Vacuum-Induced Coherence in Ultracold Photoassociative Ro-Vibrational Excitations

Abstract

We show that coherence between two excited ro-vibrational states belonging to the same molecular electronic configuration arises quite naturally due to their interaction with electromagnetic vacuum. For initial preparation of a molecule in the desired ro-vibrational states, we propose to employ the method of ultracold photoassociation. Spontaneous decay of the excited molecule then gives rise to vacuum induced coherence between the excited ro-vibrational states. We demonstrate theoretically an interesting interplay of effects due to vacuum induced coherence and photoassociation. We apply our theory to photoassociation of bosonic Ytterbium (^{174}Yb) atoms which appear to be a promising system for exploring such interplay. The effects discussed here can be important for controlling decoherence and dissipation in molecular systems.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Stimulated and spontaneous optical generation of electron spin coherence in charged GaAs quantum dots
• Two-color photoassociation spectroscopy of ytterbium atoms and the precise determinations of s-wave scattering lengths
• Quantum Interferences in Cooperative Dicke Emission from Spatial Variation of Laser Phase

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• Quantum interference effects in an ensemble of ${}^{229}$Th nuclei interacting with coherent light
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• Resonant Manipulation of d-wave Interaction of Cold Atoms with Two Lasers and a Magnetic Field
• Probing vacuum-induced coherence via magneto-optical rotation in molecular systems
• Suppressing deleterious effects of spontaneous emission in creating bound states in cold atom continuum
• Quantum Effects at Low Energy Atom-Molecule Interface
• Decay dynamics in a strongly driven atom-molecule coupled system
• Population trapping in the excited states using vacuum-induced coherence and adiabatic process