the fabric of the Schodinger-Heisenberg dynamics of quantum theory.
Stochastic resonance shows that under some circumstances noise can enhance the response of a system to a periodic force. While this effect has been extensively investigated theoretically and demonstrated experimentally in classical systems, there is complete lack of experimental evidence within the purely quantum-mechanical domain. Here we demonstrate that stochastic resonance can be exhibited in a single ion and would be experimentally observable using well mastered experimental techniques. We discuss the use of this scheme for the detection of the frequency difference of two lasers to demonstrate that stochastic resonance may have applications in precision measurements at the quantum limit.