0000000000616844

AUTHOR

Stefano Longhi

Roadmap on STIRAP applications

STIRAP (stimulated Raman adiabatic passage) is a powerful laser-based method, usually involving two photons, for efficient and selective transfer of populations between quantum states. A particularly interesting feature is the fact that the coupling between the initial and the final quantum states is via an intermediate state, even though the lifetime of the latter can be much shorter than the interaction time with the laser radiation. Nevertheless, spontaneous emission from the intermediate state is prevented by quantum interference. Maintaining the coherence between the initial and final state throughout the transfer process is crucial. STIRAP was initially developed with applications in …

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Faraday patterns in bose-Einstein condensates.

Temporal periodic modulation of the interatomic s-wave scattering length in Bose-Einstein condensates is shown to excite subharmonic patterns of atom density through a parametric resonance. The dominating wavelength of the spatial structures is shown to be primarily selected by the excitation frequency but also affected by the depth of the spatial modulation via a nonlinear resonance. These phenomena represent macroscopic quantum analogues of the Faraday waves excited in vertically shaken liquids.

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Intermittent decoherence blockade

It has long been recognized that emission of radiation from atoms is not an intrinsic property of individual atoms themselves, but it is largely affected by the characteristics of the photonic environment and by the collective interaction among the atoms. A general belief is that preventing full decay and/or decoherence requires the existence of dark states, i.e., dressed light-atom states that do not decay despite the dissipative environment. Here, we show that, contrary to such a common wisdom, decoherence suppression can be intermittently achieved on a limited time scale, without the need for any dark state, when the atom is coupled to a chiral ring environment, leading to a highly non-e…

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Faraday patterns in low-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates

We show that Faraday patterns can be excited in the weak confinement space of low-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates by temporal modulation of the trap width, or equivalently of the trap frequency Omega_tight, in the tight confinement space. For slow modulation, as compared with Omega_tight, the low-dimensional dynamics of the condensate in the weak confinement space is described by a Gross-Pitaevskii equation with time modulated nonlinearity coefficient. For increasing modulation frequencies a noticeable reduction of the pattern formation threshold is observed close to 2*Omega_tight, which is related to the parametric excitation of the internal breathing mode in the tight confinement sp…

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Topological Protection and Control of Quantum Markovianity

This article belongs to the Special Issue Topological Photonics.

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Intermittent decoherence blockade in a chiral ring environment

It has long been recognized that emission of radiation from atoms is not an intrinsic property of individual atoms themselves, but it is largely affected by the characteristics of the photonic environment and by the collective interaction among the atoms. A general belief is that preventing full decay and/or decoherence requires the existence of dark states, i.e., dressed light-atom states that do not decay despite the dissipative environment. Here, we show that, contrary to such a common wisdom, decoherence suppression can be intermittently achieved on a limited time scale, without the need for any dark state, when the atom is coupled to a chiral ring environment, leading to a highly non-e…

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