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Determining the state of a three-level atom by interaction with two radiation fields

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Abstract

An unknown state of a quantum system S is usually determined by repeatedly measuring a set of non-commuting observables. The state can also be obtained from the repeated measurements of a single separable observable when the system S interacts with an assistant system A in a known state. In this paper, we study the quantum state tomography of a three-level atom (the system S) interacting with two radiation fields as the assistant system A. We obtain the initial state of S by repeatedly measuring a separable observable Ô = Ŝ z ̂n 1̂n 2, in which Ŝ z is the atom operator, and ̂n 1 and ̂n 2 are the photon number operators of the two radiation fields. We achieve the one-to-one mapping M between the initial density matrix of the system S and the measured results of the single separable observable. We also give a concrete numerical example.

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Correspondence to YaFei Yu or ZhiMing Zhang.

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Li, S., Yu, Y. & Zhang, Z. Determining the state of a three-level atom by interaction with two radiation fields. Sci. China Phys. Mech. Astron. 56, 1478–1486 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-013-5158-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-013-5158-6

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