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Journal of Modern Optics

Quantum State Diffusion Theory and a Quantum Jump Experiment

Nicolas Gisin, P. L. Knight, Ian Colin Percival, Richard Claude Thompson, D. C. Wilson

Published Sep 1, 1993• 57 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We use a recent stochastical diffusion model of quantum evolution to represent the evolution of a three-level quantum system undergoing quantum jumps. This is possible because the continuous change in the quantum state in this diffusion model is so rapid that it appears to be instantaneous in comparison with the time between transitions. Experimental data from a study of the intermittent fluorescence of a single trapped 24Mg+ ion and equivalent theoretical data are shown to be strikingly similar. Statistical comparisons of the data are also made.

DOI
10.1080/09500349314551671

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•Jan 1, 2014•0 citations
We use a recent stochastical diffusion model of quantum evolution to represent the evolution of a three-level quantum system undergoing quantum jumps. This is possible because the continuous change in the quantum state in this diffusion model is so rapid that it appears to be instantaneous in comparison with the time between transitions. Experimental data from a study of the intermittent fluorescence of a single trapped 24Mg+ ion and equivalent theoretical data are shown to be strikingly similar. Statistical comparisons of the data are also made.
A quantum-statistical theory is developed for a single-atom, three-state quantum system where a strong (1-3) and a weak (2-3) transition are driven resonantly by an incoherent field. From a second-order correlation function of the fluorescence intensity, it is concluded that a quantum jump can occur, in the sense that the single atom can undergo large fluctuations between a state of full emission in the strong transition to a state of no emission when the electron is shelved in the metastable state (2).
Introduction The quantum theory of atoms and molecules had its origin in the famous 1913 paper of Bohr [186] in which he suggested that the interaction of radiation and atoms occurred with the transition of an atom from one stationary internal state to another, accompanied by the emission or absorption of radiation of a frequency determined by the energy difference between these states. These transitions came to be known as ‘quantum jumps’. Since all experiments until the late 1970s used to be carried out with large ensembles of atoms and molecules, these jumps were masked and could not be directly observed; they were only inferred from spectroscopic data. In fact, with the advent of quantum mechanics they eventually came to be regarded as artefacts of Bohr's simple-minded semi-classical model. But with the availability of coherent light sources and single ions prepared in ion traps [187], [188], and optically cooled [189], [190], the issue has been reopened with the experimental demonstration of quantum jumps in single ions [191], [192], [193]. These experiments have also opened up the contentious issue of wave function collapse or reduction on measurement, as they can be regarded as making collapse visible on the oscilloscope screen [191]. Evidence of the discrete nature of quantum transitions in a single quantum system had been accumulating from the observation of photon anti-bunching in single-atom resonance fluorescence [194], the tunneling of single electrons in metal–oxide-–semiconductor junctions [195] and spin-flips of individual electrons in a Penning trap [196].
Recent experiments with single atomic ions isolated in electromagnetic traps have demonstrated abrupt changes in observed fluorescence intensities, which have been interpreted as evidence for quantum jumps as the atom changes energy levels. This presents the seeming paradox of discontinuously changing observables from a system whose dynamical evolution is governed by the continuous optical Bloch equations. In this paper I present an analysis of the dynamics of a model three-level atom interacting with two laser fields in terms of the dressed states of the atom-laser system. These dressed states are eigenstates of a Hamiltonian which includes laser-atom interactions, and thus they simplify the discussion of the time evolution of the combined laser-atom system. This dressed-state description is particularly useful in the regime in which both laser intensities are strong enough to saturate their respective transitions. I calculate the radiative lifetimes of the different species of dressed states and the branching ratios for decay to other dressed states, and demonstrate the consequences of these quantities for the observed fluorescence pattern. The calculated duration of bright and dark periods shows a pronounced dependence on the detunings of the lasers.
We compare the statistics of photon counts of the light scattered by a laser-driven two-level system weakly coupled to a third metastable state with the statistics of a dichotomic Markov process. The fluorescence is found to turn abrubtly off and on, as if the atom executed quantum jumps to and from the metastable state. Moreover, the jumping nature of the fluorescence over long time scales survives even though the atom cannot be treated with rate theory and the picture of instantaneous quantum jumps is not strictly justified.
In a fundamental test of quantum mechanics, we have observed 228000228 000228000 quantum jumps of a single trapped and laser cooled 88Sr+^{88}\mathrm{Sr}^{+}88Sr+ ion. This represents a statistical increase of two orders of magnitude over previous similar analyses of quantum jumps. Compared to other searches for nonrandomness in quantum-mechanical processes, using quantum jumps simplifies the interpretation of data by eliminated multiparticle effects and providing near-unit detection efficiency of transitions. We measure the fractional reduction in the entropy of information to be $<6.5\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}4}$ when the value of any interval between quantum jumps is known. We also find that the number of runs of successively increasing or decreasing interval times agrees with the theoretically expected values. Furthermore, we analyze 238000238 000238000 quantum jumps from two simultaneously confined ions and find that the number of apparently coincidental transitions is as expected. Finally, we observe 8400 spontaneous decays of two simultaneously trapped ions and find that the number of apparently coincidental decays from the metastable state agrees with the expected value. We find no evidence for short- or long-term correlations in the intervals of the quantum jumps or in the decay of the quantum states, in agreement with quantum theory.
A number of experiments on trapped single ions or atoms have been performed in recent years [1,2,3,4]. Monitoring the intensity of scattered laser light off of such systems has shown abrupt changes that have been cited as evidence of between states of the scattered ion or atom . The existence of such jumps was required by Bohr in his theory of the atom. Bohr’s quantum jumps between atomic states [5] were the first form of quantum dynamics to be postulated. He assumed that an atom remained in an atomic eigenstate until it made an instantaneous jump to another state with the emission or absorption of a photon. Since these jumps do not appear to occur in solutions of the Schrodinger equation, something similar to Bohr's idea has been added as an extra postulate in modern quantum mechanics. Stochastic quantum jump equations [6], [7],[8]were introduced as a tool for simulating the dynamics of a dissipative system with a large Hilbert space and their links with quantum measurement the or were also noted [9],[10],[11],[12],[13].This measurement interpretation is generally known as quantum trajectory theory [14].By adding filter cavities as part of the apparatus, even the quantum jumps in the dressed state model can be interpreted as approximations to measurement-induced jumps [15]. The question arises whether an explanation of these jumps can be found to result from an Colombeau solution [16]-[18](Ψe(x, t;ħ))e of the Schrodinger equation alone without additional postulates. We found exact quasi-classical asymptotic of the quantum averages