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Entanglement of a Mesoscopic Field with an Atom Induced by Photon Graininess in a Cavity

2003; American Physical Society; Volume: 91; Issue: 23 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1103/physrevlett.91.230405

1092-0145

Alexia Auffèves, Paolo Maioli, T. Meunier, S. Gleyzes, Gilles Nogues, M. Brune, J. M. Raimond, S. Haroche,

Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates

We observe that a mesoscopic field made of several tens of microwave photons exhibits quantum features when interacting with a single Rydberg atom in a high-$Q$ cavity. The field is split into two components whose phases differ by an angle inversely proportional to the square root of the average photon number. The field and the atomic dipole are phase entangled. These manifestations of photon graininess vanish at the classical limit. This experiment opens the way to studies of large quantum state superpositions at the quantum-classical boundary.