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Physical Review A

Wave-particle superposition of distinct atomic spin excitations

Wei Zhang, Dong-Sheng Ding, Ming‐Xin Dong, Shuai Shi, Kai Wang, Guang‐Can Guo, Bao-Sen Shi

Published Dec 20, 2018• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Wave-particle duality is the most essential nature of light, and the fact that the detection apparatus determines the observed wave or particle behavior is one of the most counterintuitive features of quantum mechanics. Recent progress in this direction has revealed novel and peculiar phenomena of photonic wave-particle morphing and wave-particle superposition, which provide a deep understanding of the wave-particle duality for photons. However, it remains an open question whether this new conception can be extended to a more complex physical system, such as an atomic system. We here report an experimental realization of the wave-particle superposition of distinct atomic spin excitations in a cold atomic ensemble by using multiplexed quantum memory. The quantum behavior of wave-particle superposition for matter is observed and verified. Our scheme further provides a benchmark understanding of the wave-particle duality in matter systems.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.98.063829

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Wave-particle duality is the most essential nature of light, and the fact that the detection apparatus determines the observed wave or particle behavior is one of the most counterintuitive features of quantum mechanics. Recent progress in this direction has revealed novel and peculiar phenomena of photonic wave-particle morphing and wave-particle superposition, which provide a deep understanding of the wave-particle duality for photons. However, it remains an open question whether this new conception can be extended to a more complex physical system, such as an atomic system. We here report an experimental realization of the wave-particle superposition of distinct atomic spin excitations in a cold atomic ensemble by using multiplexed quantum memory. The quantum behavior of wave-particle superposition for matter is observed and verified. Our scheme further provides a benchmark understanding of the wave-particle duality in matter systems.
Wave-particle duality is the most fundamental description of the nature of a quantum object, which behaves like a classical particle or wave depending on the measurement apparatus. On the other hand, entanglement represents nonclassical correlations of composite quantum systems, being also a key resource in quantum information. Despite the very recent observations of wave-particle superposition and entanglement, whether these two fundamental traits of quantum mechanics can emerge simultaneously remains an open issue. Here we introduce and experimentally realize a scheme that deterministically generates entanglement between the wave and particle states of two photons. The elementary tool allowing this achievement is a scalable single-photon setup which can be in principle extended to generate multiphoton wave-particle entanglement. Our study reveals that photons can be entangled in their dual wave-particle behavior and opens the way to potential applications in quantum information protocols exploiting the wave-particle degrees of freedom to encode qubits.Here the authors experimentally realize a scheme that deterministically generates entanglement between the wave and particle states of two photons using a scalable all-optical scheme. They achieve this result by first showing generation of controllable single-photon wave-particle superposition states.
One of the cornerstones of quantum physics is the wave nature of matter. It explains experimentally observed effects like interference and diffraction, occurring when an object moves from one place to another along several indistinguishable ways simultaneously. The wave nature disappears when the individual ways are distinguishable. In this case, the particle nature of the object becomes visible. To determine the particle nature quantitatively, the way of the object has to be measured. Here, large progress has been made recently with new techniques, enabling one to investigate single moving atoms in a controlled manner. Two examples are discussed in the following two sections. The first experiment describes an atom interferometer, where the way of the atom is entangled with its internal state. This allows one to explore the origin of wave-particle duality and perform a quantitative test of this fundamental principle. The second experiment reports on the observation of an atom-photon molecule, a bound state between an atom and a single photon. A fascinating aspect of this system is that it makes possible to monitor the motion of a single neutral atom in real time.
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Abstract One of the cornerstones of quantum physics is the wave nature of matter. It explains experimentally observed effects like interference and diffraction, occurring when an object moves from one place to another along several indistinguishable ways simultaneously. The wave nature disappears when the individual ways are distinguishable. In this case, the particle nature of the object becomes visible. To determine the particle nature quantitatively, the way of the object has to be measured. Here, large progress has been made recently with new techniques, enabling one to investigate single moving atoms in a controlled manner. Two examples are discussed in the following two sections. The first experiment describes an atom interferometer, where the way of the atom is entangled with its internal state. This allows one to explore the origin of wave‐particle duality and perform a quantitative test of this fundamental principle. The second experiment reports on the observation of an atom‐photon molecule, a bound state between an atom and a single photon. A fascinating aspect of this system is that it makes possible to monitor the motion of a single neutral atom in real time.
The wave-particle duality of a photon is the bedrock of quantum optics, where both natures are mutually exclusive. Contrary to the conventional understanding of quantum features such as photon bunching on a beam splitter and Bell inequality violation based on the particle nature of photons, a new interpretation is presented for the fundamental understanding of the same quantum features using the wave nature of photons. For this, phase quantization of an optical system interacting with photons is investigated and applied it to a particular quantum phenomenon to fully understand the fundamental concept of indistinguishability between two photons in the quantum feature. This talk opens the door to randomness-based quantum determinacy.
Simultaneous observation of the wave and particle natures of a quantum object under one experimental arrangement represents the latest development regarding wave-particle duality. In this work, we propose a simple scheme using linear-optics devices to observe either the particle nature or wave nature or the wave-particle superposition (WPS) of photons by controlling a relevant classical parameter. Our setup consists of two stages, the preparation and measurement stages, with the latter stage containing an additional classical variable whose value will be given only after the first stage in order to avoid any possible communication between the two stages and thus rule out the classical hidden-variable model. We not only develop the theory but also perform the corresponding experiments. The experimental observations perfectly agree with the theoretical predictions. Our findings are the following. The frequency (wavelength) of both single- and two-photon systems is independent of whether the photon(s) is wavelike or in a WPS state, with the common fact being that the frequency (wavelength) of two photons as a whole entity is twice (half) that of a single photon. As for the interference-pattern visibility, it is always lower in the case of WPS than in the case of a wavelike state for a single photon as well as for two photons. Remarkably, with a given value of the control parameter, the interference visibility in the case of WPS is always higher in the single-photon scenario than in the two-photon one. Although here we are dealing with photons, the obtained results apply equally well to matter particles.