The polarization analysis of quantized probe light transmitted through an atomic ensemble has been used to prepare entangled collective atomic states. In a ``balanced'' detection configuration, where the difference signal from two detection ports is analyzed, the continuous monitoring of a component of the Stokes field vector provides a means for conditional projective measurements on the atomic system. Here, we make use of classical driving fields, in the pulsed regime, and of an ``unbalanced'' detection setup (single detector) where the effective photon number of scattered photons is the detected observable. Conditional atomic spin squeezed states and superpositions of such squeezed states can be prepared in this manner.
The polarization analysis of quantized probe light transmitted through an atomic ensemble has been used to prepare entangled collective atomic states. In a balanced'' detection configuration, where the difference signal from two detection ports is analyzed, the continuous monitoring of a component of the Stokes field vector provides a means for conditional projective measurements on the atomic system. Here, we make use of classical driving fields, in the pulsed regime, and of an unbalanced'' detection setup (single detector) where the effective photon number of scattered photons is the detected observable. Conditional atomic spin squeezed states and superpositions of such squeezed states can be prepared in this manner.
We analyze the performance of a protocol to prepare an atomic ensemble in a superposition of two macroscopically distinguishable states. The protocol relies on conditional measurements performed on a light field, which interacts with the atoms inside an optical cavity prior to detection, and we investigate cavity enhanced probing with continuous beams of both coherent and squeezed light. The stochastic master equations used in the analysis are expressed in terms of the Hamiltonian of the probed system and the interaction between the probed system and the probe field and are thus quite generally applicable.
We present a protocol for generating nonclassical states of atomic spin ensembles through the backaction induced by a hybrid measurement of light that is entangled with atoms, combining both homodyne and single photon detection. In phase-I of the protocol we create a spin squeezed state by measuring the light's polarization rotation due to the Faraday effect in a balanced polarimeter, equivalent to a homodyne measurement. In phase-II we send a second probe beam through the sample and detect single photons scattered into the signal mode. Before doing so, we rotate the uncertainty bubble to increase the projection fluctuations of the measured spin component. This increases the coupling strength between the atoms and photons and thus the rate of scattering of single photons into the signal mode. In the ideal case, the result is a squeezed Dicke state, with substantial quantum advantage for sensing spin rotations. We benchmark the protocol's utility in the presence of inevitable decoherence due to optical pumping using the Fisher information as a measure of quantum advantage. We show that in the presence of decoherence, the quantum Fisher information associated with the nonGaussian mixed state we prepare is substantially larger than the classical Fisher information obtained from the standard measurement of spin rotations. We deduce a measurement basis that is close to optimal for achieving the quantum Cramér Rao bound in the presence of decoherence.
We present a protocol for generating nonclassical states of atomic spin ensembles through the backaction induced by a hybrid measurement of light that is entangled with atoms, combining both homodyne and single-photon detection. In phase I of the protocol we create a spin-squeezed state by measuring the light's polarization rotation due to the Faraday effect in a balanced polarimeter, equivalent to a homodyne measurement. In phase II we send a second probe beam through the sample and detect single photons scattered into the signal mode. Before doing so, we rotate the uncertainty bubble to increase the projection fluctuations of the measured spin component. This increases the coupling strength between the atoms and photons and thus the rate of scattering of single photons into the signal mode. In the ideal case, the result is a squeezed Dicke state, with substantial quantum advantage for sensing spin rotations. We benchmark the protocol's utility in the presence of inevitable decoherence due to optical pumping using the Fisher information as a measure of quantum advantage. We show that in the presence of decoherence, the quantum Fisher information associated with the non-Gaussian mixed state we prepare is substantially larger than the classical Fisher information obtained from the standard measurement of spin rotations. We deduce a measurement basis that is close to optimal for achieving the quantum Cram\'er-Rao bound in the presence of decoherence.
Abstract The quantum spin states of an atomic ensemble are of special interest to both fundamental studies and precision measurement applications. Here, we propose a scheme to prepare collective quantum states of an atomic ensemble placed in an optical cavity via homodyne measurement of a probing light field. The effective interactions of atoms mediated by photons are enhanced by the optical cavity, and the output probe light could also be entangled with the collective spin states. By selectively measuring the quadrature of the output light, we can prepare various quantum states, including superposition states of Dicke states and Dicke squeezed states. It is also demonstrated that the fidelity of the prepared quantum state can be enhanced by repetitive homodyne detection and using longer probe laser pulses. With the experimental parameters, we discuss some imperfections, including background noise, fluctuation of the measurement outcomes, and free-space scattering.We believe that our scheme should be feasible for experimental realization with current technologies, which may be used in the future study of quantum mechanics and quantum metrology.
The generation of entanglement in atomic systems plays a central topic in the fields of quantum information storage and processing. Moreover, a special category of entangled states of multi-atom ensembles, spin squeezed states, have been proven to lead to considerable improvement in the sensitivity of precision measurements compared to systems involving uncorrelated atoms. A treatment of entanglement in open systems is, however, incomplete without a precise description of the process of decoherence which necessarily accompanies it. The theory of entanglement and decoherence are the two main topics of this thesis. Methods are described for the generation of strong correlations in large atomic ensembles using either cavity quantum electrodynamics or measurement outcome conditioned quantum dynamics. Moreover, the description of loss of entanglement resulting from the coupling to a noise reservoir (electromagnetic vacuum) is explored. A spin squeezing parameter is used throughout this thesis as both a measure of entanglement strength and as an indication of the sensitivity improvement above the so-called standard quantum limit (sensitivity obtained with uncorrelated particles) in metrology. The first scheme considered consists of a single mode cavity field interacting with a collection of atoms for which spin squeezing is produced in both resonant and off-resonant regimes. In the resonant case, transfer of squeezing from a field state to the atoms is analyzed, while in the off-resonant regime squeezing is produced via an effective nonlinear interaction (one-axis twisting Hamiltonian). A second, more experimentally realistic case, is one involving the interaction of free space atoms with laser pulses; a projective measurement of a source field originating from atomic fluctuations provides a means of preparing atomic collective states such as spin squeezed and Schrodinger cat states. A new unravelling is proposed, that employs the detection of photon number in a single output channel and is capable of producing mesoscopic Schrodinger cat states in a single step. As a first step to understanding the role of cooperative decoherence, of importance in the case of dense pencil-shaped atomic ensembles, the collective spin decoherence of a two multilevel atom system is derived. This calculation is also relevant to entanglement loss for two qubits manipulated using with reading/writing pulses. Finally, a scheme is proposed in which arbitrarily strong entanglement can be produced in a four-wave mixing setup, where the preparation of the atoms in a dark state limits the decoherence to negligible values.
Projective measurements of collective observables can be employed to herald the preparation of entangled states of quantum systems, and the resulting conditional dynamics is usually handled by stochastic master equation (SME) for small systems, and by an approximate Gaussian-state formalism for large systems. In this work, we present an alternative technique by developing a stochastic variant of cumulant mean-field theory, benchmark it against an exact stochastic collective density matrix approach by the simulations of hundreds of identical two-level atoms. More importantly, we demonstrate its full power by studying the conditional spin squeezing of thousands of three-level atoms coupled strongly with an optical cavity subject to individual decay and dephasing, and by simulating the experimental protocol to reveal formation and detection of the spin squeezed state. The proposed technique might be further extended to study more exotic quantum-measurement effects of large quantum systems, such as deterministic spin squeezing with quantum feedback, spin squeezing of optical clock transitions, and retrodictive spin squeezing by posterior measurements, and so on.