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arXiv:2304.12897 · Physical Review Letters

Non-Hermitian Waveguide Cavity QED with Tunable Atomic Mirrors

Wei Nie, Tao Shi, Yu-xi Liu, Franco Nori

Published Sep 7, 2023• 30 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Optical mirrors determine cavity properties by means of light reflection. Imperfect reflection gives rise to open cavities with photon loss. We study an open cavity made of atom-dimer mirrors with a tunable reflection spectrum. We find that the atomic cavity shows anti-PT symmetry. The anti-PT phase transition controlled by atomic couplings in mirrors indicates the emergence of two degenerate cavity supermodes. Interestingly, a threshold of mirror reflection is identified for realizing strong coherent cavity-atom coupling. This reflection threshold reveals the criterion of atomic mirrors to produce a good cavity. Moreover, cavity quantum electrodynamics with a probe atom shows mirror-tuned properties, including reflection-dependent polaritons formed by the cavity and probe atom. Our Letter presents a non-Hermitian theory of an anti-PT atomic cavity, which may have applications in quantum optics and quantum computation.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.131.103602

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Optical mirrors determine cavity properties by means of light reflection. Imperfect reflection gives rise to open cavities with photon loss. We study an open cavity made of atom-dimer mirrors with a tunable reflection spectrum. We find that the atomic cavity shows anti-PT symmetry. The anti-PT phase transition controlled by atomic couplings in mirrors indicates the emergence of two degenerate cavity supermodes. Interestingly, a threshold of mirror reflection is identified for realizing strong coherent cavity-atom coupling. This reflection threshold reveals the criterion of atomic mirrors to produce a good cavity. Moreover, cavity quantum electrodynamics with a probe atom shows mirror-tuned properties, including reflection-dependent polaritons formed by the cavity and probe atom. Our Letter presents a non-Hermitian theory of an anti-PT atomic cavity, which may have applications in quantum optics and quantum computation.
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Abstract A wide class of non-Hermitian Hamiltonians can possess entirely real eigenvalues when they have parity-time (PT) symmetric potentials. Recently, this family of non-Hermitian systems has attracted considerable attention in diverse areas of physics due to their extraordinary properties, especially in optical systems based on solid-state materials, such as coupled gain–loss waveguides and microcavities. Considering the desired refractive index can be effectively manipulated through atomic coherence, it is important to realize such non-Hermitian optical potentials and further investigate their distinct properties in atomic systems. In this paper, we review the recent theoretical and experimental progress of non-Hermitian optics with coherently prepared multi-level atomic configurations. The realizations of (anti-) PT symmetry with different schemes have extensively demonstrated the special optical properties of non-Hermitian optical systems with atomic coherence.
A periodic resonant emitter array coupled to a one-dimensional waveguide can act as a mirror. A typical example is a Bragg mirror, where emitters are spaced by multiples of half wavelengths and collectively enhance light reflection. Two such mirrors form an effective cavity that hosts bound states in the continuum (BICs). However, generating and detecting the spatial profiles of such BICs has proven challenging. Here, we experimentally demonstrate BICs in cavity magnonics using two periodic ferrimagnetic-sphere arrays and a probe sphere in a dual-open-waveguide architecture. We realize both Bragg and anti-Bragg cavities, whose mirrors have different lattice constants. In the Bragg cavity, there are degenerate supermodes formed by mirror spheres. We show that a single dark supermode coherently couples to the probe magnon in the cavity region, forming two polaritons whose splitting scales with both the probe-sphere size and the number of mirror spheres. By contrast, the anti-Bragg cavity has bright and dark supermodes in a bandgap, substantially changing the magnon-cavity interaction. Moreover, by moving the probe sphere, we perform position-dependent detection of the cavity field, highlighting the role of BICs in these cavities. Our flexible experimental setup with a scanning probe opens possibilities to detect other exotic states created by light-matter interaction, to interface with superconducting circuits in hybrid quantum networks, and to study non-Hermitian physics with Bragg and anti-Bragg cavities.
We analyze the non-Markovian spontaneous-emission dynamics of a two-level test atom placed in a cavity formed by two atomic arrays in a waveguide quantum electrodynamics (QED) setup. We demonstrate a crossover from single-mode to multimode strong-coupling cavity QED as the cavity length $\ensuremath{\sim}d$ becomes comparable to the coherence length associated with collective spontaneous emission $\ensuremath{\sim}v/(N\ensuremath{\gamma})$. The resulting non-Markovian dynamics of the test atom and the emergent spectral density of the field are analyzed as a function of various tunable atomic array parameters: the number of atoms, length of the atomic cavity, and resonance frequency of the atoms forming the atomic mirrors. Our results show limitations to cooperatively enhanced light-matter coupling in the presence of time-delayed feedback. We further illustrate that the non-Markovian system dynamics can be efficiently approximated in terms of a few modes of the emergent spectral density of the field.
We propose a special cavity design that is constructed by terminating a one-dimensional waveguide with a perfect mirror at one end and doping a two-level atom at the other. We show that this atom plays the intrinsic role of a semitransparent mirror for single-photon transports such that quasinormal modes emerge spontaneously in the cavity system. This atomic mirror has its reflection coefficient tunable through its level spacing and its coupling to the cavity field, for which the cavity system can be regarded as a two-end resonator with a continuously tunable leakage. The overall investigation predicts the existence of quasibound states in the waveguide continuum. Solid-state implementations based on a dc-superconducting quantum interference device circuit and a defected line resonator embedded in a photonic crystal are illustrated to show the experimental accessibility of the generic model.
Cavity quantum electrodynamics (CQED) plays an elegant role of studying strong coupling between light and matter. However, a non-mechanical, direct and dynamical control of the used mirrors is still unavailable. Here we theoretically investigate a novel type of dynamically controllable cavity composed of two atomic mirrors. Based on the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), the reflectance of atomic mirror is highly controllable through its dispersive properties by varying the intensity of applied coupling fields or the optical depth of atomic media. To demonstrate the uniqueness of the present cavity, we further show the possibility of manipulating vacuum-induced diffraction of a binary Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) when loading it into a dispersive cavity and experiencing superradiant scatterings. Our results may provide a novel all-optical element for atom optics and shine new light on controlling light-matter interaction.