Phase space tweezers for tailoring cavity fields by quantum Zeno dynamics.

We discuss an implementation of quantum Zeno dynamics in a cavity quantum electrodynamics experiment. By performing repeated unitary operations on atoms coupled to the field, we restrict the field evolution in chosen subspaces of the total Hilbert space. This procedure leads to promising methods for tailoring nonclassical states. We propose to realize "tweezers" picking a coherent field at a point in phase space and moving it towards an arbitrary final position without affecting other nonoverlapping coherent components. These effects could be observed with a state-of-the-art apparatus.

Quantum Zeno effect in a model multilevel molecule.

We study the dynamics of the populations of a model molecule endowed with two sets of rotational levels of different parity, whose ground levels are energetically degenerate and coupled by a constant interaction. The relaxation rate from one set of levels to the other one has an interesting dependence on the average collision frequency of the molecules in the gas. This is interpreted as a quantum Zeno effect due to the decoherence effects provoked by the molecular collisions.

Phase transitions of bipartite entanglement.

We analyze the statistical properties of the entanglement of a large bipartite quantum system. By framing the problem in terms of random matrices and a fictitious temperature, we unveil the existence of two phase transitions, characterized by different spectra of the reduced density matrices.

Direct experimental evidence of free-fermion antibunching.

Fermion antibunching was observed on a beam of free noninteracting neutrons. A monochromatic beam of thermal neutrons was first split by a graphite single crystal, then fed to two detectors, displaying a reduced coincidence rate. The result is a fermionic complement to the Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect for photons.

Fractal entropy of a chain of nonlinear oscillators.

We study the time evolution of a chain of nonlinear oscillators. We focus on the fractal features of the spectral entropy and analyze its characteristic intermediate time scales as a function of the nonlinear coupling. A Brownian motion is recognized with an analytic power-law dependence of its diffusion coefficient on the coupling.

Quantum Zeno subspaces.

The quantum Zeno effect is recast in terms of an adiabatic theorem when the measurement is described as the dynamical coupling to another quantum system that plays the role of apparatus. A few significant examples are proposed and their practical relevance discussed. We also focus on decoherence-free subspaces.

Slow relaxation, confinement, and solitons.

Millisecond crystal relaxation has been used to explain anomalous decay in doped alkali halides. We attribute this slowness to Fermi-Pasta-Ulam solitons. Our model exhibits confinement of mechanical energy released by excitation. Extending the model to long times is justified by its relation to solitons, excitations previously proposed to occur in alkali halides. Soliton damping and observation are also discussed.

From the quantum zeno to the inverse quantum zeno effect.

The temporal evolution of an unstable quantum mechanical system undergoing repeated measurements is investigated. In general, by changing the time interval between successive measurements, the decay can be accelerated (inverse quantum Zeno effect) or slowed down (quantum Zeno effect), depending on the features of the interaction Hamiltonian. A geometric criterion is proposed for a transition to occur between these two regimes.