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# Cosmic Ray Antiprotons

## 1 General Properties of Cosmic Rays

Cosmic rays are high-energy $`p`$, $`\overline{p}`$, nuclei, and $`e^\pm `$ in interplanetary and interstellar (IS) space. The dominant component consists of protons (hydrogen H) with a smaller admixture of heavier nuclei, especially He (Figure 1). Antiprotons $`(\overline{p})`$ occur at an abundance of $`10^{4,5}`$ times that of $`p`$. These energetic particles, with kinetic energy $`K>`$ 10 MeV, are Galactic in origin, not to be confused with the much denser solar wind plasma, with much lower $`K`$, streaming from the Sun.111Also ignored here are “pickup ions” or anomalous Galactic cosmic rays, neutral IS atoms which drift into the solar system and are then ionized by solar UV radiation.

The relative element abundances in cosmic rays (CRs) indicate they originate in the IS medium, where they are ionized and accelerated, probably by supernova shocks. (Recent measurements all but rule out an origin in supernova ejecta proper.) Such accelerated, pre-existing nuclei are CR primaries Once accelerated to high energies, the primaries induce the production of further CRs, the secondaries, in the IS medium and at local sites in the Galaxy. (The terms “primaries” and “secondaries” are also used in a completely different sense: CR primaries are the CRs that strike the top of the Earth’s atmosphere, the secondaries the induced CR shower propagating into the lower atmosphere.) Secondaries include $`e^+`$, $`\overline{p}`$, and certain nuclear isotopes. As some of these isotopes are unstable, their populations must be continually replenished to maintain their observed abundances.

### 1.1 Cosmic Ray Antiprotons

Standard secondary CR antiprotons are produced by the process $`pA\overline{p}X`$, with $`p`$ = high-energy CR, $`A`$ = IS medium nucleus of atomic weight $`A`$, and $`X`$ = anything consistent with charge and baryon number $`(B)`$ conservation. The threshold channel is $`pAp\overline{p}pA`$, with threshold $`E_p`$ = $`(3+4/A)m_p`$. (The nucleus $`A`$ can break up without significantly changing the dynamics.) The dominant case is H, $`A`$ = 1, with threshold $`E_p`$ = $`7m_p`$. The only other significant contribution comes from He target nuclei. By number, the IS medium is $``$ 93% H and 7% He.

The secondary $`\overline{p}`$’s subsequently propagate in the Galaxy and are subject to a variety of elastic (scattering, including energy-loss) and inelastic (annihilation and extra-Galactic leakage) processes. Leakage is the dominant loss; the Galactic storage time $``$ 13 Myr as inferred from the abundance of unstable CR isotopes. Energy loss shifts the $`\overline{p}`$ spectrum without changing their number. Some uncertainty is unavoidable in models of Galactic propagation, including H and He abundances, as well as the Galaxy’s highly tangled, stochastic magnetic field $`B_{\mathrm{Gal}}`$ 0.3 nT and small wind $`V_{\mathrm{Gal}}\begin{array}{c}<\\ \end{array}`$ 20 km sec-1 (a superposition of many stellar and supernova winds) . The field and wind control the diffusion of CRs into intergalactic space and are fairly well constrained by measurements of unstable CR isotopes. But more complicated transport mechanisms are possible, including reacceleration shocks and variation of the Galactic geometry.

The CR fluxes measured at the top of the Earth’s atmosphere are modulated by their transport through the heliosphere, the Sun’s magnetic sphere of influence (Figure 2). The heliosphere consists of a solar wind $`(V_W`$ 400 km sec-1 along the ecliptic plane, 700-800 km sec-1 along the solar axes) of $`e^{}`$ and nuclei (mainly $`p)`$ carrying the embedded magnetic field $`B_{}`$ (Figure 2). Near the Sun, the field falls off with heliocentric distance $`r`$ as $`r^2`$, arising from frozen field flux transported radially outwards. Since the Sun rotates, however, the field is twisted into an Archimedean or Parker spiral, and the field is predominantly azimuthal in the outer solar system, falling off more softly as $`r^1`$. At one AU (AU = 149.5 Mkm, the Earth’s orbit), the heliomagnetic field strength $`B_{}`$ 5 nT.

The CRs gyrate around the local $`𝐁`$ field lines. The solar field is not fully deterministic, however: it is modified by episodic (practically random) shocks that cause the CRs to diffuse along and across field lines, especially at times of solar magnetic maximum (currently 2000-01 and periodically about every 11 years, when the heliomagnetic field changes sign). In addition, the wind both imposes a macroscopic convective drift and performs work on the CRs (adiabatic deceleration), lowering their energies as they fight “upstream” into the inner solar system. A realistic prediction of Earth-measured CR fluxes must include these mechanisms, which are particularly important at lower $`K`$ and affect oppositely-charged CRs differently.  Heliospheric in situ measurements have been ongoing for four decades and have recently become much better with the IMP and Ulysses space probes.

### 1.2 Exotic Sources of Cosmic Ray Antiprotons

The density of IS matter $`n_\mathrm{H}`$ 1 H atom cm-3 and the known spectrum and abundance of CR $`p`$ primaries fix the predicted spectrum and abundance of $`\overline{p}`$ secondaries, if the $`pA\overline{p}X`$ cross section $`\sigma (\overline{p})`$ is known.  Let $`Q_{\overline{p}}(K)`$ be the differential production rate (antiprotons cm-3 MeV-1 sec-1); schematically,

$$Q_{\overline{p}}(K)=𝑑K^{}n_p(K^{})v(p)n_\mathrm{H}𝑑\sigma (pp\overline{p};K,K^{})/𝑑K^{}.$$
(1)
The $`pp`$ process has been measured in laboratory experiments, and the $`p+`$He case can be inferred from the $`pp`$ cross section (but see subsection 3.2). The differential $`\overline{p}`$ abundance $`n_{\overline{p}}(K)`$ (antiprotons cm-3 MeV-1) is related to $`Q_{\overline{p}}(K)`$ by $`n_{\overline{p}}(K)`$ = $`\tau _{\mathrm{eff}}(K)Q_{\overline{p}}(K)`$, where the effective Galactic residence time

$$\frac{1}{\tau _{\mathrm{eff}}(K)}=\frac{1}{\tau _{\mathrm{leak}}(K)}+\frac{1}{\tau _{\mathrm{ann}}(K)}+\mathrm{},$$
(2)
summing over all loss mechanisms. The sum is dominated by the first term, the extra-Galactic diffusion rate. The measured CR $`\overline{p}`$ flux is then related to $`n_{\overline{p}}(K)`$ through the transformation by heliospheric transport. Variation of Galactic transport mechanisms modifies $`\tau _{\mathrm{eff}}(K)`$. This picture is the basis for the simple Leaky Box Model. A more complex picture, with explicit spatial dependence on Galactic geometry (inhomogeneous leaky disk model = ILDM), is possible and indeed necessary, because of measurements of Galactic plane cosmic ray synchrotron radiation mapping the IS CR distribution.

The cross section $`\sigma (\overline{p})`$ has a crucial property arising from its threshold at $`E_p`$ = 7$`m_p`$ (Figure 3). The spectrum of outgoing $`\overline{p}`$’s rises sharply from $`K_{\overline{p}}`$ = 0. Since $`n_p(K)`$ falls off rapidly (as $`K_p^{2.75})`$, $`n_{\overline{p}}(K)`$ falls off similarly at high $`K_{\overline{p}}`$, leaving a $`\overline{p}`$ secondary spectrum with a sharp rise to a peak at $`K`$ 2 GeV and falling off above that. The lower threshold for He targets enhances the low-$`K`$ spectrum somewhat.

Although the secondary $`\overline{p}`$ spectrum must be there, its presence does not rule out non-standard $`\overline{p}`$ sources, so-called “exotic primaries”. These would add to the predicted secondary flux in total number. More crucially, they can also change the shape of the $`\overline{p}`$ spectrum, particularly at low $`K`$, as well the fall-off for $`K\begin{array}{c}>\\ \end{array}`$ 3 GeV. Cosmologically significant amounts of antimatter are strongly disfavored.  Instead, the most logical sources for trace amounts of exotic primary $`\overline{p}`$ would be annihilating or decaying dark matter remnants in the halo of our Galaxy. Popular models feature annihilating supersymmetric (SUSY) dark matter  (WIMPs, assumed to be the LSP = lightest SUSY particle, usually neutralinos $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }^0`$) or decaying primordial black holes.  The predictions depend on model details,  but both have roughly flat $`\overline{p}`$ production spectra as $`K`$ 0 and a non-standard fall-off with $`K`$ at high energies. Such signals can only be seen if the exotic primaries compete in number with standard secondaries. A general range of exotic SUSY $`\overline{p}`$ production (Figure 4) exhibits the dramatic modification of the low-$`K`$ $`\overline{p}`$ spectrum possible in SUSY CDM models of the Galactic halo for smaller neutralino mass.

SUSY halo dark matter $`\overline{p}`$’s (from $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }^0q\overline{q}`$, Figure 5a) requires sufficient abundance and a large enough annihilation cross section to be seen, in turn implying WIMP masses $`\begin{array}{c}<\\ \end{array}`$ few 100 GeV and $`\sigma (\mathrm{ann})v(\mathrm{WIMP})`$ 0.1 pb. (Production of heavier WIMPs is suppressed in the Big Bang with with increasing mass.) The hadronic shower evolves finally into $`p`$’s, $`\overline{p}`$’s, $`e^\pm `$, $`\nu `$’s, and $`\gamma `$’s. WIMP annihilation is natural in minimal SUSY models with conserved $`R`$-parity. An extension of minimal SUSY allows $`R`$-parity violation, in turn allowing the LSPs to decay to ordinary matter, violating lepton and/or baryon number (Figure 5b). This mechanism could open another source of CR $`\overline{p}`$’s. In a semi-realistic scenario,  lepton number violation is dominant, leading in the end to excess (anti)neutrinos. An exciting possible signal of annihilating or decaying CDM in the Galactic halo is suggested by the Galactic gamma ray maps of the orbiting Compton Gamma Ray Observatory’s EGRET telescope (Figure 6).

