Bosonic Pair Production and Squeezing for Optical Phase Measurements in Long-Lived Dipoles Coupled to a Cavity

Bhuvanesh Sundar, Diego Barberena, Asier Piñeiro Orioli, Anjun Chu, James K. Thompson, Ana Maria Rey, and Robert J. Lewis-Swan

Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 113202 – Published 15 March 2023

Abstract

We propose to simulate bosonic pair creation using large arrays of long-lived dipoles with multilevel internal structure coupled to an undriven optical cavity. Entanglement between the atoms, generated by the exchange of virtual photons through a common cavity mode, grows exponentially fast and is described by two-mode squeezing of effective bosonic quadratures. The mapping between an effective bosonic model and the natural spin description of the dipoles allows us to realize the analog of optical homodyne measurements via straightforward global rotations and population measurements of the electronic states, and we propose to exploit this for quantum-enhanced sensing of an optical phase (common and differential between two ensembles). We discuss a specific implementation based on Sr atoms and show that our sensing protocol is robust to sources of decoherence intrinsic to cavity platforms. Our proposal can open unique opportunities for next-generation optical atomic clocks.

Received 30 April 2022
Accepted 14 February 2023

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.113202

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Cavity quantum electrodynamics Quantum metrology Quantum sensing

Quantum cavities

Semiclassical methods

Atomic, Molecular & Optical

Authors & Affiliations

Bhuvanesh Sundar ^1,2, Diego Barberena ^1,2, Asier Piñeiro Orioli^1,2, Anjun Chu ^1,2, James K. Thompson², Ana Maria Rey ^1,2, and Robert J. Lewis-Swan ^3,4

¹Center for Theory of Quantum Matter, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA
²JILA, NIST, Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA
³Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma 73019, USA
⁴Center for Quantum Research and Technology, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma 73019, USA