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arXiv:1603.01449 · Physical Review A

Intrinsic optical bistability in a strongly driven Rydberg ensemble

Natalia R. de Melo, Christopher G. Wade, Nikola Šibalić, Jorge Douglas Massayuki Kondo, Charles S. Adams, Kevin J. Weatherill

Published Jun 30, 2016• 58 citations
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Abstract

We observe and characterize intrinsic optical bistability in a dilute Rydberg vapor. The bistability is characterized by sharp jumps between states of low and high Rydberg occupancy with jump-up and -down positions displaying hysteresis depending on the direction in which the control parameter is changed. We find that the shift in frequency of the jump point scales with the fourth power of the principal quantum number. Also, the width of the hysteresis window increases with increasing principal quantum number, before reaching a peak and then closing again. The experimental results are consistent with predictions from a simple theoretical model based on semiclassical Maxwell--Bloch equations including the effects of interaction-induced broadening and level shifts. These results provide insight into the dynamics of driven dissipative systems.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.93.063863

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We observe and characterize intrinsic optical bistability in a dilute Rydberg vapor. The bistability is characterized by sharp jumps between states of low and high Rydberg occupancy with jump-up and -down positions displaying hysteresis depending on the direction in which the control parameter is changed. We find that the shift in frequency of the jump point scales with the fourth power of the principal quantum number. Also, the width of the hysteresis window increases with increasing principal quantum number, before reaching a peak and then closing again. The experimental results are consistent with predictions from a simple theoretical model based on semiclassical Maxwell--Bloch equations including the effects of interaction-induced broadening and level shifts. These results provide insight into the dynamics of driven dissipative systems.
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Abstract Far-from equilibrium dynamics that lead to self-organization are highly relevant to complex dynamical systems not only in physics, but also in life-, earth-, and social sciences. It is challenging however to find systems with sufficiently controllable parameters that allow quantitatively modelling of emergent properties. Here, we study a non-equilibrium phase transition and observe signatures of self-organized criticality in a dilute thermal vapour of atoms optically excited to strongly interacting Rydberg states. Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) provides excellent control over the population dynamics and enables high-resolution probing of the driven-dissipative dynamics, which also exhibits phase bistability. Increased sensitivity compared to previous work allows us to reconstruct the complete phase diagram including in the vicinity of the critical point. We observe that interaction-induced energy shifts and enhanced decay only occur in one of the phases above a critical Rydberg population. This limits the application of generic mean-field models, however a modified, threshold-dependent approach is in qualitative agreement with experimental data. Near threshold, we observe self-organized dynamics in the form of population jumps that return the density to a critical value.
In this work, we have investigated a phase transition and optical bistability in a cold [Formula: see text]Rb sample excited to the [Formula: see text] Rydberg state, using absorption spectroscopy while scanning the Rydberg excitation laser for [Formula: see text]. The system is characterized through its dependence on the Rydberg Rabi frequency and principal quantum number, exhibiting hysteretic behavior indicative of bistability. We further analyze its time evolution, revealing the characteristic dynamics of the transition between stable states. The results are consistent with optical bistability induced by a cold plasma in the presence of Rydberg blockade. This work demonstrates the role of collective many-body interactions in establishing nonlinear optical responses in strongly interacting Rydberg ensembles.
We demonstrate a nonequilibrium phase transition in a dilute thermal atomic gas. The phase transition, between states of low and high Rydberg occupancy, is induced by resonant dipole-dipole interactions between Rydberg atoms. The gas can be considered as dilute as the atoms are separated by distances much greater than the wavelength of the optical transitions used to excite them. In the frequency domain, we observe a mean-field shift of the Rydberg state which results in intrinsic optical bistability above a critical Rydberg number density. In the time domain, we observe critical slowing down where the recovery time to system perturbations diverges with critical exponent α=-0.53±0.10. The atomic emission spectrum of the phase with high Rydberg occupancy provides evidence for a superradiant cascade.
We give a microscopic description of the optical bistability, where the transmission coefficient has two different values as a function of input light intensity, and the system exhibits a discontinuous jump with a hysteresis loop. We developed an efficient numerical algorithm to treat the quantum master equation for hybridized systems of many photons and a large number of two-level atoms. By using this method, we characterize the bistability from the viewpoint of eigenmodes and eigenvalues of the time-evolution operator of the quantum master equation. We classify types of optical bistability according to the photon number density in the cavity. In contrast to previous studies of optical bistability in the high-photon-density regime where the photons can be treated as a classical electromagnetic field and the resonance spectrum has a single-peak structure, we study the nature of optical bistability in the low-photon-density regime where the hybridization of photon and atom degrees of freedom occurs and the resonance spectrum has a double-peak structure. Unraveling the nature of the optical bistability in the latter regime may be important for the manipulation of quantum systems. Concretely, we discuss the steady-state properties of the optical bistability: dependencies of the photon number density on the intensity and the double-peak structure of the photon number distribution inside the bistable region. As for the dynamical properties, we find that the relaxation timescale shows an exponential growth with the system size and reveal how the hysteresis loop of the optical bistability depends on the size of the system and the sweeping rate of the driving amplitude. Finally, by investigating the effects of detuning frequency of the input field, we clarify the characteristic properties of the present optical bistability within the low-photon-density regime, which are qualitatively different from the standard optical bistable phenomena.