Truly unentangled photon pairs without spectral filtering.

We demonstrate that an integrated silicon microring resonator is capable of efficiently producing photon pairs that are completely unentangled; such pairs are a key component of heralded single-photon sources. A dual-channel interferometric coupling scheme can be used to independently tune the quality factors associated with the pump and signal and idler modes, yielding a biphoton wavefunction with a Schmidt number arbitrarily close to unity. This will permit the generation of heralded single-photon states with unit purity.

Atomic motion in magneto-optical double-well potentials: a testing ground for quantum chaos.

We have identified ultracold atoms in magneto-optical double-well potentials as a very clean setting in which to study the quantum and classical dynamics of a nonlinear system with multiple degrees of freedom. In this system, entanglement at the quantum level and chaos at the classical level arise from nonseparable couplings between the atomic spin and its center of mass motion. The main features of the chaotic dynamics are analyzed using action-angle variables and Poincaré surfaces of section. We show that for the initial state prepared in current experiments [D. J. Haycock et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 3365 (2000)], classical and quantum expectation values diverge after a finite time, and the observed experimental dynamics is consistent with quantum-mechanical predictions. Furthermore, the motion corresponds to tunneling through a dynamical potential barrier. The coupling between the spin and the motional subsystems, which are very different in nature from one another, leads to interesting questions regarding the transition from regular quantum dynamics to chaotic classical motion.

Phase diffusion as a model for coherent suppression of tunneling in the presence of noise.

We study the stabilization of coherent suppression of tunneling in a driven double-well system subject to random periodic delta-function "kicks." We model dissipation due to this stochastic process as a phase diffusion process for an effective two-level system, and derive a corresponding set of Bloch equations with phase damping terms that agree with the periodically kicked system at discrete times. We demonstrate that the ability of noise to localize the system on either side of the double-well potential arises from overdamping of the phase of oscillation, and not from any cooperative effect between the noise and the driving field. The model is investigated with a square wave drive, which has qualitatively similar features to the widely studied cosinusoidal drive, but has the additional advantage of allowing one to derive exact analytic expressions.

Spatial correlation diagnostics for atoms in optical lattices.

We explore the use of first and second order same-time atomic spatial correlation functions as a diagnostic for probing the small scale spatial structure of atomic samples trapped in optical lattices. Assuming an ensemble of equivalent atoms, properties of the local wave function at a given lattice site can be measured using same-position first-order correlations. Statistics of atomic distributions over the lattice can be measured via two-point correlations, generally requiring the averaging of multiple realizations of statistically similar but distinct realizations in order to obtain sufficient signal to noise. Whereas two-point first order correlations are fragile due to phase fluctuations from shot-to-shot in the ensemble, second order correlations are robust. We perform numerical simulations to demonstrate these diagnostic tools.