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Entangled Photons from Quantum Dots
JQI Researchers Create Entangled Photons from Quantum Dots
News from the Public Affairs Office at the National Institute of Standards and Technology
To exploit the quantum world to the fullest, a key commodity is entanglement—the spooky, distance-defying link that can form between objects such as atoms even when they are completely shielded from one another.
Quantum dots are nanometer-scale bits of semiconductor—so small that electrical charges in the dots are confined in all directions. They can be made to emit photons—fluoresce—by pumping in energy to create so-called “excitons,” a pairing of an electron and the electron-less "hole." When the electron falls back into the hole, the excess energy is released as a photon. Quantum dots can also host the even more exotic “biexciton,” composed of two electrons and two holes.
When a short-lived biexciton decomposes, it undergoes two drops in energy, analogous to descending two rungs of a ladder, and a photon is released at each stage. Physicists have long been trying to use this process to get pairs of entangled photons from quantum dots. What makes entanglement possible is that the biexciton could decay along one of two possible pathways, analogous to two different ladders that both get it to the ground. During its descent it releases a pair of photons with a different kind of polarization (electric field direction) depending on the ladder it descends. If the energy drop at each stage is exactly the same in both pathways, so that the ladders look identical, the pathways become indistinguishable—and as a result the biexciton releases photons with undetermined polarization values. Measuring a photon would both determine its polarization and instantly define its partner's—a hallmark of entanglement.
But imperfections within the structure of the quantum dot create differences in the energy levels (rung heights) between the two pathways, making them distinguishable and creating photons with predetermined, clearly defined polarizations. Except in rare instances, this holds true even for the reliable, widely fabricated indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) dots that JQI researcher Andreas Muller and his colleagues created at NIST. Muller and his coworkers solved this problem by beaming a laser at the quantum dot. The laser's electric field shifts the energy levels in one of the pathways so that the two pathways match up, resulting in the emission of entangled photons.
Entangled photons have come from individual quantum dots before but they have been spotted by hunting for dots in large samples whose imperfections accidentally gave the two pathways identical energy structure. JQI group leader Glenn Solomon says that this entanglement technique could work for a wide variety of quantum dots. Though the dots must be cooled to cryogenic temperatures, he adds that quantum dots could offer advantages as entanglement sources over their conventional crystal counterparts as they are less bulky and can conveniently produce one pair of entangled photons at a time, instead of in bunches.
A. Muller, W.F.Fang, J. Lawall and G.S. Solomon. "Creating polarization-entangled photons from a quantum dot." Upcoming in Physical Review Letters.
Media Contact at NIST: Ben Stein, bstein@nist.gov, (301) 975-3097
Controlling Trapped Atoms with RF
Controlling Trapped Atoms with Radio-Frequency Radiation
Gaithersburg, MD, Oct. 20, 2009
In the sequence of green arrows, a pair of ultracold gas atoms collides, briefly forms a molecule, and flies apart, in the presence of an external magnetic field (not shown) that influences this process. By adding RF radiation (lightning bolts) of the right frequency, the atoms can experience being in many different molecular states (red arrows), providing even more extensive and detailed control of the collision. The size of the yellow bursts indicate the amount of absorption/emission of RF radiation.
Credit: Eite Tiesinga, NIST/JQI
News from the Public Affairs Office at the National Institute of Standards and Technology:
Investigating mysterious data in ultracold gases of rubidium atoms, scientists at the Joint Quantum Institute and collaborators have found that properly tuned radio-frequency waves can influence how much the atoms attract or repel one another, opening up new ways to control their interactions.
As the authors report* in an upcoming issue of Physical Review A, the radio-frequency (RF) radiation could serve as a second "knob," in addition to the more traditionally used magnetic fields, for controlling how atoms in an ultracold gas interact. Just as it is easier to improve reception on a home radio by both electronically tuning the frequency on the receiver and mechanically moving the antenna, having two independent knobs for influencing the interactions in atomic gases could produce richer and more exotic arrangements of ultracold atoms than ever before.
Previous experiments with ultracold gases, including the creation of Bose-Einstein condensates, have controlled atoms by using a single knob—traditionally, magnetic fields. These fields can tune atoms to interact strongly or weakly with their neighbors, pair up into molecules, or even switch the interactions from attractive to repulsive. Adding a second control makes it possible to independently tune the interactions between atoms in different states or even between different types of atoms. Such greater control could lead to even more exotic states of matter. A second knob, for example, may make it easier to create a weird three-atom arrangement known as an Efimov state, whereby two neutral atoms that ordinarily do not interact strongly with one another join together with a third atom under the right conditions.
For many years, researchers had hoped to use RF radiation as a second knob for atoms, but were limited by the high power required. The new work shows that, near magnetic field values that have a big effect on the interactions, significantly less RF power is required, and useful control is possible.
In the new work, the JQI/NIST team examined intriguing experimental data of trapped rubidium atoms taken by the group of David Hall at Amherst College in Massachusetts. This data showed that the RF radiation was an important factor in tuning the atomic collisions. To explain the complicated way in which the collisions varied with RF frequency and magnetic field, NIST theorist Thomas Hanna developed a simple model of the experimental arrangement. The model reconstructed the energy landscape of the rubidium atoms and explained how RF radiation was changing the atoms' interactions with one another. In addition to providing a roadmap for rubidium, this simplified theoretical approach could reveal how to use RF to control ultracold gases consisting of other atomic elements, Hanna says.
* A.M. Kaufman, R.P. Anderson, T.M. Hanna, E. Tiesinga, P.S. Julienne, and D.S. Hall, Radiofrequency dressing of multiple Feshbach resonances, to appear in Physical Review A.
Media Contact: Ben Stein, bstein@nist.gov, (301) 975-3097
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