Regular Article

Deterministic quantum state transfer of atoms in a random magnetic field

¹ Department of Physics and QSO – Centre for Quantum Science, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
² The Dodd Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies, Dunedin, New Zealand

^a e-mail: bianca.j.sawyer@postgrad.otago.ac.nz
^b e-mail: nk@otago.ac.nz

Received: 2 October 2018
Accepted: 18 April 2019
Published online: 6 August 2019

Abstract

We propose a method for transferring atoms to a target quantum state for a multilevel quantum system with sequentially increasing, but otherwise unknown, energy splitting. This is achieved with a feedback algorithm that processes off-resonant optical measurements of state populations during adiabatic rapid passage in real time. As a demonstration, we reliably perform the state transfer |F = 2,m_F = 2〉 → |1,1〉 → |2,1〉 for a sample of ultracold ⁸⁷Rb in the presence of a random external magnetic field.