Fig. 3: Transient dynamics of fluorescence.
From: Electron shelving of a superconducting artificial atom
a Time-domain evolution of populations p0 (down blue triangles), p1 (up red triangles), and p2 (yellow squares) induced by the cycling of the readout transition (pulse sequence on top). Note that p0 decays approximately exponentially in time with a characteristic time scale τcyc = 9.6 μs, after which the population is transferred from state \(\left|0\right\rangle\) to states \(\left|1\right\rangle\) and \(\left|2\right\rangle\). The black circles indicate p0 + p1 + p2 and the error bars represent the standard deviation coming from the repetition of the measurements over two days. b Free evolution of populations starting predominantly from state \(\left|2\right\rangle\) (pulse sequence on top). The data in both (a) and (b) is adequately explained by an optical pumping model (solid lines) (see text) where the dominant error mechanism is a non-radiative decay due to dielectric loss.
