arXiv subjects

Pierre Meystre

Publications and source records attributed to Pierre Meystre.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2009

Measuring the quantum state of a nanomechanical oscillator

We propose a scheme to measure the quantum state of a nanomechanical oscillator cooled near its ground state of vibrational motion. This is an extension of the nonlinear atomic homodyning technique scheme first developed to measure the intracavity field in a micromaser. It involves the use of a detector-atom that is simultaneously coupled to the cantilever via a magnetic interaction and to (classical) optical fields via a Raman transition. We show that the probability for the atom to be found in the excited state is a direct measure of the Wigner characteristic function of the nanomechanical oscillator. We also investigate the backaction effect of this destructive measurement on the state of the cantilever.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2007

Quantum dynamics of Raman-coupled Bose-Einstein condensates using Laguerre-Gaussian beams

We investigate the quantum dynamics of Raman-coupled Bose-Einstein condensates driven by laser beams that carry orbital angular momentum. By adiabatically eliminating the excited atomic state we obtain an effective two-state Hamiltonian for the coupled condensates, and quantization of the matter-wave fields results in collapse and revivals in the quantum dynamics. We show that the revival period depends on whether the initial nonrotating condensate displays broken U(1) symmetry or not, and that the difference may be detected by measuring the motion of quantized vortices that are nested in the density profile of the Raman-coupled condensates. We further study the steady-state population transfer using a linear sweep of the two-photon detuning, by which the atomic population is coherently transferred from an initial nonrotating state to the final vortex state.

cond-mat.other↗

arXiv2006

Coherent Acceleration of Material Wavepackets

We study the quantum dynamics of a material wavepacket bouncing off a modulated atomic mirror in the presence of a gravitational field. We find the occurrence of coherent accelerated dynamics for atoms. The acceleration takes place for certain initial phase space data and within specific windows of modulation strengths. The realization of the proposed acceleration scheme is within the range of present day experimental possibilities.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2006

Dissociation dynamics of resonantly coupled bose-fermi mixtures in an optical lattice

We consider the photodissociation of ground-state bosonic molecules trapped in an optical lattice potential into two-component fermionic atoms. The system is assumed to be described by a one-band resonantly-coupled Bose-Fermi Hubbard model. We show that in the strong fermion-fermion interaction limit the dissociation dynamics is governed by a spin-boson lattice Hamiltonian. In the framework of a mean-field analysis based on the Gutzwiller ansatz, we then examine the crossover of the dissociation from a regime of independent single-site dynamics to a regime of cooperative dynamics as the molecular tunneling increases. We also identify two types of self-trapping transitions, a {\it coherent} and an {\it incoherent} one, depending on the ratio of the repulsive molecule-molecule interaction strength to molecular tunneling. Finally, we show that in the limits of weak and strong intersite tunneling the mean-field solutions agree well with the results from the quantum optical Jaynes-Cummings and Tavis-Cummings models, respectively.

cond-mat.other↗

arXiv2006

Coherent acceleration of material wavepackets in modulated optical fields

We study the quantum dynamics of a material wavepacket bouncing off a modulated atomic mirror in the presence of a gravitational field. We find the occurrence of coherent accelerated dynamics for atoms beyond the familiar regime of dynamical localization. The acceleration takes place for certain initial phase space data and within specific windows of modulation strengths. The realization of the proposed acceleration scheme is within the range of present day experimental possibilities.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2005

Anderson Lattice Description of Photoassociation in an Optical Lattice

We consider atomic mixtures of bosons and two-component fermions in an optical lattice potential. We show that if the bosons are in a Mott-insulator state with precisely one atom per lattice, the photoassociation of bosonic and fermionic atoms into heteronuclear fermionic molecules is described by the Anderson Lattice Model. We determine the ground state properties of an inhomogeneous version of that model in the strong atom-molecule coupling regime, including an additional harmonic trap potential. Various spatial structures arise from the interplay between the atom-molecule correlations and the confining potential. Perturbation theory with respect to the tunneling coupling between fermionic atoms shows that anti-ferromagnetic correlations develop around a spin-singlet core of fermionic atoms and molecules.

cond-mat.other↗

arXiv2004

Boson-Fermion coherence in a spherically symmetric harmonic trap

We consider the photoassociation of a low-density gas of quantum-degenerate trapped fermionic atoms into bosonic molecules in a spherically symmetric harmonic potential. For a dilute system and the photoassociation coupling energy small compared to the level separation of the trap, only those fermions in the single shell with Fermi energy are coupled to the bosonic molecular field. Introducing a collective pseudo-spin operator formalism we show that this system can then be mapped onto the Tavis-Cummings Hamiltonian of quantum optics, with an additional pairing interaction. By exact diagonalization of the Hamiltonian, we examine the ground state and low excitations of the Bose-Fermi system, and study the dynamics of the coherent coupling between atoms and molecules. In a semiclassical description of the system, the pairing interaction between fermions is shown to result in a self-trapping transition in the photoassociation, with a sudden suppression of the coherent oscillations between atoms and molecules. We also show that the full quantum dynamics of the system is dominated by quantum fluctuations in the vicinity of the self-trapping solution.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2004

