Cavity QED nondemolition measurement scheme using quantized atomic motion

Abstract

Considering ultracold atoms traversing a high-Q Fabry-Perot cavity, we theoretically demonstrate a quantum nondemolition measurement of the photon number. This fully quantum mechanical approach may be understood utilizing concepts as effective mass and group velocity of the atom. The various photon numbers induce a splitting of the atomic wave packet, and a time-of-flight measurement of the atom thereby reveals the photon number. While repeated atomic measurements increase the efficiency of the protocol, it is shown that by considering long interaction times only a few atoms are needed to resolve the photon number with almost perfect accuracy.

7 pages, 7 figures. Final version to appear in Phys. Rev. A

References in corpus (7)

• Reconstruction of non-classical cavity field states with snapshots of their decoherence
• Progressive field-state collapse and quantum non-demolition photon counting
• Process tomography of field damping and measurement of Fock state lifetimes by quantum non-demolition photon counting in a cavity
• Quantum feedback by discrete quantum non-demolition measurements: towards on-demand generation of photon-number states
• Effective mass in cavity QED
• Adiabatic state preparation in a cavity
• Scheme for generating entangled states of two field modes in a cavity

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Quantum state engineering, purification, and number resolved photon detection with high finesse optical cavities
• Probing quantum entanglement, quantum discord, classical correlation, and the quantum state without disturbing them
• Anomalous decoherence and absence of thermalization in a photonic many-body system
• Reservoir-Free Decoherence in Flying Qubits
• Quantum nondemolition measurements of a flux qubit coupled to a noisy detector