Primordial black holes (PBHs) are postulated to have been produced very early in the hot Big Bang, in the quantum gravity era.  They evaporate in turn by the Hawking process, as their temperatures rise, and can produce significant $`p`$’s and $`\overline{p}`$’s at a late time when $`T_{\mathrm{BH}}\begin{array}{c}>\\ \end{array}`$ $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$. The relic PBH density and $`\overline{p}`$ production rate have been estimated.

### 1.3 Intrinsic Properties of Antimatter: CPT Symmetry

Cosmic ray $`\overline{p}`$’s also give us a window on the intrinsic properties of antimatter. These properties should be the same or charge-conjugated from the corresponding matter by the CPT (charge-conjugation, parity- and time-reversal) symmetry of local relativistic quantum field theory (LRQFT). Some $`\overline{p}`$ properties have been checked in the laboratory directly. These include the mass, charge, magnetic moment, and the neutrality of hydrogen and antihydrogen.

More difficult to limit is the decay lifetime of $`\overline{p}`$’s. Not enough antimatter can be gathered into a detector for long enough to produce lifetime limits on antimatter competitive with the limits for matter. Astrophysical processes partially ameliorate this difficulty. The Galactic storage time for $`\overline{p}`$’s $``$ 10 Myr, and intrinsic $`\overline{p}`$ decay would modify the Galactic residence time $`\tau _{\mathrm{eff}}`$ . If the decay lifetime is short enough (taking Lorentz dilation into account), the $`\overline{p}`$ spectrum is significantly distorted. The shape and normalization of the $`\overline{p}`$ spectrum then place a lower limit on $`\tau _{\overline{p}}`$

Laboratory limits have been obtained for the $`\overline{p}`$ lifetime. Earlier limits include the LEAR Collaboration at the CERN $`\overline{p}`$ storage ring $`(\tau _{\overline{p}}>`$ 0.08 yr) and the antihydrogen Penning trap of Gabrielse et al. $`(\tau _{\overline{p}}>`$ 0.28 yr).  The best current laboratory limit is that of the APEX Collaboration at the Fermilab $`\overline{p}`$ storage ring $`(\tau _{\overline{p}}>`$ 50 kyr for $`\overline{p}\mu ^{}X`$ and 300 kyr for $`e^{}\gamma `$).  A proposed APEX II experiment would be able to reach $`\overline{p}`$ lifetime limits of 1–10 Myr, comparable to the cosmic ray limit.222All lifetime limits quoted here are at 90% C.L.

Since the CPT symmetry holds in LRQFT under the assumptions of Poincaré invariance, locality, microcausality, and vacuum uniqueness, modification of basic physics would be necessary to break it.  Within QFT, an extensive formalism and phenomenology of Lorentz and CPT violation has been developed by Kostelecký and collaborators.  String theory at first glance might seem to provide a natural way to violate locality, but perturbative string dynamics has been shown to preserve CPT in the field theory target space after compactification.  Non-perturbative string effects associated with compactification may evade this result.  Extended quantum mechanics, with non-unitary time evolution, violates CPT in general, by violating locality and/or Poincaré symmetry. Controversial proposals of non-unitary evolution have been put forward as natural consequences of quantum gravity and information loss in the presence of spacetime horizons.  Non-unitary effects have been powerfully limited in the very well-measured $`K^0`$$`\overline{K}^0`$ system  (to a few parts in $`10^{16}`$), but not well at all in other systems, particularly baryons.

The most plausible source of CPT violation lies beyond the Planck scale, based on strings or some other quantum theory of gravity, because of the necessary generalization beyond global Poincaré symmetry. Typically such effects are thought of as suppressed by the large Planck mass $`M_{\mathrm{Pl}}10^{19}`$ GeV. But if gravity is fundamentally associated with “large” extra dimensions acting at mass scales as low as 1 TeV,  the CPT-violating mechanisms may not be that suppressed at accessible energies.

## 2 Measurements of Cosmic Ray Antiprotons

Detection of CR antiprotons has gone through three distinct phases, following the proposal of Gaisser and Levy to search for $`\overline{p}`$ secondaries.  All but recent space-based experiments have been mounted on high-altitude balloons. The measurements are conventionally quoted as the $`\overline{p}/p`$ ratio of fluxes, convenient because a number of theoretical and experimental uncertainties cancel: the overall IS primary $`p`$ flux normalization uncertainty, the overall detector flux normalization uncertainty, and (at $`K\begin{array}{c}>\\ \end{array}`$ 500 MeV) diffusive modulation of both fluxes (see below).

The first two Western experiments (those of Golden et al. and Buffington et al.) detected $`\overline{p}`$ signals at a level higher than the standard secondary prediction.  These early experiments detected $`\overline{p}`$’s by energy calorimetry (the deceleration and annihilation of the $`\overline{p}`$’s in the balloon), but lacked definite identification by a magnetic spectrometer. Of particular concern is the background of kaons in the detector, as $`m_K\begin{array}{c}<\\ \end{array}m_p`$.

Stimulated by the possibility of an excess of CR $`\overline{p}`$’s, a number of groups completed measurements in the 1970s and 1980s with better particle identification. The PBAR and LEAP groups established upper limits on the CR $`\overline{p}`$ flux contradicting the first-generation experiments.  Roughly contemporaneous, the Soviet group of Bogomolov et al. reported three flux measurements (from the periods 1972-77, 1984-85, and 1986-88) consistent with standard secondary predictions.

### 2.1 Abundance & Spectrum of Antiprotons

The third generation of experiments came in the 1990s and included markedly better particle detection by magnetic spectrometer, of quality comparable to accelerator experiments. From 1991 to 1997, the MASS (1991), IMAX (1992), CAPRICE (1994), and BESS (1993, 1995, 1997) collaborations have made clean measurements of the CR $`\overline{p}`$ flux with low backgrounds.

The analysis presented here in based on all refereed and published measurements not contradicted by later measurements with better detectors (Table 1).  Figure 7 shows the selected measurements compared with the ILDM prediction for IS fluxes. The disagreement evident in the figure is explicable by heliospheric modulation. Figure 8 compares the modulated ILDM predictions with the measured fluxes. This figure makes the comparison by renormalizing the measured fluxes to a single epoch (July 1995, chosen as roughly the most recent heliomagnetic minimum) and using the prediction for that epoch. Our analysis did not use measurements with $`K<`$ 500 MeV because of the large and difficult-to-calculate diffusion modulation in that energy range.

### 2.2 Implications

The most basic result implied by Table 1 and Figure 8 is the standard $`\overline{p}`$ secondary flux alone, from a realistic ILDM, can account for the observed flux in the relevant energy range, within uncertainties. If variant Galactic transport mechanisms (such as reacceleration or shrouded sources ) or exotic $`\overline{p}`$ sources are at work in this $`K`$ range, their effects are too small to see at this time. (A hint of reacceleration may be visible in the range $`K`$ 2–5 GeV by distortion of the spectrum evident in Figure 8, but the effect is not significant within uncertainties.) A second, less obvious, result is a limit on the intrinsic decay lifetime of the antiproton: $`\tau _{\overline{p}}>`$ 0.8 Myr, the best limit currently feasible. While the exclusion of the $`K<`$ 500 MeV spectrum does not significantly affect the $`\tau _{\overline{p}}`$ limit, it does limit conclusions about the absence of exotic $`\overline{p}`$ sources, as these would have their largest effect relative to the standard secondaries precisely at such low $`K`$.

A short $`\overline{p}`$ lifetime $`\tau _{\overline{p}}\begin{array}{c}<\\ \end{array}`$ 10 Myr (Galactic CR storage time) would of course indicate CPT violation. The two pictures of CPT violation introduced in subsection 1.3 are: modification of LRQFT within ordinary quantum mechanics, and non-standard quantum mechanics (NSQM) with non-unitary time evolution. If only one new mass scale is relevant to the CPT violation, lower limits can be placed on such scales. In Table 2, the limiting CPT-violating scales associated with modified QFT $`(M_X)`$ and NSQM $`(M_Y)`$ are shown, assuming $`\tau _{\overline{p}}`$ = 10 Myr. The $`\overline{p}`$ lifetime is assumed related to each scale by simple mass dimensions. For modified QFT, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\overline{p}}`$ = $`m_p(m_p/M_X)^n`$; while for NSQM, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\overline{p}}`$ = $`(m_p/2)(m_p/M_Y)^k`$. It is interesting to note that the largest $`M_X`$ lower bound is $`𝒪(M_{\mathrm{Pl}})`$, while the scales of order the “intermediate” scale $`(10^8`$$`10^{12}`$ GeV) are possible, as well as scales $``$ TeV. The last scale may not be unreasonably low in the context of “large” extra dimensional gravity.

## 3 Future Developments and Prospects

Uncertainties intrinsic to cosmic ray analysis will probably limit deduction of antimatter properties to about the level already achieved. But the search for exotic sources of primary $`\overline{p}`$’s is still open, especially at low energy.

### 3.1 More and Better Measurements

Future measurement of the medium energy range $`(K`$ = 0.5–10 GeV) will define that part of the spectrum better, but it the spectral shape at the two extremes that is critical for exotic $`\overline{p}`$ searches.

A number of experiments have already taken recent data not yet published. These include the CAPRICE (1998) and HEAT (1999) balloons, as well as the prototype AMS (1998) and PAMELA (1995 and 1997) systems tested on Space Shuttle STS-91 and the Mir space station, respectively.  These experiments can and have searched for positrons and $`A>`$ 1 antinuclei as well. The HEAT-$`\overline{p}`$99 data are especially of interest because of their large energy range ($`K`$ = 4–50 GeV).

The PAMELA instrument, after being tested in prototype on the Mir space station, is scheduled to fly on an unmanned satellite (the Russian-Italian Resurs-Arktika 4) for three years, starting in 2002.  It can detect $`e^+`$, $`\overline{p}`$, and $`\overline{\mathrm{He}}`$ at a relative sensitivity of better than one part in $`10^7`$ over a range $`K`$ = 0.1–150 GeV. The full AMS instrument is scheduled for the International Space Station Alpha starting in 2005, also for three years, with an antiparticle/antinucleus sensitivity of one part in $`10^6`$ for $`E>`$ 5 GeV.

The MASS91 collaboration have also reanalyzed their data and released a new version divided into three energy bins, instead of one.  These three experiments (MASS91, HEAT, and PAMELA) will decisively address the paucity of data at the highest energies and define the spectrum in that range.

