X-ray single photon entanglement via coherent control of collective nuclear dynamics

Seminar Quantum Dynamics
on February 26, 2010

Jörg Evers
MPI für Kernphysik, Heidelberg

X-ray single photon entanglement via coherent control of collective nuclear dynamics

Coherent control of nuclear excitations has been a long-time goal in nuclear physics, as it is related to a number of promising applications such as nuclear quantum optics, isomer triggering or nuclear lasers. Nuclear forward scattering (NFS) is one promising experimental setup in which coherent control has been successfully applied. In NSF, intense high-frequency light hits a nuclear target, and creates an excitonic state characterized by one or few coherently excited nuclei out of many in the sample. Collectivity then leads to a preferential emission of the coherently scattered light with increased emission rate in forward direction.
In this talk, I will introduce NFS, relate it to setups in atomic physics, and then discuss coherent control schemes for the coherent decay of the nuclear excitations. As one application, I will demonstrate how to generate keV single-photon entanglement in NFS by controlling the coherent scattering of the pump pulse such that two time-resolved entangled coherent decay pulses with different photon polarizations are emitted [1]. Finally methods to extract the entangled state from the emitted light and to detect the x-ray entanglement will be discussed.

[1] A. Paffy, C. H. Keitel, and J. Evers, Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 017401 (2009).