Scheme for Concentration of Unknown Greeberger-Horne-Zeilinger Entangled States via Cavity Decay

We present a scheme for entanglement concentration of an unknown atomic non-maximally entangled GHZ state via cavity decay. In the scheme, the atom trapped in a cavity is manipulated by laser field, so the maximally entangled GHZ state can be obtained by performing certain operation, which can be realized by illuminating the atom in a cavity. Our method is robust against spontaneous atomic decay.     

Spontaneous Emission of an Inertial Multi-Level Atom in a Spacetime with a Reflecting Plane Boundary

We calculate the contributions of the vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction to the rate of change of the mean atomic energy for a multi-level hydrogen atom in the multipolar coupling scheme in a spacetime with a reflecting boundary. Our results show that, due to the presence of the boundary, the polarizations of the atom in the parallel direction and in the normal direction are weighted differently in terms of their contributions to the spontaneous emission rate, which is an oscillating function of the atom distance from the boundary. The possible experimental implications of our result are briefly discussed.     

Spontaneous emission from a Λ three-level atom in an anisotropic photonic crystal

The spontaneous emission properties of a Λ type atom embedded in a three-dimensional anisotropic photonic crystal are investigated. Only one of the two atomic transition frequencies is considered near the photonic band edge. The atomic decay properties such as the time-evolution of the excited-state population and the instant and effective decay rates are studied in detail. It is found that there exists a wide region for the difference of the transition frequency from the band edge, in which only diffusion fields with frequencies being near or far away from the band edge appear in the emitted field. The spontaneous emitted field and its spectrum depend not only on the detuning of the transition frequency from the band edge, but also on the distance from the atom. Therefore, during the propagating process, the propagating field is partially transferred into the diffusion field.     

Nonperturbative analysis of spontaneous emission in one dimensional special photonic crystals

The retarded spontaneous emission (SpE) process of a two-level atom embedded in realistic one dimensional photonic crystals (1DPC) is investigated with the quantum nonperturbative theory. The atomic transient decay is divided into two processes: the first comes from the natural decay to free space and the second is induced by the reflected field emitted from the atom itself. Due to the multi-reflection in the multi-layer structure, the correct delay time of the induced decay process is hard to calculate in the usual ways. However with the special but practical 1DPC provided, we give the analytic result of the atomic dynamic decay in 1DPC. Our result gives a clear picture to show the process which the atom feels the surrounding.     

The influence on atomic decay by inserting a LHM layer into an ordinary one dimensional multi-layer structure

Inserting left-handed material (LHM) layers into a one dimensional structure can influence the spontaneous emission (SpE) of a two-level atom. This has been investigated, starting from the simplest case of a three-layer system, where we find the reflected field (atom can “see”) passing through LHM layer is stronger than that through the corresponding normal layer. Indeed the induced decay is more strongly influenced by reflected field passing through LHM layer. Based on this and after further analysis of reflectivity, we find that, a quarter photonic crystal (PC) composed of alternately LHM and RHM can inhibit the atomic spontaneous emission more intensely compared to an ordinary PC.     

A single atom-based generation of Bell states of two cavities

A new conditional scheme for generating Bell states of two spatially separated high-Q cavities is reported. Our method is based on the passage of one atom only through the two cavities. A distinctive feature of our treatment is that it incorporates from the very beginning the unavoidable presence of fluctuations in the atom-cavity interaction times. The possibility of successfully implementing our proposal against cavity losses and atomic spontaneous decay is carefully discussed. Received 31 July 2001 and Received in final form 9 October 2001     

Six-Fold Degenerate Dark States in a Four-Level Atomic System

With all driving fields on Raman resonance, a tripod-type atomic system quickly evolves into a dark state decoupled from the lossy excited level. The dark state depends strongly on field Rabi frequencies, spontaneous decay rates, and the initial atomic population in a complicated way. Analytical results reveal that it is a sixfold degenerate dark state with its three components superposed both coherently and incoherently due to population redistribution from spontaneous emission.     

Possible Realization of Cluster States and Quantum Information Transfer in Cavity QED via Raman Transition

We present a scheme to generate cluster states with many scheme, no transfer of quantum information between the atoms in cavity QED via Raman transition. In this atoms and cavities is required, the cavity fields are only virtually excited and thus the cavity decay is suppressed during the generation of cluster states. The atoms are always populated in the two ground states. Therefore, the scheme is insensitive to the atomic spontaneous emission and cavity decay. We also show how to transfer quantum information from one atom to another.     

Controllable Kerr Nonlinearity with Perfect Transparency in the Existence of Spontaneously Generated Coherence

We investigate the Kerr nonlinearity of a V-type three-level atomic system where the upper two states decay outside to another state and hence spontaneous generated coherence may exist. It is shown that dark state and hence perfect transparency present under certain conditions. Meanwhile, the Kerr nonlinearity can be controlled by manipulation of the decay rates and the splitting of the two excited states. Therefore, enhanced Kerr nonlinearity without absorption can be obtained under proper parameters.     

Entanglement and Its Dynamics with Atomic Spontaneous Decay

The atomic decay for a two-level atom interacting with a single mode of electromagnetic tield is considered. For a chosen initial state, the exact solution of the master equation is found. Therefore, effect of the atomic damping on entanglement （purity loss）, degree of entanglement by the negativity, mutual information and atomic coherence through the master equation are studied.     

