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Physical Review A

Decoherence by spontaneous emission in atomic-momentum transfer experiments

Peter Goetsch, Robert Graham

Published Dec 1, 1996• 20 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The influence of spontaneous emission on the dynamical localization in atomic momentum transfer observed in recent experiments is investigated. Our numerical and analytical results indicate that contrary to previous expectation quantum diffusion due to decoherence by spontaneous emission is non-negligible in the experimental regime and may actually be visible in the measured data. Modifications of the experiments to strengthen this point are proposed. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.54.5345

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The influence of spontaneous emission on the dynamical localization in atomic momentum transfer observed in recent experiments is investigated. Our numerical and analytical results indicate that contrary to previous expectation quantum diffusion due to decoherence by spontaneous emission is non-negligible in the experimental regime and may actually be visible in the measured data. Modifications of the experiments to strengthen this point are proposed. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
The quantized center-of-mass dynamics of two-level atoms in a periodically modulated standing-wave laser field is analyzed, including the decohering effect of spontaneous emission. Under conditions appropriate for the occurrence of dynamical localization as determined in previous work, we predict a random diffusive motion of dynamically localized de Broglie waves due to spontaneous emission and calculate the diffusion constant and the diffusing distribution of wave packets. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
We study the dynamics of laser-cooled two-level atoms in a time-dependent standing wave. In the absence of spontaneous emission, our model reduces to the much studied quantum standard mapping. For a sample of atoms initially cooled to the Doppler limit, the momentum variance increases linearly with interaction time. A sample of atoms initially cooled to the recoil limit will display momentum diffusion at a rate that is determined by two numbers: the classical chaos parameter and a dimensionless Planck parameter. This diffusion ceases after the quantum-mechanical break time. Spontaneous emission will modify the diffusion rate of both Doppler- and recoil-cooled atoms. We show that one component of the new diffusion constant is due to spontaneous recoil and that there is a correction to the deterministic diffusion rate due to the destruction of correlations in the stroboscopic position. Spontaneous emission will destroy the dynamic localization of atoms cooled to the recoil limit. The new momentum diffusion constant can be related to the quasistationary state-decoherence rate. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
We demonstrate that the quantum localization (narrowed momentum distributions) observed in the recent momentum transfer experiments may be associated with the influence of classical phase space resonance structures on quantum Floquet states. By numerically investigating the evolution of initial distributions located in chaotic regions of the classical phase space, we argue that dynamical localization, seen, for example, in quantum kicked rotor models, is not the only possible explanation of the observed localized momentum distributions.
The effect of decoherence, induced by spontaneous emission, on the dynamics of cold atoms periodically kicked by an optical lattice is experimentally and theoretically studied. Ideally, the mean energy growth is essentially unaffected by weak decoherence, but the resonant momentum distributions are fundamentally altered. It is shown that experiments are inevitably sensitive to certain nontrivial features of these distributions, in a way that explains the puzzle of the observed enhancement of resonances by decoherence [Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 074102 (2001)]. This clarifies both the nature of the coherent evolution, and the way in which decoherence disrupts it.
We report a direct observation of dynamical localization. This effect is a quantum suppression of diffusion in a system that is classically chaotic. Our experiment measures the momentum transferred from a modulated standing wave of a near-resonant laser to a sample of ultracold atoms and is a realization of a periodically driven rotor. The conceptual simplicity and experimental control over the time dependent Hamiltonian make this system an ideal testing ground for the predictions of quantum chaos.