Two-Time Intensity Correlations and Multiple Interference Mechanisms in a Driven Cascade Atom

We examine the intensity correlation functions of the two fluorescent fields that are emitted from the top and middle states of a doubly driven three-level atom in the cascade configuration. Novel interference effects are shown. （i） Both of the fluorescent fields have anticorrelations which can exist for long times when the applied fields are on the two-photon resonance and far off one.photon resonances. （ii） Both of the fluorescent fields have strong correlations when the applied fields are far off one- and two-photon resonances. In particular, the extremely strong correlation occurs for the photons emitted from the top state. The above phenomena are traced to the multiple interference mechanisms.     

Entangled Radiation through an Atomic Reservoir Controlled by Coherent Population Trapping

We show that it is possible to generate Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen （EPR） entangled radiation using an atomic reservoir controlled by coherent population trapping. A beam of three-level atoms is initially prepared in nearcoherent population trapping （CPT） state and acts as a long-lived coherence-controlled reservoir. Four-wave mixing leads to amplification of cavity modes resonant with RabJ sidebands of the atomic dipole transitions. The cavity modes evolve Jnto an EPR state, whose degree of entanglement is controlled by the intensities and the frequencies of the driving fields. This scheme uses the long-lived CPT coherence and is robust against spontaneous emission of the atomic beam. At the same time, this scheme is implemented in a one-step procedure, not in a two-step procedure as was required in Phys. Rev. Lett. 98 （2007） 240401.     

Ultrafast control of coherent population transfer with a train of femtosecond pulse pairs

We investigate the ultrafast control of coherent population transfer in a Λ-type three-level system with a train of pump-Stokes femtosecond pulse pairs, where the pulse sequences can be produced either by optical delay line or by pulse shaping with sinusoidal phase modulation. It is shown that when the pump and Stokes pulses in each pair are applied in the counterintuitive order, similar to that in the stimulated Raman adiabatic passage technique, due to temporal quantum interference (besides optical interference in the case of overlapped subpulses), ultrafast control of coherent population transfer can be achieved by scanning the inter-pair time delay or by changing the sinusoidal phase modulation parameters. This method has potential applications in ultrafast control of chemical reactions and quantum information processing.     

Frequency Stability of Atomic Clocks Based on Coherent Population Trapping Resonance in ^85Rb

An atomic clock system based on coherent population trapping （CPT） resonance in 85Rb is reported, while most past works about the CPT clock are in ST Rb. A new modulation method （full-hyperfine-frequency-splitting modulation） is presented to reduce the effect of light shift to improve the frequency stability of the CPT clock in SSRb. The experimental results show that the short-term frequency stability of the CPT clock in SSRb is in the order of 10^-10/s and the long-term frequency stability can achieve 1.5 × 10^-11/80000s, which performs as well as 87 Rb in CPT resonance. This very good frequency stability performance associated with the low-cost and low-power properties of SSRb indicates that an atomic clock based on CPT in SSRb should be a promising candidate for making the chip scale atomic clock.     

Three-Photon Resonant Nondegenerate Six-Wave Mixing in a Dressed Atomic System

We report a three-photon resonant nondegenerate six-wave mixing （NSWM） in a dressed cascade five-level system. It has advantages that phase match condition is not stringent and NSWM signal is enhanced tremendously due to the multiple resonance with the atomic transition frequencies. In the presence of a strong coupling field, the threephoton resonant NSWM spectrum exhibits＂ Autler-Townes splitting. This technique provides a spectroscopic tool for measuring not only the resonant frequency and dephasing rate but also the transition dipole moment between two highly excited atomic states.     

Bichromatic and trichromatic manipulation of spontaneous emission in a three-level Λ system

Bichromatic and trichromatic manipulation of spontaneous emission in a three-level system in Λ configuration is studied on the basis of density matrix equation and quantum regression theorem. The spontaneous emission spectrum is numerically calculated by using harmonic expansion and matrix inversion. Two characteristic features are shown. Firstly, the central resonance peak, which is absent in the case of monochromatic excitation, is recovered for the bichromatic or trichromatic excitation. Secondly, selective elimination of the spectral lines is obtained by varying the amplitudes and phases of the trichromatic components. For the phase dependence, it is the sum of the relative phases of the two sideband components to the central component that plays a crucial role. The spontaneous emission spectrum is drastically modified once the sum phase is changed, but is kept unchanged regardless of the respective phases when the sum phase is fixed.     

