Giant nonlinearity and entanglement of single photons in photonic bandgap structures

Giantly enhanced cross-phase modulation with suppressed spectral broadening is predicted between optically-induced dark-state polaritons whose propagation is strongly affected by photonic bandgaps of spatially periodic media with multilevel dopants. This mechanism is shown to be capable of fully entangling two single-photon pulses with high fidelity.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur

Nonexponential motional damping of impurity atoms in Bose-Einstein condensates

We demonstrate that the damping of the motion of an impurity atom injected at a supercritical velocity into a Bose-Einstein condensate can exhibit appreciable deviation from the exponential law on time scales of $10^{-5}$ s.Comment: revtex, 4 pages + 2 figures (epsi format

Frequent observations accelerate decay: The anti-Zeno effect

The quantum Zeno effect (QZE) is the striking prediction that the decay of any unstable quantum state can be inhibited by sufficiently frequent observations (measurements). The consensus opinion has upheld the QZE as a general feature of quantum mechanics, which should lead to the inhibition of any decay. The claim of QZE generality hinges on the assumption that successive observations can in principle be made at time intervals too short for the system to change appreciably. However, this assumption and the generality of the QZE have scarcely been investigated thus far. We have addressed these issues by showing that (i) the QZE is principally unattainable in radiative or radioactive decay, because the required measurement rates would cause the system to disintegrate; (ii) decay acceleration by frequent measurements (the anti-Zeno effect -- AZE) is much more ubiquitous than its inhibition. The AZE is shown to be observable as the enhancement of tunneling rates (e.g., for atoms trapped in ramped-up potentials or in current-swept Josephson junctions), fluorescence rates (e.g., for Rydberg atoms perturbed by noisy optical fields) and photon depolarization rates (in randomly modulated Pockels cells).Comment: 8 pages, 13 figures, 1 table; revised version. Submitted to Z. Naturforsch.