English

Quantum versus classical dynamics in the optical centrifuge

Quantum Physics 2018-02-09 v4 Atomic and Molecular Clusters

Abstract

The interplay between classical and quantum mechanical evolution in the optical centrifuge (OC) is discussed. The analysis is based on the quantum mechanical formalism starting from either the ground state or a thermal ensemble. Two resonant mechanisms are identified, i.e. the classical autoresonance and the quantum mechanical ladder-climbing, yielding different dynamics and rotational excitation efficiencies. The rotating wave approximation is used to analyze the two resonant regimes in the associated dimensionless two-parameter space and calculate the OC excitation efficiency. The results show good agreement between numerical simulations and theory and are relevant to existing experimental setups.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1707.02896,
  title  = {Quantum versus classical dynamics in the optical centrifuge},
  author = {Tsafrir Armon and Lazar Friedland},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1707.02896},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

Corrected a minor Typo In table 1, the right cell of the row matching \Delta l = 2, \Delta m = 0 (third row from the top). Simulations were carried out with the correct value, and no other aspects of the manuscript were affected

R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:42:34.179Z