Lenses as an Atom-Photon Interface: A Semiclassical Model

Strong interaction between the light field and an atom is often achieved with cavities. Recent experiments have used a different configuration: a propagating light field is strongly focused using a system of lenses, the atom being supposed to sit at the focal position. In reality, this last condition holds only up to some approximation; in particular, at any finite temperature, the atom position fluctuates. We present a formalism that describes the focalized field and the atom sitting at an arbitrary position. As a first application, we show that thermal fluctuations do account for the extinction data reported in M. K. Tey et al., Nature Physics 4, 924 (2008)

Superluminal hidden communication as the underlying mechanism for quantum correlations: constraining models

Since Bell's theorem, it is known that quantum correlations cannot be described by local variables (LV) alone: if one does not want to abandon classical mechanisms for correlations, a superluminal form of communication among the particles must be postulated. A natural question is whether such a postulate would imply the possibility of superluminal signaling. Here we show that the assumption of finite-speed superluminal communication indeed leads to signaling when no LV are present, and more generally when only LV derivable from quantum statistics are allowed. When the most general LV are allowed, we prove in a specific case that the model can be made again consistent with relativity, but the question remains open in general.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. For the Proceedings of the Conference DICE 2004 (Piombino, 1-4 Sept. 2004

Solving the scattering of N photons on a two-level atom without computation

We propose a novel approach for solving the scattering of light onto a two-level atom coupled to a one-dimensional waveguide. We first express the physical quantity of interest in terms of Feynman diagrams and treat the atom as a non-saturable linear beamsplitter. By using the atomic response to our advantage, a relevant substitution is then made that captures the nonlinearity of the atom, and the final result is obtained in terms of simple integrals over the initial incoming wavepackets. The procedure is not limited to post-scattering quantities and allows for instance to derive the atomic excitation during the scattering event.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figure

More randomness from noisy sources

Bell experiments can be used to generate private random numbers. An ideal Bell experiment would involve measuring a state of two maximally entangled qubits, but in practice any state produced is subject to noise. Here we consider how the techniques presented in arXiv:1309.3894 and arXiv:1309.3930, i.e. using an optimized Bell inequality, and taking advantage of the fact that the device provider is not our adversary, can be used to improve the rate of randomness generation in Bell-like tests performed on singlet states subject to either white or dephasing noise.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures; to appear in Proceedings of TQC 2014; published versio