Bilitewski Thomas, Orioli Asier Piñeiro, Sanner Christian, Sonderhouse Lindsay, Hutson Ross B, Yan Lingfeng, Milner William R, Ye Jun, Rey Ana Maria
JILA, National Institute of Standards and Technology and Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
Center for Theory of Quantum Matter, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
Phys Rev Lett. 2022 Mar 4;128(9):093001. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.093001.
The observation of Pauli blocking of atomic spontaneous decay via direct measurements of the atomic population requires the use of long-lived atomic gases where quantum statistics, atom recoil, and cooperative radiative processes are all relevant. We develop a theoretical framework capable of simultaneously accounting for all these effects in the many-body quantum degenerate regime. We apply it to atoms in a single 2D pancake or arrays of pancakes featuring an effective Λ level structure (one excited and two degenerate ground states). We identify a parameter window in which a factor of 2 extension in the atomic lifetime clearly attributable to Pauli blocking should be experimentally observable in deeply degenerate gases with ∼10^{3} atoms. We experimentally observe a suppressed excited-state decay rate, fully consistent with the theory prediction of an enhanced excited-state lifetime, on the ^{1}S_{0}-^{3}P_{1} transition in ^{87}Sr atoms.
通过直接测量原子布居来观测泡利阻塞对原子自发衰变的影响，需要使用长寿命原子气体，其中量子统计、原子反冲和协同辐射过程都起着重要作用。我们建立了一个理论框架，能够同时考虑多体量子简并区域中的所有这些效应。我们将其应用于具有有效Λ能级结构（一个激发态和两个简并基态）的单个二维薄盘状或薄盘阵列中的原子。我们确定了一个参数窗口，在这个窗口中，在具有约10³个原子的深度简并气体中，实验上应该可以观测到原子寿命因泡利阻塞而明显延长两倍的情况。我们通过实验观测到了激发态衰变率的抑制，这与理论预测的⁸⁷Sr原子¹S₀ - ³P₁跃迁激发态寿命增强完全一致。
