Heidelberg 2015 – scientific programme

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

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

A 38.3: Talk

Friday, March 27, 2015, 11:45–12:00, C/HSW

X-ray polarization control using nuclear transitions — •Jonas Gunst, Adriana Pálffy, and Christoph H. Keitel — Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg

Due to the recent progress of x-ray light sources, a number of quantum optical schemes could be transferred to the realm of nuclear physics [1]. In addition, the highly brilliant photon beams provided by x–ray free electron lasers (XFEL) are expected to render the resonant driving of nuclei embedded in solid–state targets efficient via direct or secondary electron-mediated processes [2]. For applications in the fields of photonics or quantum information, x-ray photon energies (10-100 keV) would drastically decrease the limitation on nanoscale photonic circuits determined by the diffraction limit (∼ 1 µm for optical photons). Here, we investigate theoretically how to coherently control the polarization properties of x-rays in the course of nuclear forward scattering (NFS) on ensembles of Mössbauer ⁵⁷Fe nuclei. We show that it is possible to manipulate the polarization response of a nuclear 2-level system by employing NFS in external magnetic fields. Several control schemes are then applied to x-ray qubits in order to read, store and manipulate their polarization coding.

[1] F. Vagizov et al., Nature 508, 80 (2014)

[2] J. Gunst et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 082501 (2014)