Stimulated Raman adiabatic passage in an open quantum system: Master equation approach

Abstract

A master equation approach to the study of environmental effects in the adiabatic population transfer in three-state systems is presented. A systematic comparison with the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian approach [N. V. Vitanov and S. Stenholm, Phys. Rev. A 56, 1463] shows that in the weak coupling limit the two treatments lead to essentially the same results. Instead, in the strong damping limit the predictions are quite different: in particular the counterintuitive sequences in the STIRAP scheme turn out to be much more efficient than expected before. This point is explained in terms of quantum Zeno dynamics.

Stimulated Raman adiabatic passage in aΛsystem in the presence of quantum noise

“…It is worth noting that the result of the comparison is qualitatively quite similar to the result of the comparison we made in connection to the scheme with external decay [13]. Indeed, in both cases the predictions from the microscopic and the phenomenological models are almost coincident for the intuitive sequence, while for the counterintuitive sequence we find that the microscopic model predicts a higher efficiency.…”

“…From (13) and (14) one gets that the decay rates are given by a spectral density J j (ω) multiplied by a factor depending on the photon population N (ω) of the bath modes at the relevant frequency corrected with ±ω a or ±ω b depending on the case, i.e. :…”

Interaction-free evolution in the presence of time-dependent Hamiltonians

“…Consider the Hamiltonian of the class used for Stimulated Raman Adiabatic Passage (STIRAP) [20][21][22][23]. The unperturbed Hamiltonian in the basis |1 , |2 , |3 reads:…”

Role of temperature in the occurrence of some Zeno phenomena

“…Further discussions have produced several generalizations, which has led to include in the class of Zeno phenomena different physical mechanisms able to freeze a physical system in its initial state, obstructing the natural time evolution: dissipative processes (sometimes interpreted as continuous measurements) can produce the Zeno effect [4][5][6][7][8], as well as strong additional interactions can be responsible for inhibition of the natural dynamics of a system [9][10][11], which can be clearly explained in terms of formation of Zeno subspaces [12]. Also pulsed interactions have been proven to be responsible for the formation of dynamically invariant subspaces [13][14][15].…”