Inés de Vega

Matter-Wave Emission in Optical Lattices: Single Particle and Collective Effects

We introduce a simple setup corresponding to the matter-wave analogue of impurity atoms embedded in a photonic crystal and interacting with the radiation field. Atoms in a given internal level are trapped in an optical lattice, and play the role of the impurities. Atoms in an untrapped level play the role of the radiation field. The interaction is mediated by means of lasers that couple those levels. By tuning the lasers parameters, it is possible to drive the system through different regimes, and observe phenomena such as matter-wave superradiance, non-Markovian atom emission, and the appearance of bound atomic states.

State transfer in highly connected networks and a quantum Babinet principle

Original article can be found at: http://pra.aps.org/ Copyright American Physical Society. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.78.062310

Emission spectra of atoms with non-Markovian interaction: Fluorescence in a photonic crystal

We present a formula to evaluate the spontaneous emission spectra of an atom in contact with a radiation field with non-Markovian effects. This formula is written in terms of a two-time correlation of system observables and the environmental correlation function, and depends on the distance between the emitting atom and the detector. As an example, we use it to analyze the fluorescence spectra of a two level atom placed as an impurity in a photonic crystal. The radiation field within those materials has a gap or discontinuity where electromagnetic modes cannot propagate in the stationary limit. In that situation, the atomic emission occurs in the form of evanescent waves which are detected with less efficiency the farther we place the detector. The methodology presented in this paper may be useful to study the non-Markovian dynamics of any quantum open system in linear interaction with a harmonic oscillator reservoir and within the weak coupling approximation.

Effects of dissipation on an adiabatic quantum search algorithm

According to recent studies (Amin et al 2008 Phys. Rev. Lett. 100 060503), the effect of a thermal bath may improve the performance of a quantum adiabatic search algorithm. In this paper, we compare the effects of such a thermal environment on the algorithm performance with those of a structured environment similar to the one encountered in systems coupled to an electromagnetic field that exists within a photonic crystal. Whereas for all the parameter regimes explored here, the algorithm performance is worsened by contact with a thermal environment, the picture appears to be different when one considers a structured environment. In this case we show that by tuning the environment parameters to certain regimes, the algorithm performance can actually be improved with respect to the closed system case. Additionally, the relevance of considering the dissipation rates as complex quantities is discussed in both cases. More specifically, we find that the imaginary part of the rates cannot be neglected with the usual argument that it simply amounts to an energy shift and in fact influences crucially the system dynamics.

Non-Markovian stochastic Schrödinger description of transport in quantum networks

We analyze several aspects of the transport dynamics in the LH1-RC core of purple bacteria, which consists basically in a ring of antenna molecules that transport the energy into a target molecule, the reaction center, placed in the center of the ring. We show that the periodicity of the system plays an important role to explain the relevance of the initial state in the transport efficiency. This picture is modified, and the transport enhanced for any initial state, when considering that molecules have different energies, and when including their interaction with the environment. We study this last situation by using stochastic Schrödinger equations, both for Markovian and non-Markovian type of interactions.We investigate the role of non-Markovian effects in the efficiency of excitation transfer in a ring-hub arrangement of interacting two-level systems coupled to an environment. The structure is similar to light-harvesting antennae connected to a reaction centre as it is found in natural photosynthetic systems. To this order, we use stochastic Schrodinger equations within the so-called post-Markov approximation, which under certain constraints allows us to describe the system beyond the Markov and the weak-coupling approximations commonly used in the literature.

Timescales in Quantum Open Systems: Dynamics of Time Correlation Functions and Stochastic Quantum Trajectory Methods in Non-Markovian Systems

The dynamics of a system in interaction with another system, the later considered as a reservoir, is studied in many different domains in physics. This approach is useful not only to address fundamental questions like quantum decoherence decoherence and the measurement problem [1] but also to deal with practical and theoretical problems appearing in the emerging fields of nanotechnology nanotechnology [2, 3] and quantum computing quantum computing as well as in systems of ultracold atoms [7]. In many of these cases, the basic approximation is the Markov assumption in which there is a clear separation of the typical timescales associated with the system and the reservoir or environment. This separation of timescales, together with other assumptions like the weak coupling between the system and the reservoir, has been central in the development of several fields, in particular in quantum optics [8, 9]. However, in

Simulating quantum-optical phenomena with optical lattices

Cold atoms trapped in optical lattices have been proved to be very versatile quantum systems in which a large class of many-body condensed-matter Hamiltonians can be simulated [1].

Dynamics of time correlation functions and stochastic quantum trajectories methods in Non‐Markovian systems

Open quantum systems are often encountered in many different physical situations. From quantum optics to statistical mechanics, they are fundamental in the understanding of a great variety of different phenomena. Some of the most common examples are the relaxation to equilibrium, the existence of nonequilibrium stationary states, and the dynamics of atoms in interaction with electromagnetic fields. A crucial step in the analysis is to consider the quantum open system and its environment as the two mutually interacting components of a larger isolated system. Thereafter, the so‐called Markov approximation is often considered, which consists on assuming that the time scales associated to the dynamics of the quantum open system are larger than those of the environment. It is the interplay of the different time scales associated with the system and the environment what determines the validity of the different approximations made. In this paper we will discuss the dynamics of a open quantum system in contact wi...