Düsseldorf 2007 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 18: Quanteninformation (Verschränkung und Dekohärenz I)
Q 18.3: Vortrag
Dienstag, 20. März 2007, 11:15–11:30, 5L
Photon-photon entanglement in the 2E1 decay of atomic hydrogen — •Thomas Radtke1, Stephan Fritzsche1, and Andrey Surzhykov2 — 1Institut für Physik, Universität Kassel, D-34132 Kassel, Germany — 2Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Saupfercheckweg 1, D-69117 Heidelberg, Germany
The theory of the two-photon decay of (metastable) hydrogen was developed already in the early days of quantum mechanics. However, only several decades later, it was demonstrated experimentally that the correlation in the polarization states of the two photons indeed violates Bell’s inquality so that the photons are entangled [1].
More recently, within the context of quantum information processing, new interest arose in controllable sources of entanglement. Therefore, in this contribution, we have investigated in more detail the photon-photon entanglement in the 2E1 decay of atomic hydrogen. In particular, we study the entanglement as a function of the emission angles of the two photons and (for the case of excited states) the atom’s initial spin state. It is found that the two-photon decay of hydrogen may lead to pairs of photons with controllable degree of entanglement as it is used in various quantum information protocols.
[1] Perrie et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 54, 1790 (1985)