Coherent control of nuclear forward scattering

TL;DR

This paper explores controlling nuclear forward scattering through magnetic field switching, enabling suppression of decay and generation of entangled x-ray photons, advancing quantum control at nuclear energy scales.

Contribution

It introduces a method to manipulate nuclear scattering via magnetic switching, achieving decay suppression and entangled photon generation in the keV regime.

Findings

Coherent decay can be suppressed using magnetic field switching.

A sequence of magnetic rotations can generate entangled x-ray photons.

The approach enables testing Bell's inequality with nuclear photons.

Abstract

The possibility to control the coherent decay of resonant excitations in nuclear forward scattering is investigated. By changing abruptly the direction of the nuclear hyperfine magnetic field, the coherent scattering of photons can be manipulated and even completely suppressed via quantum interference effects between the nuclear transition currents. The efficiency of the coherent decay suppression and the dependence of the scattered light polarization on the specific switching parameters is analyzed in detail. Using a sophisticated magnetic switching sequence involving four rotations of the hyperfine magnetic field, two correlated coherent decay pulses with different polarizations can be generated out of one excitation, providing single-photon entanglement in the keV regime. The verification of the generated entanglement by testing a single-particle version of Bell's inequality in an x-ray optics experimental setup is put forward.