arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to M. J. Collett.
Requirements for the successful teleportation of a beam of light, including its temporal correlations, are discussed. Explicit expressions for the degrees of first- and second-order optical coherence are derived. Teleportation of an antibunched photon stream illustrates our results.
The resonant heating of a harmonically trapped ion by a standing-wave light field is described as a quantum stochastic process combining a coherent Schroedinger evolution with Bohr-Einstein quantum jumps. Quantum and semi-quantum treatments are compared.
We have proposed a model of roton cluster excitations in liquid helium~II based on a Schrödinger-type equation with a self-consistent confining potential. We have derived an equation for the number of atoms in roton excitations, which can be treated as quantum $3{\rm D}$ solitons, depending on vibrational quantum numbers. It is shown that the smallest roton cluster is in the symmetric vibrational quantum state and consists of 13 helium atoms. We have also used a modified Born approximation to calculate the $s$-scattering length for helium atoms. This allows us to calculate all parameters of Landau's roton excitation spectrum, in agreement to high accuracy with experimental measurements from neutron scattering.
We present a steady state analysis of a quantum-mechanical model of an atom laser. A single-mode atomic trap coupled to a continuum of external modes is driven by a saturable pumping mechanism. In the dilute flux regime, where atom-atom interactions are negligible in the output, we have been able to solve this model without making the Born-Markov approximation. The more exact treatment has a different effective damping rate and occupation of the lasing mode, as well as a shifted frequency and linewidth of the output. We examine gravitational damping numerically, finding linewidths and frequency shifts for a range of pumping rates. We treat mean field damping analytically, finding a memory function for the Thomas-Fermi regime. The occupation and linewidth are found to have a nonlinear scaling behavior which has implications for the stability of atom lasers.
We demonstrate a method which allows the stochastic modelling of quantum systems for which the generalised Fokker-Planck equation in the phase space contains derivatives of higher than second order. This generalises quantum stochastics far beyond the quantum-optical paradigm of three and four-wave mixing problems to which these techniques have so far only been applicable. To verify our method, we model a full Wigner representation for the optical parametric oscillator, a system where the correct results are well known and can be obtained by other methods.
We describe quantum-field-theoretical (QFT) techniques for mapping quantum problems onto c-number stochastic problems. This approach yields results which are identical to phase-space techniques [C.W. Gardiner, {\em Quantum Noise} (1991)] when the latter result in a Fokker-Planck equation for a corresponding pseudo-probability distribution. If phase-space techniques do not result in a Fokker-Planck equation and hence fail to produce a stochastic representation, the QFT techniques nevertheless yield stochastic difference equations in discretised time.
We present a fully quantum mechanical treatment of a single-mode atomic cavity with a pumping mechanism and an output coupling to a continuum of external modes. This system is a schematic description of an atom laser. In the dilute limit where atom-atom interactions are negligible, we have been able to solve this model without making the Born and Markov approximations. When coupling into free space, it is shown that for reasonable parameters there is a bound state which does not disperse, which means that there is no steady state. This bound state does not exist when gravity is included, and in that case the system reaches a steady state. We develop equations of motion for the two-time correlation in the presence of pumping and gravity in the output modes. We then calculate the steady-state output energy flux from the laser.
We present a non-Markovian quantum trajectory method for treating atoms radiating into a reservoir with a non-flat density of states. The results of an example numerical simulation of the case where the free space modes of the reservoir are altered by the presence of a cavity are presented and compared with those of an extended system approach.
We present a fully quantum mechanical treatment of a single mode atom laser including pumping and output coupling. By ignoring atom-atom interactions, we have solved this model without making the Born-Markov approximation. We find substantially less gain narrowing than is predicted under that approximation.
The regions of validity of the Markov approximation for the coupling of atoms out of an atomic trap are determined. We consider radio-frequency output coupling in the presence of gravity and collisional repulsion, and Raman output coupling. The Markov approximation is crucial in most theoretical descriptions of an atom laser that assume a continuous process of output coupling from a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate. In this regime many techniques proved to be useful for modeling the optical laser, such as master equations, can be used to describe the dynamics of the damping of the condensate mode undergoing output coupling.
