Heidelberg 2015 – scientific programme

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 38: Interaction with VUV and X-ray light II

A 38.1: Invited Talk

Friday, March 27, 2015, 11:00–11:30, C/HSW

X-ray quantum optics: From Mössbauer to Fano — Kilian P. Heeg¹, Christian Ott¹, Daniel Schumacher², Hans-Christian Wille², Ralf Röhlsberger², Thomas Pfeifer¹, and •Jörg Evers¹ — ¹Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg — ²Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Hamburg

Modern x-ray light sources promise access to structure and dynamics of matter in largely unexplored spectral regions. However, the desired information is encoded in the light intensity and phase, whereas detectors register only the intensity. This phase problem is ubiquitous in crystallography and imaging, and impedes the exploration of quantum effects at x-ray energies. Here, we demonstrate phase-sensitive measurements characterizing the quantum state of a nuclear two-level system at hard x-ray energies [1]. This system comprises a large ensemble of nuclei in a x-ray cavity. The nuclei are initially prepared in a superposition state via a short x-ray pulse. Subsequently, the relative phase of this superposition is interferometrically reconstructed from the emitted x-rays via the cavity. Next to phase-sensitive measurements, also control of spectroscopic line shapes at hard x-ray energies is enabled via the tunable Fano interference [2].
[1] K. P. Heeg et al., arXiv:1411.1545 [quant-ph]
[2] C. Ott et al., Science 340, 716 (2013)