Dresden 2011 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 50: Quantum Effects: Entanglement and Decoherence

Q 50.10: Talk

Thursday, March 17, 2011, 12:45–13:00, SCH A01

Spontaneous decay into a BEC near a surface — •Carsten Henkel and Jürgen Schiefele — Universität Potsdam

The spontaneous emission rate of an excited two-level atom placed in a Bose-Einstein condensate of ground-state atoms is enhanced by bosonic stimulation. The magnitude of the effect depends on the overlap between the atomic wave functions and the wavevector of the photon involved in the decay. We present calculations based on a quantum field theory of the atom-photon interaction that illustrate the importance of two- and four-point correlation functions of the ground-state field for the Bose enhancement [1].

For an excited atom prepared in a wavepacket, the transition rate to the ground state can be increased under optimum conditions by a factor N/10 where N is the atom number in the BEC. The effect can be used to amplify the small distance-dependent oscillations of the decay rate of an excited atom near an interface.

[1] PLA, 2010 (in press), doi:10.1016/j.physleta.2010.11.058.