Continuous and Pulsed Quantum Zeno Effect

Erik W. Streed, Jongchul Mun, Micah Boyd, Gretchen K. Campbell, Patrick Medley, Wolfgang Ketterle, and David E. Pritchard
Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 260402 – Published 27 December 2006

Abstract

Continuous and pulsed quantum Zeno effects were observed using a Rb87 Bose-Einstein condensate. Oscillations between two ground hyperfine states of a magnetically trapped condensate, externally driven at a transition rate ωR, were suppressed by destructively measuring the population in one of the states with resonant light. The suppression of the transition rate in the two-level system was quantified for pulsed measurements with a time interval δt between pulses and continuous measurements with a scattering rate γ. We observe that the continuous measurements exhibit the same suppression in the transition rate as the pulsed measurements when γδt=3.60(0.43), in agreement with the predicted value of 4. Increasing the measurement rate suppressed the transition rate down to 0.005ωR.

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  • Received 14 June 2006

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.97.260402

©2006 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Erik W. Streed1,2, Jongchul Mun1, Micah Boyd1, Gretchen K. Campbell1, Patrick Medley1, Wolfgang Ketterle1, and David E. Pritchard1

  • 1Department of Physics, MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, and Research Laboratory of Electronics, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
  • 2Centre for Quantum Dynamics, Griffith University, Nathan, QLD 4111, Australia

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Issue

Vol. 97, Iss. 26 — 31 December 2006

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