Spin State Dynamics in a Bichromatic Microwave Field: Role of Bright and Dark States in coupling with Reservoir

Abstract

Driving an open spin system by two strong, nearly degenerate fields enables addressing populations of individual spin states, characterization of their interaction with thermal bath, and measurements of their relaxation/decoherence rates. With such addressing we observe nested magnetic resonances having nontrivial dependence on microwave field intensity: while the width of one of the resonances undergoes a strong power broadening, the other one exhibits a peculiar field-induced stabilization. We also observe light-induced narrowing of such composite resonances.The observations are explained by the dynamics of bright and dark superposition states and their interaction with reservoir.