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Optics Express

Quadrupole excitation of atoms with tightly focused Laguerre-Gaussian beams

Leila Mashhadi, Gholamreza Shayeganrad

Published Feb 14, 2024• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This article investigates the quadrupole excitation of a trapped atom exposed to the tightly focused Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beams with parallel and antiparallel spin angular momentum (SAM) and orbital angular momentum (OAM) under nonparaxial conditions. The Rabi frequency profile of allowed quadrupole transition channels, modified by SAM and OAM interaction, in the focal plane is provided. In the case of antiparallel SAM and OAM, the excitation probability undergoes substantial modification due to the considerable contribution of longitudinal intensity variations in tightly focused condition. The findings offer insights into controlling localized atom transition, including OAM transfer, with potential applications in qudit-based technologies.

DOI
10.1364/oe.500848

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This article investigates the quadrupole excitation of a trapped atom exposed to the tightly focused Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beams with parallel and antiparallel spin angular momentum (SAM) and orbital angular momentum (OAM) under nonparaxial conditions. The Rabi frequency profile of allowed quadrupole transition channels, modified by SAM and OAM interaction, in the focal plane is provided. In the case of antiparallel SAM and OAM, the excitation probability undergoes substantial modification due to the considerable contribution of longitudinal intensity variations in tightly focused condition. The findings offer insights into controlling localized atom transition, including OAM transfer, with potential applications in qudit-based technologies.
In this paper, coherent Rydberg excitation of a single four-level atom in tightly confining trap so-called ‘far-off-resonance optical dipole-quadrupole trap’ (FORDQT) by considering Laguerre Gaussian (LG) beams spatial features is demonstrated. The self-trapping potential results from the position dependent differential AC Stark shift of the ground state and Rydberg state in the effective quadrupole Rydberg excitation. By introducing the effective stiffness of the FORDQT potential in terms of the key parameters of the first and Rydberg excitation laser beams, a technique to obtain sub-micron localization of Rydberg excitation is explored. The complete matched trapping potential of the ground state and Rydberg state near the center of the trap maintains the coherence of the Rydberg excitation. Transfer of optical orbital angular momentum from the LG-beam to the Rydberg-state via localized effective quadrupole excitation process paves the way for implementation of high fidelity qudit gates in high dimensional quantum information process.
Sufficient control over the excitation of the Rydberg atom as a quantum memory is crucial for the fast and deterministic preparation and manipulation of the quantum information. Considering the Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beam spatial features, localized excitation of a four-level atom to a highly excited Rydberg state is presented. The position-dependent AC-Stark shift of the first and Rydberg state in the effective quadrupole two-level description of a far-detuned three-photon Rydberg excitation results in a steep trapping potential for Rydberg state. The transfer of optical orbital angular momentum from LG beam to the Rydberg state via quadrupole transition in the last Rydberg excitation process offers a long-lived and controllable qudit quantum memory. The effective quadrupole Rabi frequency is presented as a function of ratio of the first to Rydberg excitation laser beam waist and the center of mass position inside the trap. It depicts high accuracy of detecting Rydberg atom at the center of the trap, which can pave the way for implementation of high-fidelity qudit gate.
Abstract Optical vortices are currently one of the most intensively studied topics in light–matter interaction. In this work, a three-step axial Doppler- and recoil-free Gaussian–Gaussian-Laguerre–Gaussian (GGLG) excitation of a localized atom to the highly excited Rydberg state is presented. By assuming a large detuning for intermediate states, an effective quadrupole excitation related to the Laguerre–Gaussian (LG) excitation to the highly excited Rydberg state is obtained. This special excitation system radially confines the single highly excited Rydberg atom independently of the trapping system into a sharp potential landscape into the so-called ‘far-off-resonance optical dipole-quadrupole trap’ (FORDQT). The key parameters of the Rydberg excitation to the highly excited state, namely the effective Rabi frequency and the effective detuning including a position-dependent AC Stark shift, are calculated in terms of the basic parameters of the LG beam and of the polarization of the excitation lasers. It is shown that the obtained parameters can be tuned to have a precise excitation of a single atom to the desired Rydberg state as well. The features of transferring the optical orbital and spin angular momentum of the polarized LG beam to the atom via quadrupole Rydberg excitation offer a long-lived and controllable qudit quantum memory. In addition, in contrast to the Gaussian laser beam, the doughnut-shaped LG beam makes it possible to use a high intensity laser beam to increase the signal-to-noise ratio in quadrupole excitation with minimized perturbations coming from stray light broadening in the last Rydberg excitation process.
Abstract Previous studies show that within paraxial limit and electric dipole approximations, the orbital angular momentum (OAM) of a Laguerre–Gaussian (LG) beam rotates the whole atom about the beam axis but does not affect the internal electronic motion. The contribution of the Gaussian part of the LG beam profile to the angular momentum exchange is not usually taken into account. In this paper, we develop a theory which shows that not only the OAM of a LG beam, but also the geometry of the beam cross section, plays an important role in the electronic lowest-order transitions in the interaction of the beam with a trapped Rydberg atom, due to the large span of its electronic wavefunctions. In this interaction, the standard dipole selection rules do not hold and our results show that the otherwise forbidden transitions can become sufficiently probable.
Tightly focused laser beams, or optical tweezers, are essential for analog and digital quantum simulation with neutral atoms and trapped ions. Despite this, most of the current intuition and theoretical treatment utilizes the paraxial approximation, which is an insufficient description at the focus of tightly focused optical tweezers. We develop an analytic model, which we use in tandem with numerical simulations, to quantify how nonparaxial effects will manifest in the next generation of scalable quantum hardware, where tightly focused beams are used for individual qubit control. In particular, we calculate the light potentials of Gaussian and Laguerre-Gaussian beams driving the quadrupole S 1 / 2 2 → D 5 / 2 2 transition in Ca + 40 . Longitudinal field components in the beam center cause spatially dependent Rabi frequencies and ac Stark shifts, leading to unexpected qubit-motion coupling. We characterize single- and two-qubit gate infidelities due to this effect with an analytic model and numerical simulation. We identify regimes where nonparaxial effects should be taken into account for high-precision quantum control, and highlight that the effects are potentially more severe for the case of neutral atom and molecule addressing.