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Physical Review Letters

Quantum Interference Enforced by Time-Energy Complementarity

Martin Kiffner, Jörg Evers, Christoph H. Keitel

Published Mar 14, 2006• 57 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The interplay of the concepts of complementarity and interference in the time-energy domain are studied. In particular, we theoretically investigate the fluorescence light from a J = 1/2 to J= 1/2 transition that is driven by a monochromatic laser field. We find that the spectrum of resonance fluorescence exhibits a signature of vacuum-mediated interference effects, whereas the total intensity is not affected by interference. We demonstrate that this result is a consequence of the principle of complementarity, applied to time and energy. Since the considered level scheme can be found, e.g., in (198)Hg(+) ions, our model system turns out to be an ideal candidate to provide evidence for as yet experimentally unconfirmed vacuum-induced atomic coherences.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.96.100403

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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE•May 23, 2005•0 citations
The interplay of the concepts of complementarity and interference in the time-energy domain are studied. In particular, we theoretically investigate the fluorescence light from a J = 1/2 to J= 1/2 transition that is driven by a monochromatic laser field. We find that the spectrum of resonance fluorescence exhibits a signature of vacuum-mediated interference effects, whereas the total intensity is not affected by interference. We demonstrate that this result is a consequence of the principle of complementarity, applied to time and energy. Since the considered level scheme can be found, e.g., in (198)Hg(+) ions, our model system turns out to be an ideal candidate to provide evidence for as yet experimentally unconfirmed vacuum-induced atomic coherences.
Quantum interference and coherence effects in the interaction of atoms with the quantized electromagnetic field are investigated theoretically. A general master equation for the description of atom-field interactions is introduced. The interplay of the concepts of complementarity and interference in the time-energy domain are studied on the basis of the fluorescence light emitted by a single laser-driven atom, where the coherence of spontaneous processes gives rise to quantum interference in the spectrum of resonance fluorescence. The vacuum-induced dipole-dipole interaction in pairs of multi-level atoms is analyzed. It is shown that the interaction between orthogonal transition dipole moments of different atoms does not only influence the system dynamics crucially, but implies that the few-level approximation in general cannot be applied to near-degenerate Zeeman sublevels of the atomic level scheme. Potential applications of dipole-dipole interacting multi-level atoms for the implementation of decoherence-free subspaces and the generation of entanglement between atomic states are examined. The generation of an entangled state of the radiation field with a macroscopic number of photons is discussed on the basis of a single-atom laser.
Abstract The resonance fluorescence of a four-level atom in J = 1/2 to J = 1/2 transition driven by two coherent fields is studied. We find that the incoherent fluorescence spectrum shows a direct indication of vacuum-induced coherence in the atomic system. We show that such coherence manifests itself via an enhancement or suppression of the spectral peaks in the π -polarized fluorescence. The effect of the relative phase of the driving fields on the spectral features is also investigated. We show that phase-dependent enhancement or suppression of the fluorescence peaks appears in the incoherent spectrum emitted along the σ transitions. It is found that this phase dependence occurs because of the polarization-detection scheme employed for the observation of the fluorescence light. We present an analytical explanation, based on dressed-states of the atom-field system, to interpret the numerical results.
We discuss quantum interference effects in the resonance fluorescence spectrum of a \ensuremath{\Lambda} three-level atom when the lower-level doublet is driven by a coherent field. The interfering pathways that lead to the same final state involve both spontaneous decays and stimulated transitions, and differ from one another by an odd number of stimulated processes induced by the driving field. As a consequence, the interference structures depend upon the phase of the coherent field, an effect that is absent in other resonance fluorescence phenomena. The phase dependence of the quantum interference contribution is especially significant when the level splitting of the driven doublet is comparable to the spontaneous decay rates of the competing optical paths.
Abstract We present a scheme that enables the observation of interference effects in the resonance fluorescence of a V-type atom with orthogonal dipole moments. Specifically, we consider the atomic configuration of a J g = 0 to J e = 1 transition driven by a single laser field. By employing polarization-sensitive detection in such a way that the light emitted on the two transitions become indistinguishable, we show that one can simulate the effect of vacuum-induced coherence on the resonance fluorescence of this system. In addition, we demonstrate the possibility of realizing atomic transitions with both parallel and antiparallel dipole moments and their effects on the fluorescence spectrum. The interference induced leads to interesting features in the fluorescence spectrum such as asymmetric spectral peaks, enhancement and suppression of the sidebands, and disappearance of fluorescence in the particular direction of detection. The numerical results are understood in the context of the dressed states of the combined atom–field system.
We investigate the effects of spontaneously generated interference on the spectrum of quantum fluctuations in phase quadratures of resonant fluorescence emitted from the transition of j = 1/2 to j = 1/2 of a monochromatically driven four-level atom with antiparallel dipole moments. It is found that the spectrum exhibits obvious characteristics of quantum interference in both cases of weak and strong laser fields. For the Zeeman-degenerate system, strong radiation squeezing in weak atomic excitation can occur at the central frequency of the spectrum, which is quite different from the case without consideration of the interference. Moreover, when we apply an external magnetic field to the atom, we find that the quantum interference can lead to a narrowing spectrum with much stronger squeezing by adjusting the magnetic field strength. These results suggest that the phase-dependent fluorescence spectrum can serve as a probe of the quantum interference effects in a realistic system such as a trapped 198Hg+ ion or charged quantum dots.
We discuss various aspects of the incoherent spontaneous emission in atomic few-level systems arising from the coupling of the atom to the surrounding vacuum. First, we consider systems where the decoherence due to spontaneous emission acts as a limiting factor. Here, we combine collective effects in larger samples of atoms with control mechanisms known from single-atom schemes, or modify the system dynamics by externally inducing multiphoton quantum interference effects. In the second part, we discuss ground-state laser cooling of trapped atoms and ions. Here, the momentum transfer in the spontaneous emission events is required to cool the particles, but needs to be controlled in order to achieve a low cooling limit. In our scheme, we make use of double electromagnetically induced transparency in order to design the absorption spectrum of the trapped particle. In the final part, we show that the incoherent part of the resonance fluorescence spectrum of a two-level system may serve as an interesting candidate for high-precision spectroscopy. For this, we discuss relativistic and radiative corrections to the resonance fluorescence spectra of laser-driven few-level systems.