We introduce the study of dynamical quantum noise in Bose-Einstein condensates through numerical simulation of stochastic partial differential equations obtained using phase space representations. We derive evolution equations for a single trapped condensate in both the positive-$P$ and Wigner representations, and perform simulations to compare the predictions of the two methods. The positive-$P$ approach is found to be highly susceptible to the stability problems that have been observed in other strongly nonlinear, weakly damped systems. Using the Wigner representation, we examine the evolution of several quantities of interest using from a variety of choices of initial state for the condensate, and compare results to those for single-mode models.
We present a formulation of non-Markovian quantum trajectories for open systems from a measurement theory perspective. In our treatment there are three distinct ways in which non-Markovian behavior can arise; a mode dependent coupling between bath (reservoir) and system, a dispersive bath, and by spectral detection of the output into the bath. In the first two cases the non-Markovian behavior is intrinsic to the interaction, in the third case the non-Markovian behavior arises from the method of detection. We focus in detail on the trajectories which simulate real-time spectral detection of the light emitted from a localized system. In this case, the non-Markovian behavior arises from the uncertainty in the time of emission of particles that are later detected. The results of computer simulations of the spectral detection of the spontaneous emission from a strongly driven two-level atom are presented.
A diagram approach to classical nonlinear stochastic field theory is introduced. This approach is intended to serve as a link between quantum and classical field theories, resulting in an independent constructive characterisation of the measure in Feynman path integrals in terms of stochastic differential equations for the paths.
We consider the precise quantum state of two trapped, coupled Bose Einstein condensates in the two-mode approximation. We seek a representation of the state in terms of a Wigner-like distribution on the two-mode Bloch sphere. The problem is solved using a self-consistent rotation of the unknown state to the south pole of the sphere. The two-mode Hamiltonian is projected onto the harmonic oscillator phase plane, where it can be solved by standard techniques. Our results show how the number of atoms in each trap and the squeezing in the number difference depend on the physical parameters. Considering negative scattering lengths, we show that there is a regime of squeezing in the relative phase of the condensates which occurs for weaker interactions than the superposition states found by Cirac et al% (quant-ph/9706034, 13 June 1997). The phase squeezing is also apparent in mildly asymmetric trap configurations.
We present a quantum theory of low-lying excitations in a trapped Bose condensate with finite particle numbers. We find that even at zero temperature condensate number fluctuations and/or fluctuations of the excitation frequency due to quantum uncertainties of the mode occupation lead to a collapse of the collective modes due to dephasing. Coherent revivals of the collective excitations are predicted on a much longer timescale. Depletion of collective modes due to second-harmonic generation is discussed.
We consider two dilute gas Bose-Einstein condensates with opposite velocities from which a monochromatic light field detuned far from the resonance of the optical transition is coherently scattered. In the thermodynamic limit, when the relative fluctuations of the atom number difference between the two condensates vanish, the relative phase between the Bose-Einstein condensates may be established in a superposition state by detections of spontaneously scattered photons, even though the condensates have initially well-defined atom numbers. For a finite system, stochastic simulations show that the measurements of the scattered photons lead to a randomly drifting relative phase and drive the condensates into entangled superpositions of number states. This is because according to Bose-Einstein statistics the scattering to an already occupied state is enhanced.
We study the build up of quantum coherence between two Bose-Einstein condensates which are initially in mixed states. We consider in detail the two cases where each condensate is initially in a thermal or a Poisson distribution of atom number. Although initially there is no relative phase between the condensates, a sequence of spatial atom detections produces an interference pattern with arbitrary but fixed relative phase. The visibility of this interference pattern is close to one for the Poisson distribution of two condensates with equal counting rates but it becomes a stochastic variable in the thermal case, where the visibility will vary from run to run around an average visibility of $π/4.$ In both cases, the variance of the phase distribution is inversely proportional to the number of atom detections in the regime where this number is large compared to one but small compared with the total number of atoms in the condensates.
Collisional damping of the excitations in a Bose-condensed gas is investigated over the wide range of energies and temperatures. Numerical results for the damping rate are presented and a number of asymptotic and interpolating expressions for it are derived.