Thursday, July 21, 2011

Measurement of the internal state of a single atom without energy exchange

  • Jürgen Volz, Roger Gehr, Guilhem Dubois, Jérôme Estève & Jakob Reichel
A measurement necessarily changes the quantum state being measured, a phenomenon known as back-action. Real measurements, however, almost always cause a much stronger back-action than is required by the laws of quantum mechanics. Quantum non-demolition measurements have been devised1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 that keep the additional back-action entirely within observables other than the one being measured. However, this back-action on other observables often imposes its own constraints. In particular, free-space optical detection methods for single atoms and ions (such as the shelving technique7, a sensitive and well-developed method) inevitably require spontaneous scattering, even in the dispersive regime8. This causes irreversible energy exchange (heating), which is a limitation in atom-based quantum information processing, where it obviates straightforward reuse of the qubit. No such energy exchange is required by quantum mechanics9. Here we experimentally demonstrate optical detection of an atomic qubit with significantly less than one spontaneous scattering event. We measure the transmission and reflection of an optical cavity10,11, 12, 13 containing the atom. In addition to the qubit detection itself, we quantitatively measure how much spontaneous scattering has occurred. This allows us to relate the information gained to the amount of spontaneous emission, and we obtain a detection error below 10 per cent while scattering less than 0.2 photons on average. Furthermore, we perform a quantum Zeno-type experiment to quantify the measurement back-action, and find that every incident photon leads to an almost complete state collapse. Together, these results constitute a full experimental characterization of a quantum measurement in the ‘energy exchange-free’ regime below a single spontaneous emission event. Besides its fundamental interest, this approach could significantly simplify proposed neutral-atom quantum computation schemes14, and may enable sensitive detection of molecules and atoms lacking closed transitions.

Optical Precursor of a Single Photon

Shanchao Zhang, J.F. Chen, Chang Liu, M.M.T Loy, G.K.L. Wong, Shengwang Du

We report the direct observation of optical precursors of heralded single photons with step- and square-modulated wave packets passing through cold atoms. Using electromagnetically induced transparency and the slow-light effect, we separate the single-photon precursor, which always travels at the speed of light in vacuum, from its delayed main wave packet. In the two-level superluminal medium, our result suggests that the causality holds for a single photon.