Coherent control of nuclear forward scattering

Abstract

The possibility to control the coherent decay of resonant excitations in nuclear forward scattering is investigated. By changing abruptly the direction of the nuclear hyperfine magnetic field, the coherent scattering of photons can be manipulated and even completely suppressed via quantum interference effects between the nuclear transition currents. The efficiency of the coherent decay suppression and the dependence of the scattered light polarization on the specific switching parameters is analyzed in detail. Using a sophisticated magnetic switching sequence involving four rotations of the hyperfine magnetic field, two correlated coherent decay pulses with different polarizations can be generated out of one excitation, providing single-photon entanglement in the keV regime. The verification of the generated entanglement by testing a single-particle version of Bell's inequality in an x-ray optics experimental setup is put forward.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures; revised to match the published version: added one figure, small modifications in tex