### 3.2 Production & Propagation: Importance of the Low-Energy Spectrum

The low-energy range is already being mapped out by the BESS experiment, in particular in the 1995 and 1997 data sets. Repeated, reliable measurement of the low-energy spectrum is the most important task in the contemporary period of $`\overline{p}`$ measurements, followed closely by reliable measurement of the high-energy fall-off. The presence of exotic primary $`\overline{p}`$’s in this range should be detectable with the current or next generation of experiments.

The main obstacles to conclusive limits on a non-standard $`\overline{p}`$ flux at low energy are now theoretical. There are two crucial effects needing clarification for such a signal to be found or ruled out. The first is the “subthreshold” $`\overline{p}`$ production on IS He-4 target nuclei. The status of previous estimates of this effect  has been changed in the last decade by laboratory measurements of the $`\overline{p}`$ production on heavy target nuclei,  providing evidence for a scaling relation between the $`A>`$ 1 and $`A`$ = 1 cases. Recent calculations  have begun to take account of these data, and further work is under way to develop a simple nuclear model.

The second is providing a complete heliospheric modulation calculation that includes diffusion, as well as the wind and magnetic drift. The present gap in the literature is defined on one side by thorough modulation calculations applied to low-energy CRs $`(K<`$ 100 MeV)  and on the other by accurate modulation done at higher energies $`(K>`$ 500 MeV) without diffusion.  Approximate calculations without magnetic drift are available,  but the charge-dependent magnetic drift is essential to predicting the $`\overline{p}/p`$ ratio correctly. A full calculation covering $`K\begin{array}{c}<\\ \end{array}`$ 100 MeV to 500 MeV is essential to proper interpretation of the BESS data.

Cosmic ray antimatter measurements are undergoing exciting developments that will define much of our future understanding of the composition of our Galaxy and of basic symmetries of Nature. Perhaps within 10 years, precise cosmic ray measurements will be a mature subject, along with the ripening of other types of particle astrophysics.

## Acknowledgments

The author thanks the PASCOS 99 meeting organizers at UC Davis for the opportunity to present these results, based on work done in collaboration with Stephen Geer (Fermilab). This work was supported by the U.S. DOE under grants DE-FG02-97ER41029 (Univ. Florida) and DE-AC02-76CH03000 (Fermilab), NASA under grant NAG5-2788 (Fermilab), and the Institute for Fundamental Theory at the Univ. Florida, and was greatly enhanced by conversations with J. .R. Jokipii (Lunar & Planetary Laboratory, Univ. Arizona), E. J. Smith (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), V. A. Kostelecký (Indiana Univ.), and M. Kamionkowski (CalTech). The author is also grateful to the NASA/Fermilab Theoretical Astrophysics group and the Telluride Summer Research Center for their hospitality.


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# An NMR-based nanostructure switch for quantum logic

\[

## Abstract

We propose a nanostructure switch based on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) which offers reliable quantum gate operation, an essential ingredient for building a quantum computer. The nuclear resonance is controlled by the magic number transitions of a few-electron quantum dot in an external magnetic field.

\]

Quantum superposition and entanglement are currently being exploited to create powerful new computational algorithms in the growing field of quantum information processing. A major question for condensed matter physics is whether a solid-state quantum computer can ever be built. There are at least two basic requirements which must be met by any candidate designs: First is the ability to perform single quantum bit (qubit) rotations as well as two-qubit controlled operations, i.e. quantum gates. Second, the individual qubits should have a long decoherence time. Of utmost importance, therefore, is the identification of a solid-state system which can be used to represent the qubits.

Nuclei with spin $`\frac{1}{2}`$ are natural qubits for quantum information processing as compared to electrons, since they have a far longer decoherence time: indeed they have been used in bulk liquid NMR experiments to perform some basic quantum algorithms like those of Deutsch and Grover. Their exceptionally low decoherence rates allow implementation of quantum gates by applying a sequence of radio-frequency pulses. Nuclear spins have already been employed in some solid-state proposals, for example that of Kane  where a set of donor atoms (like P) is embedded in pure silicon. Here, the qubit is represented by the nuclear spin of the donor atom and single qubit and Controlled-Not (CNOT) operations might then be achieved between neighbor nuclei by attaching electric gates on top and between the donor atoms. Another proposal suggests controlling the hyperfine electron-nuclear interaction via the excitation of the electron gas in quantum Hall systems . Both of these proposals, however, require the attachment of electrodes or gates to the sample in order to manipulate the nuclear spin qubit. Such electrodes are likely to have an invasive effect on the coherent evolution of the qubit, thereby destroying quantum information.

In this paper we present a new solid-state based proposal in which a nuclear spin is coupled, not with an electron gas, but with a reduced number of electrons in a quantum dot (QD). Our proposal avoids the complications associated with voltage gates or electron transport by providing an all-optical system. The nuclear resonance is controlled by exploiting the abrupt ground-state (so-called ‘magic number’) transitions which arise in a few-electron QD as a function of external magnetic field. The proposal was inspired by recent experimental results which demonstrated the optical detection of an NMR signal in both single QDs  and doped bulk semiconductors. The experimental dots were formed by interface fluctuations in GaAs/GaAlAs quantum wells. The NMR signal from constituent Ga and As nuclei was optically detected via excitonic recombination, exploiting the hyperfine coupling between the electronic and nuclear systems. Hence the underlying nuclear spins in the QD can indeed be controlled with optical techniques, via the electron-nucleus coupling. In addition, the experimental results of Ashoori et al.  and others, have demonstrated that few electron (i.e. $`N2`$) dots can be prepared, and their magic number transitions measured as a function of magnetic field. The requirements for the present proposal are therefore compatible with current experimental capabilities.

Consider a silicon-based $`N`$electron QD in which a 13C impurity atom (nuclear spin $`\frac{1}{2}`$) is placed at the center . Ordinary silicon (28Si) has zero nuclear spin, hence it is possible to construct the QD such that no nuclear spins are present other than that carried by the carbon nucleus. Since carbon is an isoelectronic impurity in silicon, no Coulomb field is generated by this impurity. Hence the electronic structure of the bare QD is essentially unperturbed by the presence of the carbon atom. Suppose the quantum dot is quasi two-dimensional (2D) and contains $`N=2`$ electrons. An external perpendicular magnetic field $`B`$ is applied. The lateral confining potential in such quasi-2D QDs is typically parabolic to a good approximation: the electrons, with effective mass $`m^{}`$, are confined to the $`z=0`$ plane with lateral confinement $`\frac{1}{2}m^{}\omega _0^2r^2`$. Repulsion between electrons is modelled by an inverse-square interaction $`\alpha r^2`$ which leads to the same ground-state physics as a bare Coulomb interaction $`r^1`$ : moreover, such a non-Coulomb form may  actually be more realistic due to the presence of image charges . Any many-valley effects due to the band structure of silicon should be small and will be ignored. In the effective mass approximation, the Hamiltonian is:

$`H=H_{2e}+C{\displaystyle \underset{\nu =1}{\overset{2}{}}}𝑰𝑺_\nu \delta (𝒓_\nu )\gamma _nBI_Z+{\displaystyle \underset{\nu =1}{\overset{2}{}}}\gamma _eBS_{\nu ,Z}\text{,}`$ (1)
where the electron-nucleus hyperfine interaction strength is given by $`C=\frac{8\pi }{3}\gamma _e\gamma _n\mathrm{}^2|\varphi (z=0)|^2`$, with $`\varphi (z=0)`$ the single-electron wavefunction evaluated at the QD plane, $`\gamma _e`$ ($`\gamma _n`$) is the electronic (nuclear) gyromagnetic ratio and $`𝑺_\nu `$ ($`𝑰`$) is the electron (nuclear) spin polarization. The electron location in the QD plane is denoted by the 2D vector $`𝒓_\nu `$. The first term represents the two-electron QD with a perpendicular $`B`$field, the second is the Fermi contact hyperfine coupling of the nuclear spin with the electron spin, and the last two terms give the nuclear and the electron-spin Zeeman energies. Following Ref. , $`H_{2e}`$ split up into commuting center-of-mass (CM) motion and relative motion ($`rel`$) contributions, for which exact eigenvalues and eigenvectors can be obtained analytically. The total energy is $`E=E_{CM}+E_{rel}+E_{spin}`$. The electron-electron interaction only affects $`E_{rel}`$.

The eigenstates of $`H`$ can be labelled as $`|I_Z;N,M;n,m;S,S_Z`$, where $`N`$and $`M`$($`n`$and $`m`$) are the Landau and angular momentum numbers for the CM (relative motion) coordinates; $`S`$ and $`S_Z`$ represent the total electron spin and its $`z`$-component, while $`I_Z`$ represents the $`z`$-component of the carbon nuclear spin. Consider the two-electron system in its ground state, i.e. $`N=M=0`$, $`n=0`$; $`m`$ determines the orbital symmetry while $`S=0,1`$ represents the singlet and triplet states respectively. The overall spin eigenstates have the form $`|I_Z;S,S_Z_m`$. For a given electron ground state orbital, the spin Hamiltonian matrix elements are:

$`H_S`$ $`=\frac{C}{2}`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{\nu =1}{\overset{2}{}}}\{\delta _{I_Z,}\delta _{I_Z^{},+}S^{},S_Z^{}\left|𝑺_{\nu ,}\right|S,S_Z+`$ (5)
$`\delta _{I_Z,+}\delta _{I_Z^{},}S^{},S_Z^{}\left|𝑺_{\nu ,+}\right|S,S_Z+`$
$`I_Z\delta _{I_ZI_Z^{}}S^{},S_Z^{}\left|𝑺_{\nu ,Z}\right|S,S_Z\}m|\delta (𝒓_\nu )|m+`$
$`H_{Zeeman}\text{,}`$
where $`H_{Zeeman}`$ is the Zeeman term. In the presence of the $`B`$field, the low-lying energy levels all have $`n=0`$ and $`m<0`$. The relative angular momentum $`m`$ of the two-electron ground state jumps in value with increasing $`B`$ (see Refs.  and ). The particular sequence of $`m`$ values depends on the electron spin because of the overall antisymmetry of the two-electron wavefunction . For example, only odd values of $`m`$ arise if the $`B`$field is sufficiently large for the spin wavefunction to be symmetric (the spatial wavefunction is then antisymmetric). These transitions, obtained analytically within our inverse-square model, yield the same sequence of transitions as for the Coulomb interaction. The electron-nucleus coupling depends on the wavefunction value at the nucleus and hence on $`m`$. The jumps in $`m`$ will therefore cause jumps in the amount of hyperfine splitting in the nuclear spin of the carbon atom.