Theory of nonlinear optical response of gauge invariant currents to linear and nonlinear couplings

When a gauge field interacts with a quantum condensed matter system, at first order of the gauge field it couples to the current operator of the electrons. Higher orders of the gauge field couple to electrons through other operators such as the stress tensor, etc. On the other hand, when one performs a measurement on a quantum system, not only the current operator, but also stress tensor operator of the electrons, etc. are hidden in the measurement, as they contribute to the gauge invariant current. We formulate a general problem of nonlinear optical response of the gauge invariant currents in presence of nonlinear couplings. We show that the new couplings along with new responses arising from field current have a very simple structure which can be formulated as time ordered multi-particle correlation functions. We also obtain their Lehman representation and thereby show that one need not use non-equilibrium formulations to deal with them. These new correlation functions suggest that in nonlinear optical response many new processes are possible. The experimental detection of the new terms in the current operator, and application corresponding multi-photon processes needs further theoretical and experimental investigations.     

Quantum interference of multimode two-photon pairs with a Michelson interferometer

We perform the second-order quantum interference experiment with the multimode photon pairs produced via an optical parametric oscillator far below threshold in a Michelson interferometer, measure the second-order correlation function in different cases. We find when the interferometer is highly unbalanced, the shape of the second-order correlation function is clearly dependent on the path length difference between two interfering beams. On the contrary, when the interferometer is nearly balanced, beside its height, the shape of the second-order correlation function is independent on the small path length difference. The second-order correlation function shows a multipeaked structure in both cases. All experimental results agree very well with the theoretical predictions.     

Coherent Phase Control of Ultrafast Polarization Beats in Reverse V-Type Three-Level System

We investigate the third-order nonlinear absorption and dispersion of femto- and atto-second polarization beats between the one-photon degenerate four-wave mixing process and the two-photon nondegenerate four-wave mixing process in the pure homogeneously-broadened reverse V-three-level using twin noisy fields. The third-order nonlinear response can be controlled and modified by the colour-locked correlation of twin noisy fields. Most importantly, the coherent phase control in optical heterodyne detection for studying the phase dispersion of the third-order susceptibility is demonstrated. The radiation-matter detuning oscillation is also considered in the freauencv domain.     

Quantum coherence effects in a four-level diamond-shape atomic system

A symmetric four-level closed-loop ? type (the diamond-shape) atomic system driven by four coherent optical fields is investigated. The system shows rich quantum interference and coherence features. When symmetry of the system is broken, interesting phenomena such as single and double-dark resonances appear. As a result, the controllable double electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) effect is generated, which will facilitate the implementation of quantum phase gate (QPG) operation.     

Experimental Study on Practical Quantum Key Distribution Scheme with Time-Multiplexed Technique

We present a scheme that is capable of detecting photon numbers during the quantum key distribution (QKD) based on an improved differential phase shift (DPS) system without Trojan horse attack. A time-multiplexed detector (TMD) is set in for the photon-number resolution. Two fibre loops are used for detecting photon numbers as well as distributing keys. The long-term stabilization is guaranteed by two Faraday mirrors (FM) at Bob's site to automatically compensate for polarization defect. Our experimental study (90km QKD is completed) indicates that such a system is stable and secure which nearly reaches the performance of a single photon scheme.     

