Abstract
Frequent measurements can modify the decay of an unstable quantum state with respect to the free dynamics given by Fermi's golden rule. In a landmark article [A. G. Kofman and G. Kurizki, Nature (London) 405, 546 (2000)], Kofman and Kurizki concluded that in quantum decay processes, acceleration of the decay by frequent measurements, called the quantum anti-Zeno effect (AZE), appears to be ubiquitous, while its counterpart, the quantum Zeno effect, is unattainable. However, up to now there have been no experimental observations of the AZE for atomic radiative decay (spontaneous emission) in free space. In this work, making use of analytical results available for hydrogenlike atoms, we find that in free space, only non-electric-dipole transitions should present an observable AZE, revealing that this effect is consequently much less ubiquitous than first predicted. We then propose an experimental scheme for AZE observation, involving the electric quadrupole transition between and in the alkali-earth ions and . The proposed protocol is based on the stimulated Raman adiabatic passage technique, which acts like a dephasing quasimeasurement.
- Received 21 December 2017
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.97.062122
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