Laser noise imposed limitations of ensemble quantum metrology
D. Plankensteiner,
J. Schachenmayer,
H. Ritsch,
Claudiu Genes
JOURNAL OF PHYSICS B-ATOMIC MOLECULAR AND OPTICAL PHYSICS
49
(24)
245501
(2016)
| Journal
| PDF
Laser noise is a decisive limiting factor in high precision spectroscopy of narrow lines using atomic ensembles. In an idealized Doppler and differential-light-shift-free magic wavelength lattice configuration, it remains as one distinct principal limitation beyond collective atomic decay. In this work we study the limitations originating from laser phase and amplitude noise in an idealized Ramsey pulse interrogation scheme with uncorrelated atoms. Phase noise leads to a saturation of the frequency sensitivity with increasing atom number while amplitude noise implies a scaling 1/root T with T being the interrogation time. We employ a technique using decoherence-free subspaces first introduced in Dorner (2012 New J. Phys. 14 043011) which can restore the scaling with the square root of the inverse particle number 1/root N. Similar results and improvements are obtained numerically for a Rabi spectroscopy setup.
Direct observation of ultrafast many-body electron dynamics in an ultracold Rydberg gas
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
7
13449
(2016)
| Journal
| PDF
Many-body correlations govern a variety of important quantum phenomena such as the emergence of superconductivity and magnetism. Understanding quantum many-body systems is thus one of the central goals of modern sciences. Here we demonstrate an experimental approach towards this goal by utilizing an ultracold Rydberg gas generated with a broadband picosecond laser pulse. We follow the ultrafast evolution of its electronic coherence by time-domain Ramsey interferometry with attosecond precision. The observed electronic coherence shows an ultrafast oscillation with a period of 1 femtosecond, whose phase shift on the attosecond timescale is consistent with many-body correlations among Rydberg atoms beyond mean-field approximations. This coherent and ultrafast many-body dynamics is actively controlled by tuning the orbital size and population of the Rydberg state, as well as the mean atomic distance. Our approach will offer a versatile platform to observe and manipulate non-equilibrium dynamics of quantum many-body systems on the ultrafast timescale.
Time-domain Ramsey interferometry with interacting Rydberg atoms
We theoretically investigate the dynamics of a gas of strongly interacting Rydberg atoms subject to a time-domain Ramsey interferometry protocol. The many-body dynamics is governed by an Ising-type Hamiltonian with long-range interactions of tunable strength. We analyze and model the contrast degradation and phase accumulation of the Ramsey signal and identify scaling laws for varying interrogation times, ensemble densities, and ensemble dimensionalities.
