Abstract
The quantum Zeno effect (QZE) is not only interesting as a manifestation of the counterintuitive behavior of quantum mechanics, but may also have practical applications. When a spectroscopy laser is applied to target atoms or ions prepared in an initial state, the Rabi flopping of an auxiliary transition sharing one common level can be inhibited. This effect is found to be strongly dependent on the detuning of the spectroscopy laser and offers a sensitive spectroscopy signal which allows for high precision spectroscopy of transitions with a small excitation rate. We demonstrate this method with direct frequency comb spectroscopy using the minute power of a single mode to drive a dipole allowed transition in a single trapped ion. Resolving the individual modes of the frequency comb demonstrates that the simple instantaneous quantum collapse description of the QZE can not be applied here, as these modes need several pulses to build up.
Highlights
The collapse description can be a good approximation, for example to model the quantum Zeno effect (QZE)[2,4,5]
The presence of the corresponding Rabi frequency Ωopt, reveals itself by the emitted photons and by inhibiting or damping the Rabi flopping between the stable ground states
Our intended application of the Zeno spectroscopy is the opposite case where the auxiliary transition is narrower than the spectroscopy transition
Summary
The quantum Zeno effect (QZE) is interesting as a manifestation of the counterintuitive behavior of quantum mechanics, but may have practical applications. When a spectroscopy laser is applied to target atoms or ions prepared in an initial state, the Rabi flopping of an auxiliary transition sharing one common level can be inhibited This effect is found to be strongly dependent on the detuning of the spectroscopy laser and offers a sensitive spectroscopy signal which allows for high precision spectroscopy of transitions with a small excitation rate. The condition is that it occurs on a time-scale which is fast compared to the Schrödinger dynamics of the system and that the system shows a quadratic evolution of its occupation probability In this picture a series of frequent projection measurements continues to collapse the wave function back to the initial state and inhibits the Schrödinger dynamics. The QZE is observed in systems with non-exponential dynamics, such as Rabi flopping[4,11], which is employed in this work
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