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    Extensive Manipulation of Transition Rates and Substantial Population Inversion of Rotating Atoms Inside a Cavity

    Yan Peng1,*, Yuebing Zhou1,2,*, Jiawei Hu1,†, and Hongwei Yu1,‡

    • 1Department of Physics, Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Quantum Structures and Quantum Control of Ministry of Education, and Hunan Research Center of the Basic Discipline for Quantum Effects and Quantum Technologies, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan 410081, China
    • 2Department of Physics, Huaihua University, Huaihua, Hunan 418008, China

    • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
    • †Contact author: jwhu@hunnu.edu.cn
    • ‡Contact author: hwyu@hunnu.edu.cn

    Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 013202 – Published 6 January, 2026

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/6nqb-tnp6

    Abstract

    We investigate the transition rates of a centripetally accelerated atom inside a high-quality cavity and show that they can be extensively tuned by adjusting the cavity resonance and the rotation frequency. Crucially, while inertial atoms cannot be excited in vacuum, rotation induces spontaneous excitation via the circular Unruh effect, with the cavity serving only as an amplifier. Using experimentally feasible parameters, we demonstrate that, in one scenario, the excitation rate can reach ∼107  s−1 while emission remains negligible, enabling substantial population inversion. In another scenario, both excitation and emission can simultaneously attain ∼107  s−1, corresponding to millions of transitions per second for a single atom. These findings highlight a powerful method for manipulating atomic transition rates for quantum applications and open a promising route toward experimental verification of the circular Unruh effect with state-of-the-art quantum technologies.

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