A Molecular Matter-Wave Amplifier

We describe a matter-wave amplifier for vibrational ground state molecules, which uses a Feshbach resonance to first form quasi-bound molecules starting from an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate. The quasi-bound molecules are then driven into their stable vibrational ground state via a two-photon Raman transition inside an optical cavity. The transition from the quasi-bound state to the electronically excited state is driven by a classical field. Amplification of ground state molecules is then achieved by using a strongly damped cavity mode for the transition from the electronically excited molecules to the molecular ground state.

cond-mat.other↗

arXiv2003

Inhibiting Three-Body Recombination in Atomic Bose-Einstein Condensates

We discuss the possibility of inhibiting three-body recombination in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates via the application of resonant $2π$ laser pulses. These pulses result in the periodic change in the phase of the molecular state by $π$, which leads to destructive interference between the decay amplitudes following successive pulses. We show that the decay rate can be reduced by several orders of magnitude under realistic conditions.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2003

A Molecular Micromaser

We show that photoassociation of fermionic atoms into bosonic molecules inside an optical lattice can be described using a Jaynes-Cummings Hamiltonian with a nonlinear detuning. Using this equivalence to the Jaynes-Cummings dynamics, we show how one can construct a micromaser for the molecular field in each lattice site.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2003

Wave mixing of optical pulses and Bose-Einstein condensates

We investigate theoretically the four-wave mixing of optical and matter waves resulting from the scattering of a short light pulse off an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate, as recently demonstrated by D. Schneble {\em et al.} [ Science {\bf 300}, 475 (2003)]. We show that atomic ``pair production'' from the condensate results in the generation of both forward- and backward-propagating matter waves. These waves are characterized by different phase-matching conditions, resulting in different angular distributions and temporal evolutions.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2003

Phase Conjugation of a Quantum-Degenerate Atomic Fermi Beam

We discuss the possibility of phase-conjugation of an atomic Fermi field via nonlinear wave mixing in an ultracold gas. It is shown that for a beam of fermions incident on an atomic phase-conjugate mirror, a time reversed backward propagating fermionic beam is generated similar to the case in nonlinear optics. By adopting an operational definition of the phase, we show that it is possible to infer the presence of the phase-conjugate field by the loss of the interference pattern in an atomic interferometer.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2003

A fundamental limit for integrated atom optics with Bose-Einstein condensates

The dynamical response of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate manipulated by an integrated atom optics device such as a microtrap or a microfabricated waveguide is studied. We show that when the miniaturization of the device enforces a sufficiently high condensate density, three-body interactions lead to a spatial modulational instability that results in a fundamental limit on the coherent manipulation of Bose-Einstein condensates.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2002

Noise limits in matter-wave interferometry using degenerate quantum gases

We analyze the phase resolution limit of a Mach-Zehnder atom interferometer whose input consists of degenerate quantum gases of either bosons or fermions. For degenerate gases, the number of atoms within one de Broglie wavelength is larger than unity, so that atom-atom interactions and quantum statistics are no longer negligible. We show that for equal atom numbers, the phase resolution achievable with fermions is noticeably better than for interacting bosons.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2002

Feshbach-resonance-induced atomic filamentation and quantum pair correlation in atom-laser-beam propagation

We study the propagation of an atom laser beam through a spatial region with a magnetic field tuned to a Feshbach resonance. Tuning the magnetic field below the resonance produces an effective focusing Kerr medium that causes a modulational instability of the atomic beam. Under appropriate circumstances, this results in beam breakup and filamentation seeded by quasi-particle fluctuations, and in the generation of correlated atomic pairs.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2002

Two-fermion bound state in a Bose-Einstein condensate

A nonlinear Schrödinger equation is derived for the dynamics of a beam of ultracold fermionic atoms traversing a Bose-Einstein condensate. The condensate phonon modes are shown to provide a nonlinear medium for the fermionic atoms. A two-fermion bound state is predicted to arise, and the signature of the bound state in a nonlinear atom optics experiment is discussed.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2002

Magnetism in a lattice of spinor Bose condensates

We study the ground state magnetic properties of ferromagnetic spinor Bose-Einstein condensates confined in a deep optical lattices. In the Mott insulator regime, the ``mini-condensates'' at each lattice site behave as mesoscopic spin magnets that can interact with neighboring sites through both the static magnetic dipolar interaction and the light-induced dipolar interaction. We show that such an array of spin magnets can undergo a ferromagnetic or anti-ferromagnetic phase transition under the magnetic dipolar interaction depending on the dimension of the confining optical lattice. The ground-state spin configurations and related magnetic properties are investigated in detail.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2002

Macroscopic spin tunneling and quantum critical behavior of a condensate in double-well potential

In a previous work (PRL 87, 140405), we have shown that a spinor condensate confined in a periodic or double-well potential exhibits ferromagnetic behavior due to the magnetic dipole-dipole interactions between different wells, and in the absence of external magnetic field, the ground state has a two-fold degeneracy. In this work, we demonstrate the possibility of observing macroscopic quantum spin tunneling between these two degenerate states and show how the tunneling rate critically depends on the strength of the transverse field.

cond-mat.soft↗