Preparation of decoherence-free, subradiant states in a cavity
Péter Földi, M. G. Benedict, Attila Czirják · Physical Review A · 2002
The cause of decoherence in a quantum system can be traced back to the interaction with the environment. As it has been pointed out by Dicke, in a system of N two-level atoms, where each of the atoms is individually dipole coupled to the environment, there are collective, subradiant states, that have no dipole coupling to photon modes, and therefore, they are expected to decay slower. This property also implies that these type of states decohere slower. We propose a scheme which will create such states. First, the two-level atoms are placed in a strongly detuned cavity and one of the atoms, called the control atom is excited. The time evolution of the coupled atom-cavity system leads to an appropriately entangled state of the atoms. By the aid of a suitable single-atom phase transformation, it is possible to drive the atomic state into the subradiant, i.e., decoherence-free subspace. Up to a certain average number of photons, the result is independent of the state of the cavity. The analysis of the conditions shows that this scheme is feasible with present day techniques achieved in atom-cavity interaction experiments.