Determination of the phase of an electromagnetic field via incoherent detection of fluorescence

Abstract

We show that the phase of a field can be determined by incoherent detection of the population of one state of a two-level system if the Rabi frequency is comparable to the Bohr frequency so that the rotating wave approximation is inappropriate. This implies that a process employing the measurement of population is not a square-law detector in this limit. We discuss how the sensitivity of the degree of excitation to the phase of the field may pose severe constraints on precise rotations of quantum bits involving low-frequency transitions. We present a scheme for observing this effect in an atomic beam, despite the spread in the interaction time.

4 pages, 2 figs

References in corpus (1)

• Fundamental limitation on qubit operations due to the Bloch-Siegert Oscillation

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Rabi oscillations in the four-level double-dot structure under the influence of the resonant pulse
• Superconducting resonators as beam splitters for linear-optics quantum computation
• In-Situ absolute phase detection of a microwave field via incoherent fluorescence
• Two-Level System and Some Approximate Solutions in the Strong Coupling Regime