Erlangen 2018 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 62: Poster: Quantum Optics and Photonics V
Q 62.75: Poster
Thursday, March 8, 2018, 16:15–18:15, Redoutensaal
Rotational Decoherence of Molecular Superrotors — •Benjamin A. Stickler1, Farhad Taher Ghahramani2, and Klaus Hornberger1 — 1Faculty of Physics, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany — 2School of Physics, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences, Tehran, Iran
A molecule revolving in a thermal gas experiences random collisions with the surrounding gas atoms. We show how these collisions serve to decohere an initial superposition of angular momentum eigenstates if the molecule rotates multiple times during the scattering process. The corresponding Markovian master equation, derived from the quantum linear Boltzmann equation [1], relates the decoherence rate to the microscopic scattering amplitudes of a single collision. We calculate the decoherence rate for nitrogen molecular superrotors and compare it to recent experiments [2].
[1] B. Vacchini, and K. Hornberger, Phys. Rep. 478, 71 (2009) [2] A. A. Milner, A. Korobenko, J. W. Hepburn, and V. Milner, Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 043005 (2014)