The nuclear spin$``$electron spin effective coupling affecting the resonance frequency $`\omega _{_{NMR}}`$ of the carbon nucleus is given by $`m\left|\delta (𝒓_\nu )\right|m\mathrm{\Delta }_{m,\nu }`$, where

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_{m,\nu }=𝑑𝑹𝑑𝒓\mathrm{\Psi }_{2e}^{}(𝑹,𝒓)\delta (𝒓_\nu )\mathrm{\Psi }_{2e}(𝑹,𝒓)\text{ .}$$
(6)
Here $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{2e}(𝐑,𝐫)=\xi _{N,M}(𝐑)\zeta _{n,m}(𝐫)`$ where $`\xi _{N,M}(𝐑)`$ ($`\zeta _{n,m}(𝐫)`$) is the center-of-mass (relative) wavefunction . A straightforward calculation gives $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{m,\nu }\mathrm{\Delta }(m)`$ where

$$\mathrm{\Delta }(m)=\frac{1}{\pi l^22^{1+\mu _m}}\text{ .}$$
(7)
Here $`l=\sqrt{\mathrm{}/m^{}\omega }`$ is the effective magnetic length, the effective frequency is given by $`\omega =\sqrt{\omega _c^2+4\omega _0^2}`$, $`\omega _c=eB/m^{}`$ is the cyclotron frequency. The term $`\mu _m=\left(m^2+\frac{\alpha /l_0^2}{\mathrm{}\omega _0}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}`$ absorbs the effects of the electron-electron interaction and $`l_0=\sqrt{\mathrm{}/m^{}\omega _0}`$ is the oscillator length. Hence, the effective spin Hamiltonian $`H_S`$ (Eq. (2)) has the form

$$H_S=A(m)\left[(I__+S_{_{}}+I_{_{}}S__+)+2I__ZS__Z\right]\gamma _nBI__Z+\gamma _eBS__Z$$
(8)
where $`A(m)=\frac{1}{2}C\mathrm{\Delta }(m)`$ represents a $`B`$dependent hyperfine coupling. We note that the first term of the hyperfine interaction in Eq. (5) corresponds to the dynamic part responsible for nuclear-electron flip-flop spin transitions while the second term describes the static shift of the electronic and nuclear spin energy levels.

Electrons in the singlet state ($`S`$ = $`0`$) are uncoupled to the nucleus. In this case, the nuclear resonance frequency is given by the undoped-QD NMR signal $`\omega _{_{NMR,0}}=\gamma _nB`$. For electron triplet states, the nuclear resonance signal corresponds to a transition where the electron spin is unaffected by a radio-frequency excitation pulse whereas the nuclear spin experiences a flip. This occurs for the transition between states $`|;1,1`$ and $`|\mathrm{\Psi }=c_1|+;1,1+c_2|;1,0`$. The coefficients $`c_1`$ and $`c_2`$ can be obtained analytically by diagonalizing the Hamiltonian given in Eq. (5) . Hence

$`h\omega _{_{NMR}}={\displaystyle \frac{3A(m)}{2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(\gamma _n\gamma _e\right)B+`$ (9)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left[\left[A(m)+\left(\gamma _n+\gamma _e\right)B\right]^2+8A^2(m)\right]^{\frac{1}{2}}.`$ (10)
Since $`\gamma _e>>\gamma _n`$, $`h\omega _{_{NMR}}\gamma _nB+2A(m)`$ which illustrates the dependence of the NMR signal on the effective $`B`$dependent hyperfine interaction.

Figure 1 shows the effective coupling $`\mathrm{\Delta }(m)`$ between the two-electron gas and nucleus as a function of the ratio between the cyclotron frequency and the harmonic oscillator frequency. (The CM is in its ground state). For silicon, $`C/l_0^2=60MHz`$. For $`B`$-field values where the electron ground state is a spin singlet ($`m`$ even) no coupling is present. The strength of the effective coupling decreases as the $`B`$field increases due to the larger spatial extension of the relative wavefunction at higher $`m`$ values, i.e. the electron density at the centre of the dot becomes smaller. The $`B`$field provides a very sensitive control parameter for controlling the electron-nucleus effective interaction. In particular, we note the large abrupt variation of $`\mathrm{\Delta }(m)`$ for $`\frac{\omega _c}{\omega _0}2.1`$ where the electron ground state is performing a transition from a spin triplet state ($`m=1`$) to a spin triplet state ($`m=3`$). This ability to tune the electron-nucleus coupling underlies the present proposal for an NMR-based switch.

In the presence of infra-red (IR) radiation incident on the QD, the CM wavefunction will be altered since the CM motion absorbs IR radiation. (The relative motion remains unaffected in accordance with Kohn’s theorem). This allows an additional method for externally controlling the nucleus-electron effective coupling, using optics. By considering the CM transition from the ground state $`|N=0,M=0`$ to the excited state $`|N=1,M=1`$, which becomes the strongest transition in high $`B`$fields, we get the new spin-spin coupling term given by

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_{_{\text{CM}}}(m)=\left(\frac{1+\mu _m}{2}\right)\mathrm{\Delta }(m)\text{ .}$$
(11)
Hence the nuclear spin-electron spin coupling is renormalized by the factor $`\frac{1+\mu _m}{2}`$ in the presence of IR radiation. By changing the location of the impurity atom in the QD, the discontinuity strengths in Fig. 1 will be modified, since the coupling is affected by the density of probability of the CM wavefunction at the impurity site: future work will investigate the effect of placing impurities away from the QD center.

Figure 2 shows the relative variation of $`\omega _{_{NMR}}`$ with respect to the undoped QD NMR signal, i.e. $`\mathrm{\Delta }\omega _{_{NMR}}=\frac{\omega _{NMR}\omega _{NMR,0}}{\omega _{NMR,0}}`$ (solid line) as a function of the frequency ratio $`\frac{\omega _c}{\omega _0}`$. The jumps in the carbon nucleus resonance are abrupt, reaching 25% in the absence of IR radiation. This allows a rapid tuning on and off resonance of an incident radio-frequency pulse. The NMR signal in regions of spin-singlet states remains unaltered. The $`B`$fields required to perform these jumps are relatively small (a few Tesla). Moreover, the nuclear spin is being controlled by radio-frequency pulses which are externally imposed, thereby offering a significant advantage over schemes which need to fabricate and control electrostatic gates near to the qubits, such as Refs. . Illuminating the QD with IR light will shift the frequencies $`\omega _{_{NMR}}`$ (see dotted line in Fig. 2) hence providing further all-optical control of the nuclear qubit. A crucial aspect of the present proposal is the capability to manipulate individual nuclear spins. All-optical NMR measurements in semiconductor nanostructures together with local optical probe experiments are quickly approaching such a level of finesse.

The present proposal is not in principle limited to $`N=2`$ electrons: generalizations  of the present angular momentum transitions arise for $`N>2`$. It was pointed out recently  that the spin configurations in many-electron QDs could be explained in terms of just two-electron singlet and triplet states. Therefore, the present results may occur in QDs with $`N>2`$. In addition, by employing QDs of different sizes, one could switch a subset of a QD array. Even if the QD array is irregular, one may still be able to perform the solid-state equivalent of the bulk/ensemble NMR computing recently reported in Ref. : this again represents a potential advantage of the present scheme. Further advantages stem from the electrostatically neutral character of the impurity atom 13C, and from the fact that the silicon nuclei surrounding it have no nuclear spin: the carbon nuclear spin state will be very effectively shielded from the environment and hence can be expected to have an even longer decoherence time than the (charged) donor nuclei in Ref. , thereby offering reliable quantum gate implementation.

Conditional quantum dynamics can be performed based on the selective driving of spin resonances of the two impurity nuclear qubits $`I_1,I_2`$ (spin $`\frac{1}{2}`$) in a system of two coupled QDs, separated by a distance $`d`$, each containing two electrons. The QDs do not need to be identical in size. The orthonormal computation basis of single qubits $`\{|0,|1\}`$ is represented by the spin up and down of the impurity nuclei. The Hamiltonian (1) must be modified: $`H_{2e}`$ must include the effects of the intra-dot and inter-dot correlations between the two-body electron-electron interaction, and the effects of the electron and nuclear spins of the second QD must be included. Hence, we get an additional magic number transition as a function of $`B`$field which can be used for selective switching between dots, i.e. since the ground state switches back and forth between pure and mixed states , the resonant frequency for transitions between the states $`|0,`$ and $`|1`$ of one nuclear spin (target qubit) depends on the state of the other one (control qubit). In this way, such coupled QDs can be used to generate the conditional CNOT gate CNOTij$`(|\phi _i|\phi _j)|\phi _i|\phi _i\phi _j`$ (where $``$ denotes addition modulo 2 and the indices $`i`$ and $`j`$ refer to the control bit and the target bit) on the qubits $`|\phi _i`$, and $`|\phi _j`$. Single qubit rotations, e.g. the Hadamard transformation $`H^T(|0)\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(|0+|1\right),`$and $`H^T(|1)\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(|0|1\right)`$ can be performed by rotating the single nuclear qubit via the application of an appropriate $`B`$field. Note that the presence or absence of an IR photon can also represent a qubit: hence the present single QD system in an IR cavity can also be used to perform two qubit gates as a result of the coupling.

In summary, we have proposed a solid-state qubit scheme which offers long decoherence times and reliable implementation of quantum gates. The fabrication requirements are compatible with current experimental capabilities. Being all-optical, rather than transport-based, the scheme avoids the need for electrical contacts and gates.

J.H.R. and L.Q. acknowledge financial support from COLCIENCIAS. We thank Bruce Kane for drawing our attention to Ref. . J.H.R. thanks the hospitality of the Condensed Matter Theory Group at Universidad de Los Andes, where part of this work was carried out, and is indebted to Helen Steers for continuous encouragement.

