Düsseldorf 2007 – scientific programme
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A: Fachverband Atomphysik
A 25: Poster II - Photoionization
A 25.1: Poster
Thursday, March 22, 2007, 16:30–18:30, Poster B
Entanglement in atomic photoionization and decay processes — •Thomas Radtke1, Stephan Fritzsche1, and Andrey Surzhykov2 — 1Institut für Physik, Universität Kassel, D-34132 Kassel, Germany — 2Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Saupfercheckweg 1, D-69117 Heidelberg, Germany
Atomic photoionization and decay processes have been studied intensively during the last decades. Recently, however, the interest in these processes was renewed in the context of quantum information processing as they may enable one to observe and manipulate entanglement. Therefore, in order to explore the role of entanglement in the photoionization of alkaline-earth metals, we have studied the photoion-electron entanglement as function of the photon angle and energy. It was found that the photoion-electron entanglement decreases significantly near the ionization threshold and that, in general, it depends on both the photon energy and angle [1].
Another atomic process of interest is the two-photon decay of the metastable 2S state of hydrogen or hydrogenlike systems. For this decay, it was verified by Perrie and coworkers that the outcome of polarization measurements on the emitted photons violate Bell’s inequality so that the photons are polarization entangled [2]. Using the density-matrix theory, we have analyzed the photon-photon entanglement in dependence on the emission angles of the two photons and the polarization of the initial 2S states.
[1] T. Radtke, S. Fritzsche, A. Surzhykov, PRA 74, 032709 (2006).
[2] W. Perrie et al., PRL 54, 1790 (1985).