Spectroscopic measurement of an atomic wave function

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Date

2003

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

American Physical Society

Abstract

We present a simple spectroscopic method based on Autler-Townes spectroscopy to determine the center-of-mass atomic wave function. The detection of spontaneously emitted photons from a three-level atom, in which two upper levels are driven by a classical standing light, yields information about the position and momentum distribution of the atom [A. M. Herkommer, W. P. Schleich, and M. S. Zubairy, J. Mod. Opt. 44, 2507 (1997)]. In this paper, we show that both the amplitude and phase information of the center-of-mass atomic wave function can be obtained from these distributions after a series of conditional measurements on the atom and the emitted photon.

Description

Journals published by the American Physical Society can be found at http://publish.aps.org/

Keywords

AUTLER-TOWNES SPECTROSCOPY, QUANTUM STATE MEASUREMENT, PHASE-SENSITIVE, AMPLIFICATION, WIGNER FUNCTION, TRAPPED ATOM, CAVITY FIELD, SINGLE-ATOM, TOMOGRAPHY, RECONSTRUCTION, INTERFEROMETER, Optics, Physics

Citation

KT Kapale, S. Qamar and M. Suhail Zubairy. Phys.Rev.A 67 023805 2003. "Copyright (2003) by the American Physical Society."