2024/10/17 by Amir Sivan, Meir Orenstein, Sivan, Amir +1 · 1 citation
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Quantum optics and atomic interactions
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2410.13655
openalex publication_date 2024/10/17 · openalex created_date 2024/10/21 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We show here that the photonic states emitted by ensembles of multilevel atoms via a superradiance process exhibit entanglement in the modal (frequency) degree of freedom, making this collective emission process a favorable candidate for a fast, bright and deterministic source of entangled photons. This entanglement is driven by two mechanisms: (i) selective excitation of the atomic ensemble to a superposition state and (ii) degeneracies of the optical transitions due to internal structure of the emitting atoms. The latter induces intricate non-radiative virtual transitions in the ensemble, which create interatomic correlations that are imprinted onto the emitted photons. One of the important outcomes of this complexity is the generation of mode-independent entangled multiphoton states. In addition, we study the dynamics of the correlations of the superradiating multilevel atom ensembles, and demonstrate a case where they exhibit beating in steady-state due to the aforementioned virtual transitions.