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Physical Review Letters

Vacuum Rabi splitting as a feature of linear-dispersion theory: Analysis and experimental observations

Yifu Zhu, Daniel J. Gauthier, S. Morin, Qilin Wu, H. J. Carmichael, THOMAS W. MOSSBERG

Published May 21, 1990• 604 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The spectral and temporal response of an optical cavity resonantly coupled to an ensemble of barium atoms has been investigated experimentally. The empty-cavity trnasmission resonances are found to split in the presence of the atoms and, under these conditions, the cavity's temporal response is found to be oscillatory. These effects may be viewed as a manifestation of a vacuum-field Rabi splitting, or as a simple consequence of the linear absorption and dispersion of the intracavity atoms.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.64.2499

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The spectral and temporal response of an optical cavity resonantly coupled to an ensemble of barium atoms has been investigated experimentally. The empty-cavity trnasmission resonances are found to split in the presence of the atoms and, under these conditions, the cavity's temporal response is found to be oscillatory. These effects may be viewed as a manifestation of a vacuum-field Rabi splitting, or as a simple consequence of the linear absorption and dispersion of the intracavity atoms.
We report experimental measurements of the transmission spectrum of an optical cavity coupled with cold Rb atoms. We observe the multiatom vacuum Rabi splitting of a composite cavity and atom system. When a coupling field is applied to the atoms and induces the resonant two-photon Raman transition with the cavity field in a $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$-type system, we observe a cavity transmission spectrum with two vacuum Rabi sidebands and a central peak representing the intracavity dark state. The central peak linewidth is significantly narrowed by the dark-state resonance and its position is insensitive to the frequency change of the empty cavity.
A composite atom-cavity system exhibits complex behavior with respect to spontaneous emission, resonance fluorescence, and transmission spectra.1–3 An early investigation1 showed that for an atom in an ideal cavity, the spontaneous-emission spectra show a doublet splitting in the case of very weak excitation. This splitting, which arises from vacuum-field Rabi oscillation, is regarded as an inherently quantum phenomenon.1,2 However, recent experiments and theoretical analyses have demonstrated that the multiatom vacuum Rabi splitting may be regarded as a feature of linear dispersion theory.3 This approach is dramatically different from the one employed in QED descriptions of the problem.
Recently, several research groups have reported investigations of vacuum-field Rabi splittings (VRS) in the linear response of strongly coupled semiconductor microcavities [1-4]. We have previously reported on the dynamics of time-domain vacuum Rabi oscillations, which are most easily understood in the framework of cavity exciton-polaritons, in which the in-plane momentum k|| is conserved [2], so that at each k|| a single cavity mode interacts with only a single mode of the electromagnetic field (Jaynes-Cummings model). In high Q semiconductor microcavities, the strong coupling between two-dimensional excitons and planar distributed- Bragg-reflector cavity modes results in several-meV splittings observable in the reflectivity or absorption spectrum. In the low excitation regime, the VRS is independent of light intensity incident on the cavity, since the vacuum-Rabi frequency exceeds the externally-driven Rabi frequency (in which case the Jaynes-Cummings model is equivalent to the linear dispersion of the coupled exciton-cavity system). As the incident light intensity is increased, two different effects may be expected to contribute to the nonlinear response. First, as long as the excitonic absorption is equivalent to a two-level system, higher-lying states of the Jaynes-Cummings ladder might be observable. Second, at high intensity phase-space filling and Coulomb screening of the exciton states results in a reduced oscillator strength which leads to a reduced VRS; this effect has no analogue in the case of atom-cavity systems. In this paper, we apply several ultrafast nonlinear techniques to investigate the nonlinear response of semiconductor microcavities.
The normal-mode splitting(or the vacuum Rabi splitting) is a typical strong interaction of atoms in the cavity QED system.Linear-dispersion theory was adopted to research a composite atom-cavity system.By putting absorption and dispersion of intracavity three-energy level atom in the EIT condition(EIT medium) into the formula of the empty-cavity transmission,we can see that a resonance transmission spectrum was split into three transmission spectrums due to absorption and dispersion of EIT medium in the cavity.The method can be applied to all cavities which contain medium of random absorption and dispersion.