Abstract
Various effective-spin systems in atomic physics are investigated. The first example is the photon with its two states of circular polarization. The photon’s coherent superposition states can be mapped onto the surface of the Bloch sphere. The next example presents two atomic states involved in a resonance transition, driven by laser or microwave radiation. This leads to Rabi oscillations, photon free induction decay, quantum beats, photon echoes, and Ramsey signals. In molecular physics, a well known example of a two-state system is a nitrogen atom in the double-well potential of an ammonia molecule. A modern version of this experiment is a Bose–Einstein condensate in a double-well optical trap.
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Dubbers, D., Stöckmann, HJ. (2013). Two-State Systems in Atomic and Molecular Physics. In: Quantum Physics: The Bottom-Up Approach. Graduate Texts in Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31060-7_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31060-7_12
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-31059-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-31060-7
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