Tunable twin beams generated by a type-I LNB OPO

We present a novel scheme to separate spatially twin beams generated by a type-I lithium niobate (LNB) optical parametric oscillator near frequency degeneracy. The system is based on a holographic diffraction grating acting as a beam splitter in a balanced detector. The fast and easy temperature tuning of LNB index of refraction allows an easy control of the twin-beam wavelength distance in a range of the order of ∼100 nm. We report correlation spectra measured for different twin-beam wavelength separations (15–60 nm) with a maximum noise reduction of 3.2 dB at 3.5 MHz. The described system exhibited a pump resonance stability longer than 6 h with infrared output power fluctuations within 4% around an average value of ≃2 mW in each beam. The measured oscillation threshold pump power was lower than 31 mW. Received: 7 June 2001 / Revised version: 17 July 2001 / Published online: 10 October 2001     

Non-Adiabatic Geometric Phase in a Dispersive Interaction System

We investigate the geometric phase and dynamic phase of a two-level fermionic system with dispersive interaction, driven by a quantized bosonic field which is simultaneously subjected to parametric amplification. It is found that the geometric phase is induced by a counterpart of the Stark shift. This effect is due to distinct shifts in the field frequency induced by interaction between different states （｜e〉 and ｜g〉 ） and cavity field, and a simple geometric interpretation of this phenomenon is given, which is helpful to understand the natural origin of the geometric phase.     

Evolution of population in an equispaced three-level ladder-type atomic system

Transient response of nearly equispaced three-level ladder-type atomic system with a broad-band squeezed vacuum (SV) is investigated. We focus our attention in the interplay between the quantum interference and the squeezed field on the population distribution. It is shown that an atomic population inversion can be attained on one of the optical transitions due to the SV. Additionally, we show, with the proper value of the relative phase, the SV can also lead to unexpected population inversion on the transition between two different levels.     

Upper level and phase controlling group velocity in V-type system

With the external field coupling the two upper levels, we investigate the light pulse propagation properties with weak probe field in a V-type system. Due to the external upper level (UL) coupling field, the dispersion of the system has been influenced by the relative phase. It is shown that the UL field and the relative phase can be regarded as switches to manipulate light propagation between subluminal and superluminal.     

Study of squeezing in spin clusters

The conditions under which spin squeezing occurs in an asymmetric chain of spins are discussed. The time evolution of the system is calculated for different initial conditions. The effects of the use of spin coherent states to model the initial condition are analyzed.     

Ghost diffraction, lensless system and 2-f system

We investigate two imaging schemes, lensless system and 2-f system which are used to implement ghost diffraction. It is shown that the two schemes have similar intensity fluctuation correlation functions which both realize the function of the Fourier-transform imaging, and the diffraction pattern is in agreement with that in the classical wave optics. The difference of the imaging visibility in the two systems is also discussed.     

Colored noise in a two-dimensional nonlinear system

A two-dimensional decoupling theory is developed when colored noise is included in a nonlinear dynamical system. By a functional analysis, the colored noise is transformed to an effective noise that includes the noise correlation time, the mean dynamical variable, and the original noise strength. When the two-dimensional decoupling theory is applied to single-mode and two-mode dye laser systems, the mean, variance, and effective eigenvalue of laser intensity are calculated. Excellent agreement between theoretical analysis, numerical simulations, and experimental measurements are obtained. It is seen that the increase of noise correlation time can reduce the fluctuations in the laser system. It is also shown that there is relatively large fluctuation in the phase when the laser undergoes from thermal light to coherent light when the theory is applied to a single mode dye laser. Received 20 August 2001 and Received in final form 4 December 2001     

Autler-Townes triplet spectroscopy

We study the effects of quantum interference in the spontaneous emission spectrum of a four-level driven atomic system. We use three strong laser fields to drive the atom and a weak laser field to prepare the initial state of the atom. The atomic system exhibits Autler-Townes triplet in the spectrum. The single Lorentzian peak splits into triplet and their widths are controlled by the relative strengths of the laser fields.     

Coherent control of optical precursors in a warm atomic system with Doppler effects

We theoretically study coherent control of optical precursors via active Raman gain (ARG) in an N-type warm atomic system. When a step pulse passes through an ARG window, main fields are advanced due to fast-light effect and constructively interference with optical precursors, then an enhanced transient pulse appears. As the control field decreases, the interference effect is strengthened, and the transient pulse builds up and becomes narrow. Moreover, its peak intensity is inverse to the system temperature and also determined by the input-pulse form. The scheme may be useful in designing optical devices in optical communication.