Atomic Focusing by Quantum Fields: Entanglement Properties

The coherent manipulation of the atomic matter waves is of great interest both in science and technology. In order to study how an atom optic device alters the coherence of an atomic beam, we consider the quantum lens proposed by Averbukh et al [1] to show the discrete nature of the electromagnetic field. We extend the analysis of this quantum lens to the study of another essentially quantum property present in the focusing process, i.e., the atom-field entanglement, and show how the initial atomic coherence and purity are affected by the entanglement. The dynamics of this process is obtained in closed form. We calculate the beam quality factor and the trace of the square of the reduced density matrix as a function of the average photon number in order to analyze the coherence and purity of the atomic beam during the focusing process.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Exotic looped trajectories via quantum marking

We provide an analytical and theoretical study of exotic looped trajectories (ELTs) in a double-slit interferometer with quantum marking. We use an excited Rydberg-like atom and which-way detectors such as superconducting cavities, just as in the Scully-Englert-Walther interferometer. We indicate appropriate conditions on the atomic beam or superconducting cavities so that we determine an interference pattern and fringe visibility exclusive from the ELTs. We quantitatively describe our results for Rubidium atoms and propose this framework as an alternative scheme to the double-slit experiment modified to interfere only these exotic trajectories.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

Entanglement and scattering in quantum electrodynamics: S-matrix information from an entangled spectator particle

We consider a general quantum field relativistic scattering involving two half spin fermions, $A$ and $B$, which are initially entangled with another fermion $C$ that does not participate in the scattering dynamics. We construct general expressions for the reduced spin matrices for the out-state considering a general tripartite spin-entangled state. In particular we study an inelastic QED process at tree-level, namely $e^-e^+\rightarrow \mu^- \mu^+$ and a half spin fermion $C$ as an spectator particle which can be entangled to the $AB$ system in the following ways: W state, GHZ state, $|\text{A}^\alpha \rangle \otimes |\Psi^{\pm} \rangle_{\text{BC}}$ and $|\text{A}^\alpha \rangle \otimes |\Phi^{\pm} \rangle_{\text{BC}}$, where $\{|\Psi^{\pm} \rangle,|\Phi^{\pm} \rangle\}$ are the Bell basis states and $|\text{A}^\alpha \rangle$ is a spin superposition state of system $A$. We calculate the von-Neumann entropy variation before and after the scattering for the particle $C$ and show that spin measurements in $C$ contain numerical information about the total cross section of the process. We compare the initial states W and GHZ as well as study the role played by the parameter $\alpha$ in the evaluation of the entropy variations and the cross section encoded in the spectator particle.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figure