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arXiv:1909.06454 · Physical Review Letters

Collective Multimode Vacuum Rabi Splitting

William Guerin, T. S. do Espirito Santo, P. Weiss, A. Cipris, Johannes Schachenmayer, Robin Kaiser, Romain Bachelard

Published Dec 12, 2019• 24 citations
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Abstract

We report the experimental observation of collective multimode vacuum Rabi splitting in free space. In contrast to optical cavities, the atoms couple to a continuum of modes, and the optical thickness of the cloud provides a measure of this coupling. The splitting, also referred as normal mode splitting, is monitored through the Rabi oscillations in the scattered intensity, and the results are fully explained by a linear-dispersion theory.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.123.243401

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We report the experimental observation of collective multimode vacuum Rabi splitting in free space. In contrast to optical cavities, the atoms couple to a continuum of modes, and the optical thickness of the cloud provides a measure of this coupling. The splitting, also referred as normal mode splitting, is monitored through the Rabi oscillations in the scattered intensity, and the results are fully explained by a linear-dispersion theory.
The transmission spectrum for one atom strongly coupled to the field of a high finesse optical resonator is observed to exhibit a clearly resolved vacuum Rabi splitting characteristic of the normal modes in the eigenvalue spectrum of the atom-cavity system. A new Raman scheme for cooling atomic motion along the cavity axis enables a complete spectrum to be recorded for an individual atom trapped within the cavity mode, in contrast to all previous measurements in cavity QED that have required averaging over 10(3)-10(5) atoms.
Multi-normal-mode splitting peaks are experimentally observed in a system with Doppler-broadened two-level atoms inside a relatively long optical cavity. In this system, the atom-cavity interaction can reach the ``superstrong-coupling'' condition with atom-cavity coupling strength gNg\sqrt{N}gN​ to be near or larger than the cavity free-spectral range ${\ensuremath{\Delta}}_{\text{FSR}}$. In such case, normal-mode splitting can occur in many cavity longitudinal modes to generate the multi-normal-mode splitting peaks, which can be well explained by the linear-dispersion enhancement due to the largely increased atomic density in the cavity. Many new interesting phenomena might come out of this superstrong atom-cavity coupling regime.
Strong collective interaction of atoms with an optical cavity causes normal mode splitting of the cavity's resonances, whose width is given by the collective coupling strength. At low optical density of the atomic cloud the intensity distribution of light in the cavity is ruled by the cavity's mode function, which is solely determined by its geometry. In this regime the dynamics of the coupled atom-cavity system is conveniently described by the open Dicke model, which we apply to calculating normal mode splitting generated by periodically ordered clouds in linear and ring cavities. We also show how to use normal mode splitting as witness for Wannier-Bloch oscillations in the tight-binding limit. At high optical density the atomic distribution contributes to shaping the mode function. This regime escapes the open Dicke model, but can be treated by a transfer matrix model provided the saturation parameter is low. Applying this latter model to an atomic cloud periodically ordered into a one-dimensional lattice, we observe the formation of photonic bands gaps competing with the normal mode splitting. We discuss the limitations of both models and point out possible pathways to generalized theories.