Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Comment on Some Implications of the Quantum Nature of Laser Fields for Quantum Computations

Published

Author(s)

Wayne M. Itano

Abstract

A recent discussion of quantum limitations to the Fidelity with which superpositions of internal atomic energy levels can be generated by an applied laser pulse is shown to be in error. This discussion incorrectly assumed the validity of Jaynes-Cummings dynamics for an atom interacting with a laser field in free space, leading to entanglement of the atom and field systems and effective decoherence of the atomic system. If the field of the laser pulse is a multimode coherent state, then there is no decoherence of the atomic state, beyond that which can be attributed to spontaneous emission.
Citation
Physical Review A (Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics)
Volume
68
Issue
046301

Keywords

Jaynes-Cummings model, matter-light interaction, quantum computation, quantum optics, Rabi flopping

Citation

Itano, W. (2003), Comment on Some Implications of the Quantum Nature of Laser Fields for Quantum Computations, Physical Review A (Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics), [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=841699 (Accessed April 25, 2024)
Created October 14, 2003, Updated February 17, 2017