Figure 1. Variation of the electron spin – nucleus spin effective coupling $`\mathrm{\Delta }(m)`$ as a function of $`\frac{\omega _c}{\omega _0}`$; $`\omega _c`$ is proportional to the magnetic field and $`\omega _0`$ represents the QD confining potential strength (see text). The center-of-mass motion remains in its ground state. The electron repulsion strength is given by $`\frac{\alpha /l_0^2}{\mathrm{}\omega _0}=3.0`$. The two-electron ground state undergoes transitions in the relative angular momentum $`m`$. The sequence, in terms of $`|m|`$ and the total electron spin $`S`$, is given by $`(|m|,S)=\{(0,0),(1,1),(3,1),(5,1),\mathrm{}\}`$.

Figure 2. Relative variation of the effective nuclear magnetic resonance frequency of the carbon impurity nucleus as a function of $`\frac{\omega _c}{\omega _0}`$. The electron repulsion parameter is the same as in Fig. 1. Solid line corresponds to center-of-mass in the ground state. Dotted line corresponds to center-of-mass in the first excited state after absorption of IR light.


text:
# Towards artificial muscles

## 1 Introduction

As soon as Kuhn understood the flexibility of polymer chains, and the origin of rubber elasticity, his student A. Katchalsky thought about the possibility of transforming chemical energy into mechanical energy, using gels swollen by water. His first idea is explained on Fig.1. Starting from chains which carry acid groups $`(CO_2H)`$ and adding $`OH^{}`$ ions, one obtains a charged network $`(CO_2^{})`$ where the chains stretch by electrostatic repulsions. If one then adds $`H^+`$, the system returns to neutral, and the gel contracts.

This system, however, does not allow for many cycles. Adding $`OH^{}`$ really means adding soda $`(NaOH)`$ and adding $`H^+`$ means adding hydrochloric acid $`(HCl)`$. At each cycle, one thus adds one mole of $`NaCl`$, and this ionic solute screens out the electrostatic interactions: the system dies out fast.

Katchalsky solved this problem by an intelligent trick: he used ion exchange $`(Na^+`$ against $`Ba^{++})`$ where $`Ba^{++}`$ binds two $`(CO_2^{})`$ groups and contracts the gel.

His group produced active fibers of this type . However, the process did not gave rise to useful applications, for a number of reasons:

1) Time constants: what is implied here is diffusion of ions from a bath to a fiber, and diffusion is always very slow. And even if the ions were injected locally (by highly divided electrodes, or, by conducting polymers) the diffusion of water remains necessary to swell or deswell.

2) Fatigue: if we swell a gel by water, the swelling process starts at the outer surface, and creates huge mechanical tensions in a thin region: buckling instabilities occur and fractures show up. There is little hope for an artificial muscle which breaks locally at each cycle.

In the following section, we present two attempts where these difficulties are taken into account. It may well be that none of them gives a durable answer, but the trends are interesting.

## 2 A semi fast nematic muscle

The starting point here is a nematic network schematized on Fig.2. At low temperatures, the system is elongated. At higher temperatures, above the nematic isotropic transition point $`T_{N1}`$, the network contracts. Networks of this type have been synthetised by a very intelligent technique .

Of course, thermal effects have their difficulties: the diffusion of heat is faster than the diffusion of solvents, but is still slow. This led us to think about a semi-fast system$`:`$ here we heat up rapidly the system by a light pulse (having some adsorbing dyes inside) and induce the nematic isotropic transition. The contraction time of rubber in a sling -is related to the velocity of shear waves in the rubber, and is typically of order 1 millisecond. When we want to close the cycle, we have to cool down the sample (by a few degrees) and this takes a long time (seconds). But this semi fast actuator might be of some use.

To avoid fatigue, we conceived a system based on block copolymers (Fig.3) which is hopefully well protected. The fabrication of these sophisticated copolymers requires artistic chemistry, and is under way.

## 3 Nafions

A completely different approach has been used by M. Shahinpoor and coworkers . Here, the basic material is commercially available, cheap, and robust. It is a ”nafion”: a fluoropolymer containing some fixed $`SO_3^{}`$ groups plus $`Na^+`$ counterions and small water pockets which are inter connected (Fig.4). Shahinpoor was able to set up electrodes, with large contact areas, on both sides of a thin nafion sheet, by formation of platinum nanoparticles.

When such a sheet is put under a mild voltage ($``$1 volt) it deforms as shown on Fig5. The basic process appears to be simple. When a $`Na^+`$ ion moves, it drags some water with it towards the cathode: thus the cathode swells, while the anode contracts.

There is also an inverse effect: if a bending torque is applied to the sheet, a voltage difference shows up.

The features can be described rather simply (like all electro osmosis effects) in terms of two coupled fluxes (normal to the plate): the electric current $`J`$ and the water flux $`Q\text{[7]}.`$ The corresponding forces are the electric field $`E`$ and the pressure gradient $`p:`$

$$J=EL_{12}p$$
(1)
$$Q=L_{21}EKp$$
(2)
Here, $`\sigma `$ is the conductivity, $`K`$ the Darcy permeability and $`L_{12}=L_{21}=L`$ is a coupling coefficient.

1) The direct effect corresponds to $`Q=0`$ and $`p=L/KE.`$The pressure gradient induces a curvature $`C`$: in the absence of any external toque, they are related by:

$$p=kYC$$
(3)
where $`Y`$ is the Young modulus, and $`k`$ is a numerical factor involving the Poisson ratio $`\sigma _p`$:

$$k^1=(1+\sigma _p)(12\sigma _p)$$
(4)
2) For the inverse effect, we have $`J=0,`$ and $`E=L_{12}p`$ is proportional to the curvature.

One can construct order of magnitude estimates for the various coefficients. For the very small pores of interest here, the standard (Smoluchow ski) description of electro osmosis is not very adequate. The following is an alternate view point:

a) The conductance is:

$$\sigma =\frac{ne^2}{\zeta }$$
(5)
where $`n`$ is the number of sodium ions per unit volume and $`\zeta `$ a friction coefficient:

b) The Darcy permeability $`K`$ is of order:

$$K\varphi \frac{d^2}{\eta }$$
(6)
where $`\varphi `$ is the water volume fraction, $`d`$ the size of the water pores, and $`\eta `$ the viscosity.

c) Finally, the coupling coefficient $`L`$ can be estimated from a situation where $`p=0`$, assuming that each $`Na^+`$ ion drags a volume $`w`$ of water. Then:

$$Q=LE=\text{v}w$$
(7)
where v=$`eE/\xi `$ is the drift velocity of the ions. It seems that, in this way, we can arrive at a reasonable picture of the whole effect.

We are currently studying the time response, ie the frequency dependence of all these processes. But some general features emerge:

1) The system is robust, and can be cycled many times.

2) The frequency response is typically in the range of 30 cycles -ie slow, but still of possible interest for some biomedical applications.

On the whole, it is clear that soft actuators are still in their infancy; but it is also clear that they will soon become important.


text:
# Matching and Digital Control Implementation for Underactuated Systems

## 1 Introduction

Several papers have been written recently regarding the control of nonlinear underactuated systems -. Recall that an underactuated system, is a system with fewer control inputs than degrees of freedom. The idea that one should look for control laws such that the closed loop system takes a particular form is common to all of these papers. The particular form of the final equations is chosen so that there will be a natural candidate for a Lyapunov function. If the Lyapunov function attains a local minimum at an isolated point, then this point is a locally asymptotically stable equilibrium of the continuous system.

Digital implementation of continuous control laws introduces additional difficulties. It is not a priori clear that a method which produces good results in the continuous case with full state feedback will continue to produce acceptable results with state estimation and sampled data. For a digitally controlled system, the data is collected and the control input is calculated at discrete moments of time. In addition, the full state cannot be directly measured and must be estimated based on observable data. Assume the continuous closed-loop system is modelled by

$$\dot{x}=f(x,u(x)),$$
(1)
where $`u`$ is a full state feedback control law. Let $`\tau `$ be the sample time, let $`x_k=x(\tau k)`$, let $`y_k=C(x_k)`$ be the observerable data, and let $`\underset{¯}{x}_k`$ be the estimated state at time $`\tau k`$. A model of a corresponding digitally controlled system is

$$\begin{array}{c}\dot{x}(t)=f(x(t),u(\underset{¯}{x}(t)),\\ \underset{¯}{x}(t)=\underset{¯}{x}_k,\text{for}\tau kt<\tau (k+1),\\ \underset{¯}{x}_{k+1}=g(y_k,\underset{¯}{x}_k),\end{array}$$
(2)
where $`g`$ is the state estimator. In practice, it is not system 1, but rather system (2), which must have an asymptotically stable equilibrium. There is a lower bound on the sampling time, $`\tau `$, dictated by the control apparatus. There is an upper bound on $`\tau `$ depending upon the state estimator and the control law.

For a simple linear system corresponding to $`f(x,u)=Ax+Bu(x)`$, $`y=Cx`$, conditions to make (2) asymptotically stable are well known. For the continuous closed-loop system to be asymptotically stable, there must exist a matrix, $`G`$ so that the eigenvalues of $`AGC`$ all lie in the left half plane, and $`\tau `$ must be sufficiently small.

For nonlinear systems, the situation is more complicated. One case, however, is easy to understand. Consider a nonlinear closed-loop system $`\dot{x}=f(x,u(x))`$ whose linearization, $`\dot{x}=Ax+Bu(x)`$, at the equilibrium $`x=0`$ is asymptotically stable such that there exists a matrix $`G`$ so that all eigenvalues of $`AGC`$ lie in the left half plane. In this case, the continuous system

$$\begin{array}{c}\dot{x}=f(x,u(\underset{¯}{x}))\\ \underset{¯}{\overset{\dot{}}{x}}=f(\underset{¯}{x},u(\underset{¯}{x}))+GC(x\underset{¯}{x})\end{array}$$

will be locally asymptotically stable. In fact any system with correct linearization will do. For digital control, one may choose, for example, the following system

$$\begin{array}{c}\dot{x}=f(x,u(\underset{¯}{x}))\\ \underset{¯}{x}(t)=\underset{¯}{x}_k,\text{for}\tau kt<\tau (k+1),\\ \underset{¯}{x}_{k+1}=A_d\underset{¯}{x}_k+B_du\underset{¯}{x}_k+G_dC(x_k\underset{¯}{x}_k),\end{array}$$
(3)
where $`A_d=\mathrm{exp}(\tau A)`$, $`B_d=_0^\tau \mathrm{exp}(sA)𝑑sB`$ and $`G_d`$ is chosen such that $`spec(A_dG_dC)=exp(\tau spec(AGC))`$. If the sampling time, $`\tau `$, is sufficiently small, then the system (3) will be locally asyptotically stable.

