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New Journal of Physics

‘Which-way’ collective atomic spin excitation among atomic ensembles by photon indistinguishability

Guowan Zhang, Chenglin Bian, Liang Chen, Z. Y. Ou, Weiping Zhang

Published Jun 25, 2012• 6 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In spontaneous Raman scattering in an atomic ensemble, a collective atomic spin wave is created in correlation with the Stokes field. When the Stokes photons from two or more such atomic ensembles are made indistinguishable, a 'which-way' collective atomic spin excitation is generated among the independent atomic ensembles. We demonstrate this phenomenon experimentally by reading out the atomic spin excitations and observing interference between the read-out beams. When a single-photon projective measurement is made on the indistinguishable Stokes photons, this simple scheme can be used to entangle independent atomic ensembles. Compared to other currently used methods, this scheme can be easily scaled up and has greater efficiency.

DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/14/6/063034

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In spontaneous Raman scattering in an atomic ensemble, a collective atomic spin wave is created in correlation with the Stokes field. When the Stokes photons from two or more such atomic ensembles are made indistinguishable, a 'which-way' collective atomic spin excitation is generated among the independent atomic ensembles. We demonstrate this phenomenon experimentally by reading out the atomic spin excitations and observing interference between the read-out beams. When a single-photon projective measurement is made on the indistinguishable Stokes photons, this simple scheme can be used to entangle independent atomic ensembles. Compared to other currently used methods, this scheme can be easily scaled up and has greater efficiency.
In spontaneous Raman process in atomic cell at high gain, both the Stokes field and the accompanying collective atomic excitation (atomic spin wave) are coherent. We find that, due to the spontaneous nature of the process, the phases of the Stokes field and the atomic spin wave change randomly from one realization to another but are anti-correlated. The phases of the atomic ensembles are read out via another Raman process at a later time, thus realizing phase memory in atoms. The observation of phase correlation between the Stokes field and the collective atomic excitations is an important step towards macroscopic EPR-type entanglement of continuous variables between light and atoms.
Spontaneous Raman scattering (SRS) in atomic ensembles provides a promising method to generate spin-wave--photon entangled states. In the past experiments, a spin-wave--photon entangled state was produced via SRS from an atomic ensemble. Here, we report a scheme of simultaneously generating two spin-wave--photon (atom-photon) entangled states in a cold Rb ensemble via SRS. Based on joint Bell-state measurements on the two photons coming from the two atom-photon entangled sources, respectively, we projected the two stored spin waves into a Bell state and then mapped the quantum memory into a polarization-entangled photon pair. Such a polarization-entangled photon pair can be released on demand and thus the presented scheme has potential application in the preparation of large-size photonic entangled states.
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We propose a scheme of generating and verifying mesoscopic-level entanglement between two atomic ensembles using nonresonant stimulated Raman scattering. Entanglement can be generated by direct detection or balanced homodyne detection of the Stokes fields from the two cells after they interfere on a beam splitter. The entanglement of the collective atomic fields can be transferred to the anti-Stokes fields in a readout process. By measuring the operator moments of the anti-Stokes fields, we can verify the presence of entanglement. We model the effects of practical factors such as Stokes-field detector quantum efficiency and additive thermal noise in the entanglement generating process, and anti-Stokes-field losses in the entanglement verification process, and find achievable regimes in which entanglement can be verified at the levels of tens to hundreds of atomic excitations in the ensembles.
We demonstrate deterministic generation of two distinct collective excitations in one atomic ensemble, and we realize the Hong-Ou-Mandel interference between them. Using Rydberg blockade we create single collective excitations in two different Zeeman levels, and we use stimulated Raman transitions to perform a beam-splitter operation between the excited atomic modes. By converting the atomic excitations into photons, the two-excitation interference is measured by photon coincidence detection with a visibility of 0.89(6). The Hong-Ou-Mandel interference witnesses an entangled NOON state of the collective atomic excitations, and we demonstrate its two times enhanced sensitivity to a magnetic field compared with a single excitation. Our work implements a minimal instance of boson sampling and paves the way for further multimode and multiexcitation studies with collective excitations of atomic ensembles.