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arXiv:1404.2561

Radiation spectrum of systems with condensed light

Alexander Kruchkov

Published Apr 9, 2014• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Experimental observation of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of photons inside a microcavity induced an extensive study of the phenomenon. Beyond the purely theoretical interest, this phenomenon is believed to be used to create a novel source of light. The shape of radiation spectrum is therefore the main characteristic of the system with light BEC as an optical device. However, until now, there were no detailed calculations of this property. In the present paper we derive analytically the shape of radiation spectrum and show that our results are in excellent agreement with existing experimental measurements.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1404.2561

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Experimental observation of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of photons inside a microcavity induced an extensive study of the phenomenon. Beyond the purely theoretical interest, this phenomenon is believed to be used to create a novel source of light. The shape of radiation spectrum is therefore the main characteristic of the system with light BEC as an optical device. However, until now, there were no detailed calculations of this property. In the present paper we derive analytically the shape of radiation spectrum and show that our results are in excellent agreement with existing experimental measurements.
The spectrum shape of atomic radiation in the case of ideal Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) excited by quantized light is derived through the Wigner–Weisskopf approximation. Besides the split and gap in the excitation spectrum, a doublet structure appears in the emission spectrum with different widths for the non-resonant case and the same widths for the resonant case. The survival probability is found to decrease exponentially for the non-resonant case and with oscillation for the resonant case. A suppressed radiation also appears in the non-resonant case. All these results can be used to detect the existence of BE condensation.
Bose–Einstein condensation is a state of matter known to be responsible for peculiar properties exhibited by superfluid Helium-4 and superconductors. Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) in its pure form is realizable with alkali atoms under ultra-cold temperatures. In this paper, we review the experimental scheme that demonstrates the atomic Bose–Einstein condensate. We also elaborate on the theoretical framework for atomic Bose–Einstein condensation, which includes statistical mechanics and the Gross–Pitaevskii equation. As an extension, we discuss Bose–Einstein condensation of photons realized in a fluorescent dye filled optical microcavity. We analyze this phenomenon based on the generalized Planck’s law in statistical mechanics. Further, a comparison is made between photon condensate and laser. We describe how photon condensate may be a possible alternative for lasers since it does not require an energy consuming population inversion process.
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A theory of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of light in a dye microcavity is developed. The photon polarization degeneracy and the interaction between dye molecules and photons in all of the cavity modes are taken into account. The theory goes beyond the grand canonical approximation and allows one to determine the statistical properties of the photon gas for all numbers of dye molecules and photons at all temperatures, thus describing the microscopic, mesoscopic, and macroscopic light BEC from a general perspective. A universal relation between the degrees of second-order coherence for the photon condensate and the polarized photon condensate is obtained. The photon Bose-Einstein condensate can be used as a new source of nonclassical light.
Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) is the transition to a macroscopic occupation of the ground state of a system of bosonic particles. In 1995 the first experimental realization of BEC was achieved by condensing a dilute atomic gas [1,2]. It was long thought only massive particles could undergo BEC. However, in 2010 it was shown that photon BEC was achieved in an optical dye-filled microcavity [3]. In 2015, we became the second group to successfully repeat these experiments.\n\nBEC is a phase transition and thus it occurs at thermal equilibrium. To achieve a thermal photon gas the cavity is filled with a fluorescent dye solution. The dye molecules thermalize the photons by means of repeated absorption-emission cycles. We optically pump the cavity. With the pump we determine the number of photons absorbed by the dye, consequently defining a nonvanishing chemical potential. This ensures a conserved photon number. The photons are trapped by the harmonic potential induced by the concave cavity mirrors. Due to the cutoff energy determined by the cavity length, the trapped photons have a dispersion similar to that of a massive particle in a quantum harmonic oscillator. The cavity length is tuned such that the free spectral range is larger than the bandwidth of the dye. Therefore, only one longitudinal mode fits inside the cavity, making the photon gas effectively two-dimensional. We end up with a thermalized two-dimensional photon gas that has the eigenenergies of a quantum harmonic oscillator. The Bose-Einstein distribution function predicts a critical photon number. Pumping the thermal photon gas beyond this critical number will lead to photon BEC.\n\nWe measure the spectral- and spatial distributions of our two-dimensional photon gas. In both distributions we observe photon BEC. Results show the characteristics of a phase transition: the appearance of a sharp peak on top of the thermal cloud that coincides with a converging chemical potential to zero. Both the spectral- and spatial distribution are in agreement with the theoretical distribution of photons with an effective mass in a quantum harmonic oscillator. Expansion of the condensate has been measured. This could indicate nonlinear optical effects such as thermal lensing or repulsive photon-photon interactions.
We review recent experiments on the Bose-Einstein condensation of photons in a dye-filled optical microresonator. The most well-known example of a photon gas, photons in blackbody radiation, does not show Bose-Einstein condensation. Instead of massively populating the cavity ground mode, photons vanish in the cavity walls when they are cooled down. The situation is different in an ultrashort optical cavity imprinting a low-frequency cutoff on the photon energy spectrum that is well above the thermal energy. The latter allows for a thermalization process in which both temperature and photon number can be tuned independently of each other or, correspondingly, for a nonvanishing photon chemical potential. We here describe experiments demonstrating the fluorescence-induced thermalization and Bose-Einstein condensation of a two-dimensional photon gas in the dye microcavity. Moreover, recent measurements on the photon statistics of the condensate, showing Bose-Einstein condensation in the grand-canonical ensemble limit, will be reviewed. Introduction Quantum statistical effects become relevant when a gas of particles is cooled, or its density is increased, to the point where the associated de Broglie wavepackets spatially overlap. For particles with integer spin (bosons), the phenomenon of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) then leads to macroscopic occupation of a single quantum state at finite temperatures [1]. Bose-Einstein condensation in the gaseous case was first achieved in 1995 by laser and subsequent evaporative cooling of a dilute cloud of alkali atoms [2, 3, 4], as detailed in Chapter 3 of this volume. The condensate atoms can be described by a macroscopic singleparticle wavefunction, similar to the case of liquid helium [1]. Bose-Einstein condensation has also been observed for exciton-polaritons, which are hybrid states of matter and light [5, 6, 7] (see Chapter 4), magnons [8] (see Chapter 25), and other physical systems. Other than material particles, photons usually do not show Bose-Einstein condensation [9]. In blackbody radiation, the most common Bose gas, photons at low temperature disappear, instead of condensing to a macroscopically occupied ground-state mode. In this system, photons have a vanishing chemical potential, meaning that the number of photons is determined by the available thermal energy and cannot be tuned independently from temperature.