Leveraging Reactant Entanglement in the Coherent Control of Ultracold Bimolecular Chemical Reactions

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how entangling reactants can enhance the coherent control of ultracold bimolecular reactions, allowing for optimized manipulation of reaction pathways and outcomes.

Contribution

It introduces an entanglement-based control scheme that overcomes traditional limitations and maximizes reaction control by tuning reactant entanglement levels.

Findings

Optimal entanglement maximizes control visibility.

Complete pathway indistinguishability achieved at specific entanglement levels.

Simulation of KRb + KRb reaction shows perfect control over product states.

Abstract

Entanglement is a crucial resource for achieving quantum advantages in quantum computation, quantum sensing, and quantum communication. As shown in this Letter, entanglement is also a valuable resource for the coherent control of the large class of bimolecular chemical reactions. We introduce an entanglement-enhanced coherent control scheme, in which the initial preparation of the superposition state is divided into two steps: the first entangles the reactants, and the second is responsible for coherent control. This approach can overcome the limitations of traditional coherent control of scattering caused by non-interfering pathways, known as satellite terms. By tuning the amount of entanglement between reactants, the visibility of coherent control in chemical reactions can be modulated and optimized. Significantly, there exists an optimal amount of entanglement, which ensures complete indistinguishability of the reaction pathways, maximizing the extent of control. This entanglement-enhanced coherent control scheme is computationally illustrated using the ultracold KRb + KRb reaction, where a perfect control over the parity of the product rotational states is achieved.