2011/11/30 by Roberto de J. León‐Montiel, R. de J. León-Montiel, Juan P. Torres
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.85.033801
published as Phys. Rev. A 85, 033801 (2012)
openalex publication_date 2012/03/05 · arxiv created 2012/03/08 · arxiv updated 2012/03/09 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
We unveil the relationship existing between the temperature of an ensemble of three-level atoms in a \ensuremathΛ configuration, and the width of the emission cone of Stokes photons that are spontaneously emitted when atoms are excited by an optical pulse. This relationship, which is based on the amount of which-way information available about where the Stokes photon originated during the interaction, allows us to put forward a scheme to determine the temperature of atomic clouds by measuring the width of the emission cone. Unlike the commonly used time-of-flight measurements, with this technique, the atomic cloud is not destroyed during each measurement.