Measurement of distance and orientation of two atoms in arbitrary geometry

Abstract

Accurate measurement of relative distance and orientation of two nearby quantum particles is discussed. We are in particular interested in a realistic description requiring as little prior knowledge about the system as possible. Thus, unlike in previous studies, we consider the case of an arbitrary relative orientation of the two atoms. For this, we model the atom with complete Zeeman manifolds, and include parallel as well as orthogonal dipole-dipole couplings between all states of the two atoms. We find that it is possible to determine the distance of the two atoms independent of the orientation, as long as the particles are sufficiently close to each other. Next, we discuss how in addition the alignment of the atoms can be measured. For this, we focus on the two cases of atoms in a two-dimensional waveguide and of atoms on a surface.

11 pages, 10 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Coherent Quantum Optical Control with Subwavelength Resolution
• Measurement of the separation between atoms beyond diffraction limit
• Localization of atomic ensembles via superfluorescence
• Coherent control in a decoherence-free subspace of a collective multi-level system
• Dipole-dipole interaction between orthogonal dipole moments in time-dependent geometries
• Breakdown of the few-level approximation in collective systems

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Highly directional photon superbunching from a 'few atom' chain of emitters
• Non-diffracting Optical Beams in a Three-level Raman System
• Sub-wavelength position measurements with running wave driving fields