Survival resonances in an atom-optics system driven by temporally and spatially periodic dissipation

Abstract

We investigate laser-cooled atoms periodically driven by pulsed standing waves of light tuned close to an open atomic transition. This nonunitary system displays survival resonances for certain driving frequencies. The survival resonances emerge as a result of the matter-wave Talbot-Lau effect, similar to the Talbot effect causing quantum resonances in the atom optics δ-kicked rotor. Since the Talbot-Lau effect occurs for incoherent waves, the survival resonances can be observed using thermal atoms. A microlensing effect can enhance the height and incisiveness of the resonances. This may find applications in precision measurements.

Enhancing survival resonances with engineered dissipation

“…Recall that Refs. [16,17] outline how to calculate the survival probabilities in the absence of recycling s N needed for evaluation of Eq. (3).…”

“…(1) thereby cannot contribute to the survival resonances. On the other hand, the standing wave diffracts a proportion of the atoms with a suitable initial quasimomentum into the long-surviving modes, where they effectively go dark to the standing-wave light and give rise to the resonant survival [16].…”

“…1(b), survive N consecutive standingwave pulses s N . References [16,17] provide the method for calculating s N . The probability that atoms, in the reservoir state right after a standing-wave pulse, are recycled before the next is γ , where γ is a function of the recycle light pulse duration τ R .…”

“…The superposition states are ideally suited for precision measurements, and we observe that they improve the signal-to-noise ratio of an atomic interferometer by a factor of more than 2. The designed dissipation arises from combining survival resonances in the atom-optics δ-killed rotor [16,17] with recycling of lost atoms through laser-cooling [18,19].…”

Impact of Lattice Vibrations on the Dynamics of a Spinor Atom-Optics Kicked Rotor

“…Its success has translated into many different fields of research, from Anderson and dynamical localisation [3,[5][6][7][8] to ballistic quantum resonant motion [9][10][11]. Many AOKR experiments tested the effect of artificial or natural noise and decoherence [4,5,[12][13][14][15], and the stability with respect to parameter changes [16][17][18]. Currently, platforms based on Bose-Einstein condensates offer unprecedented control over the initial conditions in phase space [19][20][21], which are used to produce directed motion [21][22][23][24][25][26] and to study dynamical tunnelling [27,28], for instance.…”