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arXiv:1909.00680 · Physical Review A

Dark-time decay of the retrieval efficiency of light stored as a Rydberg excitation in a noninteracting ultracold gas

Steffen Schmidt, Thomas Stolz, Gerhard Rempe, Stephan Dürr

Published Jan 14, 2020• 21 citations
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Abstract

A comprehensive analysis of photon storage in a Rydberg state of ultracold ${}^{87}$Rb gas based on electromagnetically induced transparency is performed both experimentally and theoretically. The theoretical model shows that the retrieval efficiency is related to the decay of fringe visibility in Ramsey spectroscopy.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.101.013421

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A comprehensive analysis of photon storage in a Rydberg state of ultracold 87{}^{87}87Rb gas based on electromagnetically induced transparency is performed both experimentally and theoretically. The theoretical model shows that the retrieval efficiency is related to the decay of fringe visibility in Ramsey spectroscopy.
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We develop an approach to generate finite-range atomic interactions via optical Rydberg-state excitation and study the underlying excitation dynamics in theory and experiment. In contrast to previous work, the proposed scheme is based on resonant optical driving and the establishment of a dark state under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). Analyzing the driven dissipative dynamics of the atomic gas, we show that the interplay between coherent light coupling, radiative decay, and strong Rydberg-Rydberg atom interactions leads to the emergence of sizable effective interactions while providing remarkably long coherence times. The latter are studied experimentally in a cold gas of strontium atoms for which the proposed scheme is most efficient. Our measured atom loss is in agreement with the theoretical prediction based on binary effective interactions between the driven atoms.
Storage of light pulses in Rb vapour with bright Zeeman coherences and the associated enhanced absorption and steep negative dispersion is reported. Our experimental observations are qualitatively similar to the well-known proof-of-principle demonstration of light storage (D F Phillips et al 2001 Phys. Rev. Lett. 86 783), but obtained under conditions where electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) does not exist and the slow-light dark-state polariton model does not apply. Under the present experimental conditions the retrieved pulses obtained in atomic media with dark or bright Zeeman coherences have very similar exponentially decaying slopes which are independent of the shape of the incoming signal pulse. Numerical modelling based on the optical Bloch equations reproduces the essential features of the experimental observations.
We experimentally studied the temporal evolution of Zeeman electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) resonances induced by the laser resonant to hyperfine transition of 87Rb in a rubidium buffer gas cell. We simultaneously modulated the laser beam intensity and polarization to achieve the repeated interaction of the laser beam with coherently prepared atoms. Our cell was placed in a homogenous magnetic field to obtain the Larmor precession of the phase of coherences. The weak laser beam was used to probe the atoms at the end of the Ramsey sequence. We measured the transparency of the probe pulse at different magnetic fields for a given excitation pulse and the period of free evolution of Zeeman coherences in the dark. From these data, we reconstructed the temporal evolution of EIT resonances. The Ramsey fringes that appeared on the EIT curves at the beginning of the second probing pulse disappeared at later moments due to various decay processes.
Using electromagnetically induced transparency and photon storage, the strong dipolar interactions between Rydberg atoms and the resulting dipole blockade can be mapped onto light fields to realise optical non-linearities and interactions at the single photon level. We report on the realisation of an experimental apparatus designed to study interactions between single photons stored as Rydberg excitations in optically trapped microscopic ensembles of ultracold 87Rb atoms. A pair of in-vacuum high numerical aperture lenses focus excitation and trapping beams down to 1 μm, well below the Rydberg blockade. Thanks to efficient magneto-optical trap (MOT) loading from an atomic beam generated by a 2D MOT and the ability to recycle the microscopic ensembles more than 20000 times without significant atom loss, we achieve effective repetition rates exceeding 110 kHz to obtain good photon counting statistics on reasonable time scales. To demonstrate the functionality of the setup, we present evidence of strong photon interactions including saturation of photon storage and the retrieval of non-classical light. Using in-vacuum antennae operating at up to 40 GHz, we perform microwave spectroscopy on photons stored as Rydberg excitations and observe an interaction induced change in lineshape depending on the number of stored photons.