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arXiv:2401.05297

Breaking of reciprocity and the Pancharatnam-Berry phase for light scattered by a disordered cold atom cloud

P. H. N. Magnani, Pablo Gabriel Santos Dias, Frometa, M., Martins, M. A., N. Piovella, Robin Kaiser, Ph. W. Courteille, Mathilde Hugbart, Romain Bachelard, R Teixeira

Published Jan 10, 2024• 0 citations
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Abstract

Collective effects on the light scattered by disordered media such as Anderson localization and coherent backscattering critically depend on the reciprocity between interfering optical paths. In this work, we explore the breaking of reciprocity for the light scattered by a disordered cold atom setup, taking advantage of the non-commutation of optical elements that manipulate the polarization of the interfering paths. This breaking of symmetry manifests itself in the reduction of the fringes contrast as the light scattered by the cloud interferes with that from its mirror image. We provide a geometrical interpretation in terms of the Pancharatnam-Berry phase, which we directly access from the fringes displacement. Our work paves the way toward the manipulation of path reciprocity and interference for light scattered by disordered media.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2401.05297

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Collective effects on the light scattered by disordered media such as Anderson localization and coherent backscattering critically depend on the reciprocity between interfering optical paths. In this work, we explore the breaking of reciprocity for the light scattered by a disordered cold atom setup, taking advantage of the non-commutation of optical elements that manipulate the polarization of the interfering paths. This breaking of symmetry manifests itself in the reduction of the fringes contrast as the light scattered by the cloud interferes with that from its mirror image. We provide a geometrical interpretation in terms of the Pancharatnam-Berry phase, which we directly access from the fringes displacement. Our work paves the way toward the manipulation of path reciprocity and interference for light scattered by disordered media.
Reciprocity is a universal principle that has a profound impact on many areas of physics. A fundamental phenomenon in condensed-matter physics, optical physics, and acoustics, arising from reciprocity, is the constructive interference of quantum or classical waves which propagate along time-reversed paths in disordered media, leading to, for example, weak localization and metal-insulator transition. Previous studies have shown that such coherent effects are suppressed when reciprocity is broken. Here we experimentally show that by tuning a nonreciprocal phase we can coherently control complex coherent phenomena, rather than simply suppress them. In particular, we manipulate coherent backscattering of light, also known as weak localization. By utilizing a magneto-optical effect, we control the interference between time-reversed paths inside a multimode fiber with strong mode mixing, observe the optical analog of weak antilocalization, and realize a continuous transition from weak localization to weak antilocalization. Our results may open new possibilities for coherent control of waves in complex systems.
Since the work of Anderson on localization, interference effects for the propagation of a wave in the presence of disorder have been extensively studied, as exemplified in coherent backscattering (CBS) of light. In the multiple scattering of light by a disordered sample of thermal atoms, interference effects are usually washed out by the fast atomic motion. This is no longer true for cold atoms where CBS has recently been observed. However, the internal structure of the atoms strongly influences the interference properties. In this paper, we consider light scattering by an atomic dipole transition with arbitrary degeneracy and study its impact on coherent backscattering. We show that the interference contrast is strongly reduced. Assuming a uniform statistical distribution over internal degrees of freedom, we compute analytically the single- and double-scattering contributions to the intensity in the weak-localization regime. The so-called ladder and crossed diagrams are generalized to the case of atoms and permit to calculate enhancement factors and backscattering intensity profiles for polarized light and any closed atomic dipole transition.
We experimentally demonstrate ultrafast control over reciprocal light paths in random media. The combination of multiple scattering and coherence of light gives rise to strong interference contributions in light transport. An important interference correction to diffusion theory is the coherent backscattering effect, the constructive interference of reciprocal light paths in the backscattering direction. Our experiments show that the phase coherence between these paths can be suppressed by introducing dynamics faster than the photon dwell time. This adiabatic dephasing is of interest for its potential for controlling weak and strong localization and adiabatic storage and release of photonic information.
For large bulk disordered media, light transport is generally successfully described by a diffusion process. This picture assumes that any interference is washed out under configuration average. However, it is now known that, under certain circumstances, some interference effects survive the disorder average and in turn lead to wave localizations effects. In this paper, we investigate coherence of a monochromatic laser light propagating in an optically thick sample of laser-cooled strontium atoms. For this purpose, we use the coherent backscattering effect as an interferometric tool. At low laser probe beam intensities, phase coherence is fully preserved and the interference contrast is maximal. At higher intensities, saturation effects start to set in and the interference contrast is reduced.
Light propagation in disordered media is a fundamental and important problem in optics and photonics. In particular, engineering light-matter interaction in disordered cold atomic ensembles is one of the central topics in modern quantum and atomic optics. The collective response of dense atomic gases under light excitation, which crucially depends on the spatial distribution of atoms and the geometry of the ensemble, has important impacts on quantum technologies like quantum sensors, atomic clocks and quantum information storage. Here we analyze near-resonant light transmission in two-dimensional dense ultracold atomic ensembles with short-range positional correlations. Based on the coupled-dipole simulations under different atom number densities and correlation lengths, we show that the collective effects are strongly influenced by those positional correlations, manifested as significant shifts and broadening or narrowing of transmission resonance lines. We also analyze the eigenstate distribution of different atomic ensembles. This work may provide profound implications on collective and cooperative effects in cold atomic ensembles as well as the study of mesoscopic physics concerning light transport in strongly scattering disorder media.