Rabi cycle

Common card · No. 365373

In physics, the Rabi cycle (or Rabi flop) is the cyclic behaviour of a two-level quantum system in the presence of an oscillatory driving field. A great variety of physical processes belonging to the areas of quantum computing, condensed matter, atomic and molecular physics, and nuclear and particle physics can be conveniently studied in terms of two-level quantum mechanical systems, and exhibit Rabi flopping when coupled to an optical driving field. The effect is important in quantum optics, magnetic resonance, and quantum computing, and is named after Isidor Isaac Rabi. A two-level system is one that has a Hilbert space spanned by two possible orthogonal states. These states may have two possible energy levels. One level can be a ground state with lower energy, and the other can be an excited state with higher energy. If the energy levels are not degenerate (i.e. don't have equal energies), the system can absorb or emit a quantum of energy and transition from the ground state to the excited...

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