Darmstadt 2008 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 31: Quanteninformation (Konzepte und Methoden I)
Q 31.8: Talk
Thursday, March 13, 2008, 10:15–10:30, 1B
Wave particle duality in a two atom interferometer — •Uwe Schilling1, Christoph Thiel1, Thierry Bastin2, and Joachim von Zanthier1 — 1Institut für Optik, Information und Photonik, Max- Planck-Forschungsgruppe, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany — 2Institut de Physique Nucléaire, Atomique et de Spectroscopie, Université de Liège, Belgium
In 1996 Englert investigated the wave-particle duality in a Ramsey interferometer and derived a quantitative complementarity relation between the contrast of the interference pattern and the maximum obtainable which-way (WW) information [1].
We examine the duality relation in a system of two two-level atoms which are coherently excited by a resonant laser pulse. The atoms subsequently scatter a single photon which is recorded by a detector in the far field region. By applying Englert’s definition of the distinguishability D of the two pathes in this interferometer, we find that D becomes a function of where the photon is detected. As a result we derive that in this system, by choosing the detector position and the Bloch angle of the exciting laser pulse accordingly, full WW information becomes available after the detection of the photon while the contrast of the interference pattern remains close to 100 %. By introducing a quantity which describes the average WW information per scattered photon, it is possible to derive a quantitative relation between the wave and the particle properties of the photon in this system.
[1] B.-G. Englert, Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 2154 (1996)