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Physical Review A

Loss of spatial coherence in atomic deflection from an off-resonant quantized standing-wave field

Fam Le Kien, Alexei Vladimirovich Chizhov

Published May 1, 1996• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We show that the transverse spatial coherence of the atomic density matrix is destroyed to some extent by the deflection of the atom from an off-resonant quantized standing-wave field. The collapse and revival of the atomic spatial coherence are demonstrated. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
DOI
10.1103/physreva.53.3675

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It is shown that the correlation between momenta of two atoms cooperatively deflected from an off-resonant quantized standing-wave light field arises due to the fluctuations of the field in the photon number. The normalized cross-correlation functions are calculated. The Cauchy-Schwartz-type inequalities for the joint distribution of the atomic transverse momenta are derived. The simultaneous deflection of the atoms allows one to determine the mean photon number and the width of the photon distribution and to produce predetermined correlations between atomic de Broglie waves.
We present an in-depth study on the behavior of an atomic wave packet which is placed in a standing wave cavity prepared in various states of light. We extract a simple classical oscillator model out of the dynamics of the quantum system. We quantitatively resolve the states of the spatially reorganized wave packet by the dressed state spatial probability distribution functions we developed. We also report a novel type of the “quantum collapse and revival” behavior of the Rabi nutation which is originated from the effect of the quantized atomic center-of-mass motion on the atomic internal motion.
We have demonstrated the loss of transverse spatial coherence of an atomic wave function after a single spontaneous emission. He∗{\mathrm{He}}^{*}He∗ atoms were both diffracted and excited by a standing light wave with a variable period. After the interaction, the excited atoms decay by a single spontaneously emitted photon. By changing the period of the standing light wave, we have mapped the loss of spatial coherence as a function of the transverse coordinate. By detecting the emitted photon one could "erase" the position information available and recover the transverse coherence in a correlation experiment, or realize a Heisenberg microscope.
We investigate to which extent the quantum nature of light modifies laser-induced atomic beam deflection in a plane standing wave. Our model considers a single two-level atom interacting with a single quantized standing wave mode of the electromagnetic field. We neglect spontaneous emission into other field modes, an approximation valid for short enough times. We find that there is an essential qualitative difference between the cases of a coherent field and a thermal field. For a coherent field, the atomic momentum distribution after interaction has two symmetric peaks on the wings and resembles the semiclassical result of Arimondo et al. [Phys. Rev. A 24, 898 (1981)]. For a thermal field, this distribution has its maximum at p = 0. It is characterized by a constant contribution at p = 0, some sharp interference features, and near-Gaussian wings. The only feature common to both cases is that in the Raman-Nath regime of scattering, the range on transverse momenta grows linearly with time at a rate proportional to 〈 n 〉 , where 〈 n 〉 is the mean number of photons in the field.
Deflection of an atomic beam passing through two crossed standing light waves is proposed for studies of transition through the Raman resonance in Λ -atomic systems. Considering different regimes of excitation of Λ -atoms by offresonant standing waves, we demonstrate that the deflection patterns, in the plane perpendicular to the direction of the center of atomic mass motion, are essentially different for the cases of one-photon and two-photon excitations. Visualization of the quantum superposition states of low atomic levels on the two-dimensional spatial patterns of atomic deflection is performed.