Zhang Ping, Kang Qianqian, Pei Yumiao, Wang Zhaoyuan, Hu Yi, Chen Zhigang, Xu Jingjun
The MOE Key Laboratory of Weak-Light Nonlinear Photonics, TEDA Applied Physics Institute and School of Physics, Nankai University, Tianjin 300457, China.
Department of Physics and Astronomy, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California 94132, USA.
Phys Rev Lett. 2020 Sep 18;125(12):123201. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.123201.
Rabi oscillation, originally proposed in nuclear magnetic resonance, is a well-known phenomenon associated with a driven two-level system. Although magnetic fields typically can bring about chirality into unusual phenomena such as chiral edge states in the quantum Hall effect, it is not clear if chirality exists in Rabi oscillations. Here we unveil the intrinsic chirality carried by the phase in a Rabi problem. For opposite detuning of the driving field, the phase evolution of the probability amplitude exhibits a mirror symmetry. Consequently, constructive or destructive interference of two off-resonant Rabi processes under different initial conditions is level dependent and symmetry protected. Experimentally, we demonstrate such features in a photonic setting with adjustable detuning, yet our results may prove pertinent to the study of similar phenomena in other driven two-level systems beyond photonics.
拉比振荡最初是在核磁共振中提出的，是与受驱动二能级系统相关的一种著名现象。尽管磁场通常可以在诸如量子霍尔效应中的手性边缘态等异常现象中引入手性，但尚不清楚拉比振荡中是否存在手性。在此，我们揭示了拉比问题中由相位携带的内在手性。对于驱动场的相反失谐，概率幅的相位演化呈现镜像对称。因此，在不同初始条件下两个非共振拉比过程的相长或相消干涉取决于能级且受对称性保护。在实验中，我们在具有可调失谐的光子学环境中展示了此类特征，然而我们的结果可能证明与光子学之外的其他受驱动二能级系统中类似现象的研究相关。