Coherence induced by incoherent pumping field and decay process in three-level Λ type atomic system

Following the method proposed by Kozlov et al. [Victor V. Kozlov, Yuri Rostovtsev, Marlan O. Scully, Phys. Rev. A 74 (2006) 063829], we have investigated the atomic coherence induced by incoherent pump and vacuum spontaneous decay process in a Λ type three-level atomic system. The system can be in a coherent population trapping state and multi-steady states in different conditions. Interestingly, two kinds of new states are derived from the system with different pumping rate and decaying rate. They are the “robust” steady state and the “weak” steady state. Under the action of pump field and vacuum reservoir, these two kinds of states exhibit stable or unstable characteristics, respectively. Moreover, by investigating the difference between these states, we reveal the mechanism of coherence excitation and level-population transition. The special feature of the Λ atomic system will promise fruitful applications in quantum optics.     

Disentanglement of atom-photon via quantum interference in driven three-level atoms

In this paper, the effect of quantum interference on the entanglement of a driven V-type three-level atom and its spontaneous emission field was investigated by using the quantum entropy. The results indicate that, in the absence of quantum interference the atom and its spontaneous emission field are always entangled at the steady-state. But, in the presence of full quantum interference their steady-state entanglement depends on the atomic parameters. Specifically, with appropriate atomic parameters they can be entangled or disentangled at the steady-state. We realized that the steady-state entanglement is due to completely destructive nature of quantum interference. On the contrary, the steady-state disentanglement is due to instructive nature of quantum interference.     

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.     

Spontaneous emission of an excited two-level atom without both rotating-wave and Markovian approximation

The spontaneous emission of an excited atom is analyzed by quantum stochastic trajectory approach without both rotating-wave approximation and Markovian approximation. The atom finite size effect is also taken into account. We show by an example that the correction due to the counter-rotating wave term is rather small, even for the largest atomic number of real nuclei. Received 10 July 2002 / Received in final form 12 November 2002 Published online 4 February 2003     

Non-Markovian thermalisation of a two-level atom

We consider thermalisation and spontaneous decay of a two-level atom beyond the Markovian approximation. While the standard elimination of the continuum of radiation modes results in exponential decay represented by a Lindblad equation of motion, we use a simple toy model that takes into account the finite relaxation rate of the environment and present an exact non-Markovian master equation of the Nakajima-Zwanzig form. Because the exact derivation of non-Markovian equations has proved very difficult for all more realistic (and hence much more complicated) models, we analyze the master equation obtained and also discuss difficulties that are likely to arise with non-Markovian evolution operators.     

Preparation of Cluster States of Atomic Qubits in Cavity QED

We propose an optical scheme to generate cluster states of atomic qubits, with each trapped in separate optical cavity, via atom-cavity-laser interaction. The quantum information of each qubit is encoded on the degenerate ground states of the atom, hence the entanglement between them is relatively stable against spontaneous emission. A single-photon source and two classical fields are employed in the present scheme. By controlling the sequence and time of atom-cavity-laser interaction, we show that the atomic cluster states can be produced deterministically.     

Tripartite Entanglement via Microwave Driven Atomic Coherence

We propose a new scheme to achieve the tripartite entanglement based on the standard criteria [Phys. Rev. A 67（2003） 052315] in a inverse-tripod atomic system. In our scheme, the atomic coherence is introduced by two microwave fields which drive the upper three levels of atom. By numerically simulating the dynamics of system, we investigate the generation and evolution of entanglement in the presence of atom and cavity decay. As a result, the present research provides an efficient approach to achieve fully tripartite entanglement with different frequencies and initial states for each entangled mode, which may have impact on the progress of multicolored multi-notes quantum information networks.     

Abnormal properties of spontaneous emission in a Kerr nonlinear blackbody

We reexamine the atomic spontaneous decay in a Kerr nonlinear blackbody by contrast with our previous paper [M. Yin, Z. Cheng, Phys. Rev. A 78 (2008) 063829]. In the process of deriving the atomic decay rate, we use the temperature-dependent velocity of photons to take the full nonlinearity of a KNB into account. It is found that below a transition temperature T_c, the atomic spontaneous emission in a KNB might be enhanced or inhibited compared with that in a normal blackbody whose interior is filled with a nonabsorbing linear medium. The physical origin of the enhancement and inhibition of spontaneous emission is also discussed.     

Spontaneous Emission of an Atom in a Spacetime with Two Parallel Reflecting Boundaries

We consider an inertial two-level atom in interaction with a real massless scalar quantum field in a spacetime between two parallel reflecting plane boundaries, and calculate the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction to the rate of change of the atomic energy. Our results show that there exists a regime of the separation L between the two boundaries such that the excited atom＇s spontaneous emission is impossible. There also exist certain values of the atom＇s position such that the corrections due to the presence of boundaries balance each other, so that the atom＇s spontaneous emission rate is the same as if there were no boundaries at all.     

Entanglement in Weisskopf-Wigner theory of atomic decay in free space

In this paper, we use the Weisskopf-Wigner theory to study the entanglement in the state of the free-space radiation field produced from vacuum due to atomic decay. We show how bipartite entanglement is shared between different partitions of the radiation modes. We investigate the role played by the size of the partitions and their detuning with the decaying atom. The dynamics of the atom-field entanglement during the atomic decay is also briefly discussed. From this dynamics, we assert that such entanglement is the physical quantity that fix the statistical atomic decay time.