Abstract
Continuous and pulsed quantum Zeno effects were observed using a Bose-Einstein condensate. Oscillations between two ground hyperfine states of a magnetically trapped condensate, externally driven at a transition rate , were suppressed by destructively measuring the population in one of the states with resonant light. The suppression of the transition rate in the two-level system was quantified for pulsed measurements with a time interval between pulses and continuous measurements with a scattering rate . We observe that the continuous measurements exhibit the same suppression in the transition rate as the pulsed measurements when , in agreement with the predicted value of 4. Increasing the measurement rate suppressed the transition rate down to .
- Received 14 June 2006
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.97.260402
©2006 American Physical Society