Observation of ground-state quantum beats in atomic spontaneous emission

Phys Rev Lett. 2010 Sep 17;105(12):123602. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.123602. Epub 2010 Sep 15.

Abstract

We report ground-state quantum beats in spontaneous emission from a continuously driven atomic ensemble. Beats are visible only in an intensity autocorrelation and evidence spontaneously generated coherence in radiative decay. Our measurement realizes a quantum eraser where a first photon detection prepares a superposition and a second erases the "which path" information in the intermediate state.