arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to G. Kurizki.
We show that particular configurations of intense off-resonant laser beams can give rise to an attractive 1/r interatomic potential between atoms located well within the laser wavelength. Such a ``gravitational-like'' interaction is shown to give stable Bose condensates that are self-bound (without an additional trap) with unique scaling properties and measurably distinct signatures.
We point out that the quantum Zeno effect, i.e., inhibition of spontaneous decay by frequent measurements, is observable only in spectrally finite reservoirs, i.e., in cavities and waveguides, using a sequence of evolution-interrupting pulses or randomly-modulated CW fields. By contrast, such measurements can only accelerate decay in free space.
We show that the recently proposed scheme of teleportation of continuous variables [S.L. Braunstein and H.J. Kimble, Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 869 (1998)] can be improved by a conditional measurement in the preparation of the entangled state shared by the sender and the recipient. The conditional measurement subtracts photons from the original entangled two-mode squeezed vacuum, by transmitting each mode through a low-reflectivity beam splitter and performing a joint photon-number measurement on the reflected beams. In this way the degree of entanglement of the shared state is increased and so is the fidelity of the teleported state.
We study the use of the Faraday effect as a quantum clock for measuring traversal times of evanescent photons through magneto-refractive structures. The Faraday effect acts both as a phase-shifter and as a filter for circular polarizations. Only measurements based on the Faraday phase-shift properties are relevant to the traversal time measurements. The Faraday polarization filtering may cause the loss of non-local (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen) two-photon correlations, but this loss can be avoided without sacrificing the clock accuracy. We show that a mechanism of destructive interference between consecutive paths is responsible for superluminal traversal times measured by the clock.
We put forward a method for optimized distillation of partly entangled pairs of qubits into a smaller number of more entangled pairs by recurrent local unitary operations and projections. Optimized distillation is achieved by minimization of a cost function with up to 30 real parameters, which is chosen to be sensitive to the fidelity and the projection probability at each step. We show that in many cases this approach can significantly improve the distillation efficiency in comparison to the present methods.
We present hitherto unknown forms of soliton dynamics in the forbidden frequency gap of a Bragg reflector, modified by periodic layers of near-resonant two-level systems (TLS). Remarkably, even extremely low TLS densities create an allowed band within the forbidden gap. This spectrum gives rise, for any Bragg reflectivity, to a vast family of stable gap solitons, both standing and moving, having a unique analytic form, an arbitrary pulse area, and inelastic collision properties. These findings suggest new possibilities of transmission control, noise filtering or ``dynamical cavities'' (self-traps) for both weak and strong signal pulses.
With the help of some remarkable examples, it is shown that conditional measurements performed on two-level atoms just after they have interacted with a resonant cavity field mode are able to recover the coherence of number-state superpositions, which is lost due to dissipation.
We show that optical tachyonic dispersion corresponding to superluminal (faster than-light) group velocities characterizes parametrically amplifying media. The turn-on of parametric amplification in finite media, followed by illumination by spectrally narrow probe wavepackets, can give rise to transient tachyonic wavepackets. In the stable (sub-threshold) operating regime of an optical phase conjugator it is possible to transmit probe pulses with a superluminally advanced peak, whereas conjugate reflection is always subluminal. In the unstable (above-threshold) regime, superluminal response occurs both in reflection and in transmission, at times preceding the onset of exponential growth due to the instability. Remarkably, the quantum information transmitted by probe or conjugate pulses, albeit causal, is confined to times corresponding to superluminal velocities. These phenomena are explicitly analyzed for four-wave mixing, stimulated Raman scattering and parametric downconversion.
We theoretically investigate the response of optical phase conjugators to incident probe pulses. In the stable (sub-threshold) operating regime of an optical phase conjugator it is possible to transmit probe pulses with a superluminally advanced peak, whereas conjugate reflection is always subluminal. In the unstable (above-threshold) regime, superluminal response occurs both in reflection and in transmission, at times preceding the onset of exponential growth due to the instability.
We theoretically analyze wave packet transmission through a phase-conjugating mirror and show that the transmission of a suitably chosen input pulse is superluminal, i.e. the peak of the pulse emerges from the mirror before the time it takes to travel the same distance in vacuum. This pulse reshaping effect can be attributed directly to the dispersion relation in the nonlinear medium constituting the mirror. Thus, for the first time a connection is laid between optical phase conjugation and superluminal behavior. In view of its additional amplifying ability, a phase-conjugating mirror is a most promising candidate for an experimental observation of tachyonic signatures.
By sending many two-level atoms through a cavity resonant with the atomic transition, and letting the interaction times between the atoms and the cavity be randomly distributed, we end up with a predetermined Fock state of the electromagnetic field inside the cavity if we perform after the interaction with the cavity a conditional measurement of the internal state of each atom in a coherent superposition of its ground and excited states. Differently from previous schemes, this procedure turns out to be very stable under fluctuations in the interaction times.