Unitarily manipulating in time and space a Gaussian wave-packet motional state of a single atom in a quadratic potential field

TL;DR

This paper presents methods for precise, unitary control of a single atom's Gaussian wave-packet state in a quadratic potential, enabling manipulation of its position, momentum, and shape in time and space.

Contribution

It introduces a state-selective trigger pulse and demonstrates how quadratic Hamiltonians can control Gaussian wave-packet properties without shape distortion.

Findings

Gaussian wave-packet shape remains unchanged during manipulation

Quadratic terms control the complex linewidth of the wave-packet

Linear terms affect only position and momentum

Abstract

The paper first discusses theoretically the off-resonance selective excitation method that is dependent on the atomic internal states and used to generate approximately a standard coherent state of harmonic oscillator. The coherent average method then is proposed to construct the state-selective trigger pulse. A state-selective trigger pulse can keep Gaussian shape unchanged but change in an internal-state-dependent form the center-of-mass position and/or momentum of an atomic Gaussian wave-packet motional state. A Gaussian wave-packet state is one of the simplest wave-packet states that can be easily manipulated and controlled in time and space. The paper also investigates how to manipulate in time and space an atomic Gaussian wave-packet motional state by a generalized quadratic potential field. A general quadratic Hamiltonian can affect not only the center-of-mass position and momentum but also the complex linewidth of a Gaussian wave-packet motional state while keep Gaussian shape of the motional state unchanged. It is shown that generally quadratic terms of a quadratic Hamiltonian can control directly the complex linewidth, while linear terms of a quadratic Hamiltonian can affect only the center-of-mass position and momentum of a Gaussian wave-packet motional state.