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Title:
Spontaneous emission of ultracold atomic matter waves from a tunable open quantum system
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Abstract:
The question how irreversibility can emerge in quantum mechanics is central to the study of open quantum systems. A simple example is the exponential decay of an excited two-level atom as described by the Wigner-Weisskopf model of quantum optics, in which spontaneous photon emission is viewed as being driven by fluctuations of the surrounding vacuum. However, the Markov approximation underlying this model can be violated under certain conditions, and recent experiments on optical decay in photonic bandgap materials have indeed started to find deviations from its predictions. -- We have recently realzed an "artificial atom" in which the excited-state energy and the vacuum
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