Quantum seismology

We propose a quantum mechanical method of detecting weak vibrational disturbances inspired by the protocol of entanglement farming. We consider a setup where pairs of atoms in their ground state are successively sent through an optical cavity. It is known that in this way it is possible to drive tha...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Eric G Brown, William Donnelly, Achim Kempf, Robert B Mann, Eduardo Martín-Martínez, Nicolas C Menicucci
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IOP Publishing 2014-01-01
Series:New Journal of Physics
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/16/10/105020
Description
Summary:We propose a quantum mechanical method of detecting weak vibrational disturbances inspired by the protocol of entanglement farming. We consider a setup where pairs of atoms in their ground state are successively sent through an optical cavity. It is known that in this way it is possible to drive that cavity toward a stable fixed-point state. Here we study how that fixed-point state depends on the time interval between pairs of atoms and on the distance between the cavityʼs mirrors. Taking advantage of an extremely precise resonance effect, we find that there are special values of these parameters where the fixed-point state is highly sensitive to perturbations, even harmonic vibrations with frequencies several orders of magnitude below the cavityʼs natural frequency. We propose that this sensitivity may be useful for high precision metrology.
ISSN:1367-2630