## 2 The Control Law

In this section, we briefly recall a method for constructing an infinite dimensional family of controls laws for many nonlinear systems. We will then use the method to derive a specific control law for an inverted pendulum cart system. The implementation of this control law including a sample time and a state estimator will be discussed in the final section of this paper.

Let $`Q`$ denote a configuration space. Let $`g\mathrm{\Gamma }(T^{}QT^{}Q)`$ be a metric. Let $`c,f:TQTQ`$ be fiber-preserving maps. We assume that $`c(X)=c(X)`$. Let $`V:Q𝑹`$. The system that we consider is

$$_{\dot{\gamma }}\dot{\gamma }+c(\dot{\gamma })+grad_\gamma V=f(\dot{\gamma }).$$

Let $`P\mathrm{\Gamma }(T^{}QTQ)`$ be a $`g`$-orthogonal projection. We consider the situation where a constraint $`P(f)=0`$ is imposed. A system is called underactuated if $`P0`$. In order to describe the final control law, we will use several other variables. The variable $`\widehat{g}\mathrm{\Gamma }(T^{}QT^{}Q)`$ will be a metric, $`\widehat{c}:TQTQ`$ will be a fiber-preserving map, $`\widehat{V}`$ will be a real-valued function, and $`\lambda \mathrm{\Gamma }(T^{}QTQ)`$ will be a $`g`$-self adjoint map. One first solves the equations

$$g\lambda |_{\text{Im}P^2}=0,$$

for $`\lambda |_{\text{Im}P}`$. Then one solves

$$L_{_{\lambda PX}}\widehat{g}=L_{_{PX}}g$$

(this is a slight rewrite of equation (1.12) of our previous paper ),

$$L_{_{\lambda PX}}\widehat{V}=L_{_{PX}}V$$

(this is equation (1.13) of our previous paper ), then after solving,

$$P(c(X)\widehat{c}(X))=0,$$

the control input will be given by:

$$f(X)_XX\widehat{}_XX+grad_\gamma V\widehat{grad}_\gamma \widehat{V}+c(X)\widehat{c}(X)$$
(4)
We now apply the above method to the inverted pendulum cart depicted in Figure 1.

With appropriate scaling, the metric $`g`$ is given by $`g=d\theta ^2+2b\mathrm{cos}(\theta )dxd\theta +dx^2`$, where $`b`$ is a physical parameter, $`0<b<1`$. The potential energy is given by $`V=\mathrm{cos}(\theta )`$. Since no torques can be applied directly to the pendulum, $`P=(b\mathrm{cos}(\theta )dx+d\theta )/\theta `$ is the orthogonal projection onto the direction $`/\theta `$. Assuming that there is no dissipation, $`c=0`$.

Let $`\theta `$ be the coordinate with index $`1`$, and $`x`$ be the coordinate with index $`2`$. Writing $`\lambda PX=\sigma \frac{}{\theta }+\mu \frac{}{x}`$, where $`\sigma `$ and $`\mu `$ are yet to be found, the $`\lambda `$-equation may be rewritten as

$$\frac{}{\theta }(\sigma +b\mathrm{cos}(\theta )\mu )+2b\mathrm{sin}(\theta )\mu =0,$$

$$\frac{}{x}(\sigma +b\mathrm{cos}(\theta )\mu )=0.$$

For these equations to be consistent the following compatibility condition must hold:

$$\frac{}{x}(\mathrm{sin}(\theta )\mu )=0.$$

This implies that $`\mu `$ is a function of $`\theta `$. The second $`\lambda `$-equation implies that $`\sigma `$ is a function of $`\theta `$. The first $`\lambda `$-equation then becomes an ODE which may be solved for $`\sigma `$ giving,

$$\sigma (\theta )=\sigma _0+b\mu _0b\mathrm{cos}(\theta )2b_0^\theta \mathrm{sin}(t)\mu (t)𝑑t.$$

Before solving the $`\widehat{g}`$-equation, it is helpful to solve,

$$\sigma \frac{y}{\theta }+\mu \frac{y}{x}=0.$$

Using the method of characteristics, we find,

$$y=x_0^\theta \frac{\mu (t)}{\sigma (t)}𝑑t.$$

The $`\widehat{g}`$-equation may be rewritten as

$$\sigma \frac{\widehat{g}_{11}}{\theta }+\mu \frac{\widehat{g}_{11}}{x}+2(\frac{\sigma }{\theta }\frac{\sigma }{\mu }\frac{\mu }{\theta })\widehat{g}_{11}+2\frac{\frac{\mu }{\theta }}{\mu }=0.$$

Let $`\overline{\sigma }`$ and $`\overline{\mu }`$ be $`\sigma `$ and $`\mu `$ considered as functions of $`\theta `$ and $`y`$, i.e.,

$$\overline{\sigma }(\theta ,y(\theta ,x))=\sigma (\theta ,x),\overline{\mu }(\theta ,y(\theta ,x))=\mu (\theta ,x).$$

The solution to the $`\widehat{g}`$-equation is then given explicitly by

$$\widehat{g}_{11}(\theta ,x)=\frac{\mu ^2}{\sigma ^2}\left[2_0^\theta \frac{\overline{\sigma }}{\overline{\mu }^3}\frac{\overline{\mu }}{\theta }𝑑\theta |_y+h(y)\right],$$

where $`h(y)`$ is an arbitrary function of a single variable. Using the definition of $`\lambda `$, we have

$$\widehat{g}_{12}=\frac{1}{\mu }(1\sigma \widehat{g}_{11}),$$

$$\widehat{g}_{22}=\frac{1}{\mu }(b\mathrm{cos}(\theta )\sigma \widehat{g}_{12}).$$

Using integration by parts and the first $`\lambda `$-equation, we can simplify the integral appearing in $`\widehat{g}_{11}`$. Explicitly,

$$\widehat{g}_{11}(\theta ,x)=\frac{1}{\sigma }\frac{\sigma _0\mu ^2}{\mu _0^2\sigma ^2}\frac{b\mathrm{cos}(\theta )\mu }{\sigma ^2}+\frac{b\mu ^2}{\mu _0\sigma _0^2}+\frac{\mu ^2}{\sigma ^2}h(y).$$

The function $`\widehat{V}`$ satisfies the equation

$$\sigma \frac{\widehat{V}}{\theta }+\mu \frac{\widehat{V}}{x}=\mathrm{sin}(\theta ).$$

Considering $`\widehat{V}`$ as a function of $`\theta `$ and $`y`$, this becomes an ODE. The resulting expression for $`\widehat{V}`$ is:

$$\widehat{V}(\theta ,x)=w(y(\theta ,x))_0^\theta \frac{\mathrm{sin}(t)}{\sigma (t)}𝑑t,$$

here $`w(y)`$ is an arbitrary function. Finally, the solution to the $`\widehat{c}`$-equation is given by:

$$\widehat{c}^1=b\mathrm{cos}(\theta )(\widehat{c}^2c^2)+c^1,$$

where $`\widehat{c}^2`$ is an arbitrary function which is odd in the velocities. The final control law is given by equation (4).

For the inverted pendulum in our lab, the parameter, $`b`$, is .238, and $`c=0`$. (In practice, there is some dissipation in the base of the cart, but this may be directly counteracted by a term in the control law. The dissipation in the joint holding the pendulum is really negligible.) The value of $`b`$ is different from the value that was used in the simulations in . This is because we are now taking into account additional contributions to the mass of the base of the cart and to the mass of the pendulum.

The control law studied in  stabilized a wide range of initial conditions, however, it was found to be underdamped for small initial conditions. This was not dissapointing because the arbitrary functions in our control law were chosen for algebraic simplicity, and not for specific engineering goals. For this paper, we decided to use step functions in place of some of the constants used previously. By using step functions we hoped to reduce the number of parameters to something which would be reasonable to analyze. Our plan was to try to blend the nonlinear control law which worked well for large disturbances with one which would linearize to the linear control law that worked well for small initial conditions. In particular, we took

$$\mu (\theta )=\{\begin{array}{cc}\mu _0\mathrm{cos}(\theta ),\hfill & \text{for }|\theta |\theta _L\hfill \\ \mu _{\mathrm{}}\mathrm{cos}(\theta ),\hfill & \text{otherwise}\hfill \end{array}.$$

$$h(y)=\{\begin{array}{cc}h_0,\hfill & \text{for }yy_L\hfill \\ h_{\mathrm{}},\hfill & \text{otherwise}\hfill \end{array}$$

$$w(y)=\{\begin{array}{cc}\frac{1}{2}w_0y^2,\hfill & \text{for }yy_L\hfill \\ \frac{1}{2}w_{\mathrm{}}y^2,\hfill & \text{otherwise}\hfill \end{array}$$

The entire motivation for this method is that $`\widehat{H}(\dot{\gamma })=\frac{1}{2}\widehat{g}(\dot{\gamma },\dot{\gamma })+\widehat{V}(\gamma )`$, is a natural candidate for a Lyapunov function for the closed loop system. The time derivative of $`\widehat{H}`$ is, $`\widehat{g}(\widehat{c}(X),X)=(det\widehat{g})\widehat{c}^2(\mu _0\mathrm{cos}\theta \dot{\theta }\sigma _0\dot{x})`$. Thus taking $`\widehat{c}^2=\mathrm{\Phi }(\mu _0\mathrm{cos}\theta \dot{\theta }\sigma _0\dot{x})`$ will insure that $`\widehat{H}`$ is never increasing. We take,

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(\theta )=\{\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{\Phi }_0,\hfill & \text{for }|\theta |\theta _L\hfill \\ \mathrm{\Phi }_{\mathrm{}},\hfill & \text{otherwise}\hfill \end{array}.$$

