Quantum Zeno dynamics of a field in a cavity

TL;DR

This paper explores how frequent measurements or operations on atoms interacting with a cavity field can confine the field's evolution, enabling the creation of non-classical states and complex manipulations in cavity QED systems.

Contribution

It demonstrates the application of quantum Zeno dynamics to control and generate non-classical states of a cavity field, with detailed analysis of experimental implementation and robustness.

Findings

Confinement of field evolution to specific subspaces via Zeno effect

Generation of mesoscopic superposition states

Robust state manipulation demonstrated through numerical simulations

Abstract

We analyze the quantum Zeno dynamics that takes place when a field stored in a cavity undergoes frequent interactions with atoms. We show that repeated measurements or unitary operations performed on the atoms probing the field state confine the evolution to tailored subspaces of the total Hilbert space. This confinement leads to non-trivial field evolutions and to the generation of interesting non-classical states, including mesoscopic field state superpositions. We elucidate the main features of the quantum Zeno mechanism in the context of a state-of-the-art cavity quantum electrodynamics experiment. A plethora of effects is investigated, from state manipulations by phase space tweezers to nearly arbitrary state synthesis. We analyze in details the practical implementation of this dynamics and assess its robustness by numerical simulations including realistic experimental imperfections. We comment on the various perspectives opened by this proposal.