Unruh acceleration radiation revisited

Tools Share Abstract When ground-state atoms are accelerated and the field with which they interact is in its normal vacuum state, the atoms detect Unruh radiation. We show that atoms falling into a black hole emit acceleration radiation which, under appropriate initial conditions (Boulware vacuum), has an energy spectrum which looks much like Hawking radiation. This analysis also provides insight into the Einstein principle of equivalence between acceleration and gravity. The Unruh temperature can also be obtained by using the Kubo–Martin–Schwinger (KMS) periodicity of the two-point thermal correlation function, for a system undergoing uniform acceleration; as with much of the material in this paper, this known result is obtained with a twist

Resonant interferometric lithography beyond the diffraction limit

A novel approach for the generation of subwavelength structures in interferometric optical lithography is described. Our scheme relies on the preparation of the system in a position dependent trapping state via phase shifted standing wave patterns. Since this process only comprises resonant atom-field interactions, a multiphoton absorption medium is not required. The contrast of the induced pattern does only depend on the ratios of the applied field strengths such that our method in principle works at very low laser intensities. © 2008 The American Physical Society

Subwavelength optical lattices induced by position-dependent dark states

A method for the generation of subwavelength optical lattices based on multilevel dark states is proposed. The dark state is formed by a suitable combination of standing wave light fields, leading to position-dependent populations of the ground states. An additional field coupling dispersively to one of the ground states translates this position dependence into a subwavelength optical potential. We provide two semiclassical approaches to understand the involved physics, and demonstrate that they lead to identical results in a certain meaningful limit. Then we apply a Monte Carlo simulation technique to study the full quantum dynamics of the subwavelength trapping. Finally, we discuss the relevant time scales for the trapping, optimum conditions, and possible implementations. © 2011 American Physical Society