With these choices, the function $`\sigma `$ will take the form,

$$\sigma (\theta )=\{\begin{array}{cc}\sigma _0,\hfill & \text{for }|\theta |\theta _L\hfill \\ \sigma _{\mathrm{}},\hfill & \text{otherwise}\hfill \end{array},$$

where $`\sigma _{\mathrm{}}=\sigma _0+b(\mu _0\mu _{\mathrm{}})\mathrm{cos}^2(\theta _L)`$. We guessed $`\theta _L=.3`$ and $`y_L=15`$. Values which stabilize a large region are:

$`\sigma _{\mathrm{}}=.05,\mu _{\mathrm{}}=9.9,w_{\mathrm{}}=1.5,`$ $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{\mathrm{}}=.75,`$ and $`h_{\mathrm{}}=.03.`$

These are a slight modification of the values given in our previous paper, since we are using a slightly diferent value of $`b`$. To compute the appropriate values for the remaining constants, we write the linear control input as: $`u_l=g(f,\frac{}{x})=p_1\theta +p_2x+d_1\dot{\theta }+d_2\dot{x}`$. Setting $`\frac{u}{\theta }|_0=p_1`$, $`\frac{u}{x}|_0=p_2`$, $`d_1\sigma _0+d_2\mu _0=0`$, and $`\sigma _{\mathrm{}}=\sigma _0+b(\mu _0\mu _{\mathrm{}})\mathrm{cos}^2(\theta _L)`$ determines four of the remaining parameters. The final parameter is determined by the condition, $`\frac{u}{\dot{\theta }}|_0=d_1`$. The resulting parameters are:

$`\sigma _0=1.59`$, $`\mu _0=17`$, $`w_0=.00296`$, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0=1.48`$, and $`h_0=.0081.`$

Numerical results comparing the control law described above with the linear control law are presented in Figs. 2 through 5 below. The small initial conditions were $`\theta _0=0.4`$, $`x_0=0`$, $`\dot{\theta }_0=0`$, and $`\dot{x}_0=0`$. The large initial conditions were $`\theta _0=1.1`$, $`x_0=0`$, $`\dot{\theta }_0=0`$, and $`\dot{x}_0=0`$.

## 3 Implementation

The inverted pendulum cart in our lab cannot directly observe the velocity or angular velocity of the cart. Thus, full state feedback is not possible and the modifications needed to implement the control law based upon the output of a non-trivial linear observer, $`C`$, must be considered. For our first test of a digital control system implementing the control law described above, we took an estimator of the form (3) with $`\tau =0.0143`$,

$$A_d=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1\hfill & 0\hfill & 0.0143\hfill & 0\hfill \\ 0\hfill & 1\hfill & 0\hfill & 0.0143\hfill \\ 0.0151\hfill & 0\hfill & 1\hfill & 0\hfill \\ .0036\hfill & 0\hfill & 0\hfill & 1\hfill \end{array}\right),$$

$`B_d`$ $`=`$ $`\left(\begin{array}{c}0\hfill \\ 0\hfill \\ 0.0036\hfill \\ 0.0151\hfill \end{array}\right),C=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1\hfill & 0\hfill & 0\hfill & 0\hfill \\ 0\hfill & 1\hfill & 0\hfill & 0\hfill \end{array}\right),`$ (11)
$`G_d`$ $`=`$ $`\left(\begin{array}{cc}0.168\hfill & 0\hfill \\ .0001\hfill & 0.165\hfill \\ 0.509\hfill & 0\hfill \\ .0039\hfill & 0.473\hfill \end{array}\right),x=\left(\begin{array}{c}\theta \hfill \\ x\hfill \\ \dot{\theta }\hfill \\ \dot{x}\hfill \end{array}\right)`$ (20)
Results from our numerical computations of this larger system are displayed in Figures 6 and 7. The initial estimated state was chosen to be the same as the initial conditions. System (3) was unstable with the large initial conditions for both the linear and nonlinear control law.

## 4 Conclusions

Looking for control laws so that the closed loop system takes some specified form appears to be a promising idea in nonlinear control theory. There are however many issues which have not been fully resolved. One must first decide what it means to say that one control law is better than another. With only an intuitive idea of what is ”better” we would argue that a control law derived via the matching equations works “better” for an inverted pendulum cart than a linear control law. This brings up the question of finding control laws of this type. Such control laws are usually described as solutions to a system of partial differential equations. Just guessing a solution based on the form of the equations is not a very satisfactory solution to the problem. The general solution to the matching equations may be found for systems with two degrees of freedom. If there is some symmetry present, it is also possible to find solutions to the matching equations. This leaves open the problem of finding such control laws for systems with more degrees of freedom in the absence of symmetry. The general matching equations have many solutions. This means that one must have some method for picking a good solution to the matching equations.

Assuming that all of these questions have been answered, one must still come up with satisfactory answers to the main questions discussed in this paper: what state estimator should be used, and why will the closed loop system be stable when only sampled data is used. Mathematically, it is well known that the resulting system will be locally stable if the linearization about the equilibrium is stable and the sample time is sufficiently small. Perhaps some numerical and experimental tests will shed some light on the correct choice for a state estimation scheme. Given the promising results of the matching control law applied to the inverted pendulum cart, and the wide array of open questions, this is a fertile area for future research.


text:
# Line narrowing via cavity-induced quantum interference in a Ξ-type atom

## Abstract

We show that cavity-induced interference may result in spectral line narrowing in the absorption spectrum of a $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$-type atom coupled to a single-mode, frequency-tunable cavity field with a pre-selected polarization at finite temperature.

Within recent years, quantum interference among different transition pathways of atoms has become a very important tool in manipulating radiative properties of atoms . Many interesting and counterintuitive effects, such as electromagnetically-induced transparency , enhancement of the index of refraction without absorption , lasing without population inversion , fluorescence quenching , quantum beats , are attributed to the interference. Very recently, we have shown that quantum interference can also result in spectral line narrowing  and is potentially of interest as a spectroscopic tool, as well.

Quantum interference effects can be generated by coherent laser fields . For example, for three-level atomic systems (in $`V`$, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$ configurations) excited by two laser fields: one being a strong pump field to drive two levels (say $`|1`$ and $`|2`$) and the other being a weak probe field at different frequency to probe the levels $`|0`$ and $`|1`$ or $`|2`$, the strong coherent field can drive the levels $`|1`$ and $`|2`$ into superpositions of these states, so that different atomic transitions are correlated. For such systems, the cross-transition terms (quantum interference) are evident in the atomic dressed picture . The interference may also arise as two transition pathways are created due to atomic emission into a common vacuum of the infinite electromagnetic modes . The latter requires that the dipoles moments of the transitions involved are non-orthogonal. The maximal effect of quantum interference occurs with parallel moments. From the experimental point view, however, it is difficult to find isolated atomic systems which have parallel moments .

An alternative scheme for engineering quantum interference (equivalently two parallel or anti-parallel dipole transition moments) has been proposed by coupling a V-type atom to a cavity mode with low quality factor $`Q`$ . Here we extend the study to a $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$-type atom coupled to a frequency-tunable, single-mode cavity field with a pre-selected polarization at finite temperature. We show that maximal quantum interference can be achieved in such a system, and the cavity-induced interference may lead to linewidth narrowing in the probe absorption spectrum.

For a $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$-configuration three-level atom having the levels $`|0`$, $`|1`$ and $`|2`$ with level energies $`E_0<E_1<E_2`$, we assume that the levels $`|0|1`$, and $`|1`$ $`|2`$ are coupled by the single-mode cavity field, respectively. Direct transitions between the ground level $`|0`$ and the upper excited level $`|2`$ are dipole forbidden. The master equation for the total density matrix operator $`\rho _T`$ in the frame rotating with the average atomic transition frequency $`\omega _0=(E_2E_0)/2`$ takes the form,

$$\dot{\rho }_T=i[H_A+H_C+H_I,\rho _T]+\rho _T,$$
(1)
where

$`H_A`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Delta }A_{11},`$ (2)
$`H_C`$ $`=`$ $`\delta a^{}a,`$ (3)
$`H_I`$ $`=`$ $`i\left(g_{01}A_{01}+g_{12}A_{12}\right)a^{}h.c.,`$ (4)
$`\rho _T`$ $`=`$ $`\kappa (N+1)\left(2a\rho _Ta^{}a^{}a\rho _T\rho _Ta^{}a\right)`$ (6)
$`+\kappa N\left(2a^{}\rho _Taaa^{}\rho _T\rho _Taa^{}\right),`$
where $`H_C`$, $`H_A`$ and $`H_I`$ are the unperturbed cavity, the unperturbed atom and the cavity-atom interaction Hamiltonians respectively, while $`\rho _T`$ describes damping of the cavity field by the continuum electromagnetic modes at finite temperature, characterized by the decay constant $`\kappa `$ and the mean number of thermal photons N; $`a`$ and $`a^{}`$ are the photon annihilation and creation operators of the cavity mode, and $`A_{ij}=|ij|`$ is the atomic population (the dipole transition) operator for $`i=j`$ $`(ij)`$; $`\delta =\omega _C\omega _0`$ is the cavity detuning from the average atomic transition frequency, $`\mathrm{\Delta }=E_1\omega _0`$, and $`g_{ij}=𝐞_\lambda 𝐝_{ij}\sqrt{\mathrm{}\omega _C/2ϵ_0V}`$ is the atom-cavity coupling constant with $`𝐝_{ij},`$ the dipole moment of the atomic transition from $`|j`$ to $`|i,`$ $`𝐞_\lambda `$, the polarization of the cavity mode, and $`V,`$ the volume of the system. In the remainder of this work we assume that the polarization of the cavity field is pre-selected, i.e., the polarization index $`\lambda `$ is fixed to one of two possible directions.

