Vacuum-assisted generation and control of atomic coherences at x-ray energies

The control of light-matter interaction at the quantum level usually requires coherent laser fields. But already an exchange of virtual photons with the electromagnetic vacuum field alone can lead to quantum coherences, which subsequently suppress spontaneous emission. We demonstrate such spontaneou...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2013-05
Main Authors: Heeg, Kilian P, Wille, Hans-Christian, Schlage, Kai, Guryeva, Tatyana, Schumacher, Daniel, Uschmann, Ingo, Schulze, Kai S, Marx, Berit, Kämpfer, Tino, Paulus, Gerhard G, Röhlsberger, Ralf, Evers, Jörg
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anisotropy
Coherence
Cooperative control
Emissions control
Photons
Quantum theory
Spontaneous emission
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The control of light-matter interaction at the quantum level usually requires coherent laser fields. But already an exchange of virtual photons with the electromagnetic vacuum field alone can lead to quantum coherences, which subsequently suppress spontaneous emission. We demonstrate such spontaneously generated coherences (SGC) in a large ensemble of nuclei operating in the x-ray regime, resonantly coupled to a common cavity environment. The observed SGC originates from two fundamentally different mechanisms related to cooperative emission and magnetically controlled anisotropy of the cavity vacuum. This approach opens new perspectives for quantum control, quantum state engineering and simulation of quantum many-body physics in an essentially decoherence-free setting.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1305.0878