In this paper we are interested in the bad cavity limit: $`\kappa g_{ij}`$, that is the atom-cavity coupling is weak, and the cavity has a low $`Q`$ so that the cavity field decay dominates. The cavity field response to the continuum modes is much faster than that produced by its interaction with the atom, so that the atom always experiences the cavity mode in the state induced by the thermal reservoir. Thus one can adiabatically eliminate the cavity-mode variables, giving rise to a master equation for the atomic variables only , which are of the form

$`\dot{\rho }`$ $`=`$ $`i[H_A,\rho ]`$ (12)
$`+\{F(\mathrm{\Delta })(N+1)[|g_{01}|^2(A_{01}\rho A_{10}A_{11}\rho )+g_{01}g_{12}^{}A_{01}\rho A_{21}]`$
$`+F(\mathrm{\Delta })(N+1)\left[|g_{12}|^2\left(A_{12}\rho A_{21}A_{22}\rho \right)+g_{01}^{}g_{12}A_{12}\rho A_{10}\right]`$
$`+F(\mathrm{\Delta })N\left[|g_{01}|^2\left(A_{10}\rho A_{01}\rho A_{00}\right)+g_{01}g_{12}^{}A_{21}\rho A_{01}\right]`$
$`+F(\mathrm{\Delta })N\left[|g_{12}|^2\left(A_{21}\rho A_{12}\rho A_{11}\right)+g_{01}^{}g_{12}A_{10}\rho A_{12}\right]`$
$`+h.c.\},`$
where $`F(\pm \mathrm{\Delta })=[\kappa +i(\delta \pm \mathrm{\Delta })]^1`$

Obviously, the equation (12) describes the cavity-induced atomic decay into the cavity mode. The real part of $`F(\pm \mathrm{\Delta })|g_{ij}|^2`$ represents the cavity-induced decay rate of the atomic level $`|j`$ to the lower level $`|i`$, while the imaginary part is associated with the frequency shift of the atomic level resulting from the interaction with the thermal field in the detuned cavity. The other terms, $`F(\pm \mathrm{\Delta })g_{01}g_{12}^{}`$ and $`F(\pm \mathrm{\Delta })g_{01}^{}g_{12}`$, however, represent the cavity-induced correlated transitions of the atom, in which the atomic transition $`|1|0`$ induces the other transition $`|1|2`$, and vice versa. It is these correlated transitions that give rise to quantum interference.

The effect of quantum interference is very sensitive to the orientations of the atomic dipoles and the polarization of the cavity mode. For instance, if the cavity-field polarization is not pre-selected, as in free space, one must replace $`g_{ij}g_{kl}^{}`$ by the sum over the two possible polarization directions, giving $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_\lambda g_{ij}g_{kl}^{}𝐝_{ij}𝐝_{kl}^{}`$ . Therefore, only non-orthogonal dipole transitions lead to nonzero contributions, and the maximal interference effect occurs with the two dipoles parallel. As pointed out in Refs.  however, it is questionable whether there is a isolated atomic system with parallel dipoles. Otherwise, if the polarization of the cavity mode is fixed, say $`𝐞_\lambda =𝐞_x`$, the polarization direction along the $`x`$-quantization axis, then $`g_{ij}g_{kl}^{}\left(𝐝_{ij}\right)_x\left(𝐝_{kl}^{}\right)_x`$, which is nonvanishing, regardless of the orientation of the atomic dipole matrix elements.

Now we investigate the effects of quantum interference on the steady-state absorption spectrum of such a system, which is defined as

$$A(\omega )=\mathrm{}e_0^{\mathrm{}}\underset{t\mathrm{}}{lim}[P(t+\tau ),P^{}(t)]e^{i\omega \tau }d\tau ,$$
(13)
where $`\omega =\omega _p\omega _0`$, and $`\omega _p`$ is the frequency of the probe field and $`P(t)=d_1A_{01}+d_2A_{12}`$ is the component of the atomic polarization operator in the direction of the probe field polarization vector $`𝐞_p`$, with $`d_1=𝐞_p𝐝_{01}`$ and $`d_2=𝐞_p𝐝_{12}`$. Obviously, we may probe atomic absorption between different transition levels by selecting the polarization of the probe beam . For example, if the polarization direction $`𝐞_p`$ is perpendicular to the dipole moment $`𝐝_{12}`$ of atomic transitions between the levels $`|1`$ and $`|2`$, then $`d_2=0`$, the spectrum (13) hence describes the atomic absorption between the ground level $`|0`$ and the intermediate level $`|1`$, while it represents the probe absorption from the intermediate level $`|1`$ to the upper level $`|2`$, if $`𝐞_p𝐝_{01}`$, otherwise, eq. (13) is the stepwise two-photon absorption spectrum between the ground and upper levels.

The spectrum (13) can be evaluated from the cavity-modified Bloch equations

$`\dot{\rho }_{11}`$ $`=`$ $`2\gamma _1\left[(N+1)\rho _{11}N\rho _{00}\right]2\gamma _2\left[N\rho _{11}(N+1)\rho _{22}\right],`$ (14)
$`\dot{\rho }_{22}`$ $`=`$ $`2\gamma _2\left[(N+1)\rho _{22}N\rho _{11}\right],`$ (15)
$`\dot{\rho }_{20}`$ $`=`$ $`\left[\gamma _1N+\gamma _2(N+1)+i\omega _{sh}\right]\rho _{20},`$ (16)
$`\dot{\rho }_{10}`$ $`=`$ $`\left[F(\mathrm{\Delta })|g_{01}|^2(2N+1)+F^{}(\mathrm{\Delta })|g_{12}|^2N+i\mathrm{\Delta }\right]\rho _{10}`$ (18)
$`+\left[F(\mathrm{\Delta })+F^{}(\mathrm{\Delta })\right]g_{01}^{}g_{12}(N+1)\rho _{21},`$
$`\dot{\rho }_{21}`$ $`=`$ $`\left[F^{}(\mathrm{\Delta })|g_{01}|^2N+F(\mathrm{\Delta })|g_{12}|^2(2N+1)i\mathrm{\Delta }\right]\rho _{21}`$ (20)
$`+\left[F^{}(\mathrm{\Delta })+F(\mathrm{\Delta })\right]g_{01}g_{12}^{}N\rho _{10},`$
where $`\omega _{sh}=\mathrm{}m\left[F(\mathrm{\Delta })\right]N|g_{01}|^2+\mathrm{}m\left[F(\mathrm{\Delta })\right](N+1)|g_{12}|^2`$ is the cavity-induced frequency shift, and $`\gamma _1`$ ($`\gamma _2`$) is the cavity-induced decay rate of the intermediate state $`|1`$ to the ground state $`|0`$ ($`|2|1`$),

$$\gamma _1=\frac{\kappa |g_{01}|^2}{\kappa ^2+(\delta \mathrm{\Delta })^2},\gamma _2=\frac{\kappa |g_{12}|^2}{\kappa ^2+(\delta +\mathrm{\Delta })^2},$$
(21)
which vary with the cavity frequency, decay rate and coupling constants. It is not difficult to find from eq. (20) that the steady state populations are, however, independent of these parameters:

$`\rho _{22}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{N^2}{3N(N+1)+1}},`$ (22)
$`\rho _{11}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{N(N+1)}{3N(N+1)+1}},`$ (23)
$`\rho _{00}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(N+1)^2}{3N(N+1)+1}},`$ (24)
and the steady-state coherence between the ground and upper levels is zero, $`\rho _{20}=0`$, which are the same as a $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$-type atom damped by a thermal reservoir in free space. Nevertheless, the transit atomic coherence $`\rho _{20}(t)`$ may oscillate due to the cavity-induced frequency shift.

Figure 1 represents the probe absorption spectrum between the ground state $`|0`$ and the intermediate state $`|1`$, for $`\mathrm{\Delta }=\delta =0`$, $`g_{01}=g_{12}=g=10`$, $`\kappa =100`$, and various numbers of thermal photon. It is evident that when the photon number is very small, see $`N=0.01`$ in Fig. 1(a) for instance, both the spectra in the presence and absence of the cavity induced interference are virtually same. Otherwise, the spectral line is narrowed in the presence of the interference, as shown in Figs. 1(b)-1(d), where $`N=0.1,\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}`$, and $`2`$, respectively. The larger the number, the more profound the line narrowing. One can find from eq. (20) that in the case, no frequency shift occurs, and the absorption spectrum consists of two Lorentzians centred at $`\omega _p=\omega _0`$ with the spectral linewidths $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\pm =2[(3N+1)\pm 2\eta \sqrt{N(N+1)}]g^2/\kappa `$ . In the absence of the cavity-induced quantum interference ($`\eta =0`$), the two Lorentzians are same. Otherwise, $`\eta =1`$, the Lorentzians have different linewidths.. Noting that heights of the Lorentzians are proportional to $`(1/\mathrm{\Gamma }_\pm )`$, the Lorentzian with linewidth $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{}`$ dominates. Therefore, the absorption peck is narrower and higher in the presence of the cavity-induced quantum interference.

Figure 2 shows the variations of the spectral line narrowing with the cavity detuning for $`N=1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0`$. The spectrum is sharper in large cavity detuning, for example, $`\delta =100`$ in the frame 2(d). This is because the cavity-induced decay rates, as shown in eq. (21), are suppressed when the cavity is far off resonant with the atomic transition. In addition, the absorption peak is displaced a bit from the atomic transition frequency involved $`\omega _{10}=\omega _0`$ for large detuning, owing to the cavity induced frequency shifts.

Figure 3 exhibits that the effect of the cavity induced interference on the spectral linewidth narrowing is significant only when the $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$-type atom has an equally-spaced or near equally-spaced level structure, as displayed in Figs. 3(a) with $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0`$, and 3(b) with $`\mathrm{\Delta }=1`$. Otherwise, the effect is negligible small, which is demonstrated in the frames 3(c) and 3(d) for $`\mathrm{\Delta }=5`$ and $`10`$, respectively.

It should be pointed out that the features of the cavity interference assisted line narrowing in the probe spectrum between the intermediate and upper states, and in the stepwise two-photon absorption spectrum between the ground and upper states are similar to those in the atomic absorption spectrum from the ground state to the intermediate state, as exhibited in the above figures.

In summary, we have shown that cavity-induced quantum interference can lead to significant linewidth narrowing in the probe absorption spectra of a $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$-type atom with equal (or near equal) space level-lying, coupled to a single-mode, frequency-tunable cavity field, which is damped by a thermal reservoir, in the bad cavity limit. There are no special restrictions on the atomic dipole moments for the appearance of quantum interference , as long as the polarization of the cavity field is pre-selected.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work is supported by the ARO/NSA grant G-41-Z05. I gratefully acknowledge conversations with Z. Ficek, T. A. B. Kennedy, S. Swain, and L. You.