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Optical Engineering

Optical vortices for localized optical lattice site manipulation

Ethan F. Schonbrun, Rafael Piestun

Published Feb 1, 2006• 15 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present a method for manipulating individual sites in a 2-D optical lattice that enables the creation of defects within otherwise periodic light patterns. The modified optical lattice is created by interference of plane waves and spiral phase waves. Spiral phase modulation creates an optical vortex that is well suited for addressing single rows of the optical lattice owing to the localized wrap of the phase front. Local fringes can be split, annihilated, or have their size tuned by controlling the charge and location of the vortex cores. These properties provide a connection between dislocations in crystals, waves, and optical lattices.

DOI
10.1117/1.2172930

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We present a method for manipulating individual sites in a 2-D optical lattice that enables the creation of defects within otherwise periodic light patterns. The modified optical lattice is created by interference of plane waves and spiral phase waves. Spiral phase modulation creates an optical vortex that is well suited for addressing single rows of the optical lattice owing to the localized wrap of the phase front. Local fringes can be split, annihilated, or have their size tuned by controlling the charge and location of the vortex cores. These properties provide a connection between dislocations in crystals, waves, and optical lattices.
We address the concept of guiding and transporting matter-wave solitons along the channels of optical lattices made by interference patterns of beams containing topological wavefront dislocations. The local lattice distortions that occur around the dislocations cause solitons to move along reconfigurable paths, a phenomenon that may be used for controlled all-optical manipulation of Bose-Einstein condensates. Multiple dislocations form traps that can capture and hold moving solitons. We also show that suitable lattice topologies may be used to explore matter-wave soliton collisions and interactions in a confined reconfigurable environment.
Abstract Optical vortices, which are beams with spiral‐shaped wavefronts and screw phase dislocations, have potential for supporting high‐capacity optical communications. In this study, the generation of 1D and 2D vortex‐beam arrays is theoretically proposed and experimentally demonstrated by introducing novel forked‐photonic lattices in a three‐level 85 Rb atomic medium. Such forked‐photonic lattices are established through the interference of Gaussian and vortex coupling beams. The input Gaussian probe beam that travels through this lattice experiences phase superposition and is diffracted into vortex‐beam arrays. Moreover, the relative efficiency of the high‐order diffractions can be enhanced by tuning the two‐photon detuning and power of the coupling beams. The enriched diffractive arrays of a vortex probe beam propagating in such forked‐photonic lattices are also presented. The experimental results agree well with those of the numerical simulations. This work suggests that atomic systems are a fertile platform for creating and controlling vortex‐beam arrays, and that they can shed light on ongoing exploration in the fields of optical manipulation and quantum information processing.
Abstract Vector vortex beams, featuring spatially structured polarization states and helical phase fronts, emerge as a critical solution for enhancing optical information capacity beyond the constraints of traditional communication paradigms. In this paper, a coherent modulation strategy is established for creating two dimension (2D) vector vortex far‐field diffraction arrays through light‐atom interactions under electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). A dynamically reconfigurable optical lattice is engineered via interference between a Gaussian‐coupled field and a vortex‐coupled field with adjustable topological charge. The atomic medium, when subjected to this lattice modulation, facilitates the diffraction of probe vector light fields into high‐order vector vortex diffracted spots. This system enables multi‐parameter tuning to significantly enhance diffraction efficiency. Results demonstrate that Comprehensive optimization of coupling field intensity, interference beam power distribution, and frequency detuning significantly enhances the relative diffraction efficiency. Moreover, the polarization state distribution of diffraction fields can be reconfigured by controlling optical lattice topological charges. This atomic medium‐based optical lattice modulation framework offers flexibility in tailoring structured light arrays, bridging fundamental studies of structured light‐matter interactions with advanced applications in high‐dimensional optical encoding, quantum state engineering, and multifunctional optical manipulation systems.
Optical vortices with a vortex core size that is at least two orders of magnitude smaller than the laser beam waist is presented. The optical vortex is generated by a spiral phase plate (SPP) and counterrotating optical vortex pairs are created in a modified Mach–Zehnder interferometer surrounded by a 4f lens arrangement. The azimuthal variation of the counterrotating optical vortex forms a sinusoidal intensity modulation for which the winding number of the optical vortex is deduced accurately and precisely by fitting it to a sinusoidal function. These results are of interest in designing novel optical vortex gratings for manipulating matter waves (e.g., in Kapitza–Dirac scattering). A theory of atomic angular Kapitza–Dirac scattering with optical vortices is presented. The large beam waist combined with a small optical vortex core size would also be of interest when using an optical vortex to perform spectroscopy in a wide range of matter systems including solid, liquid, atomic, and molecular systems, as well as in short-range optical communication.
Superfluids with strong spatial modulation can be experimentally produced in the area of cold atoms under the influence of optical lattices. Here we address 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb bosons at T=0T=0T=0 K in a flat geometry under the influence of a periodic potential with the Gross-Pitaevskii theory. The statics and dynamics of vortex excitations are studied in the case of one-dimensional (1D) and of two-dimensional (2D) optical lattices, as function of the intensity of the optical lattice. We compute how the vortex energy depends on the position of its core and the energy barrier that a vortex has to surmount in order to move in the superfluid. The dynamics of a vortex dipole, a pair of vortices of opposite chirality, differ profoundly from the case of a uniform superfluid. In the 1D case, when parallel ridges of density are present, the dynamics depends on the positions of the two vortices. If they are in the same channel between two ridges, then the two vortices approach each other until they annihilate each other in a short time. If the two vortices are in distinct channels, the dipole undergoes a rigid translation but with a velocity depending on the intensity of the optical lattice and this translation velocity can even change sign with respect to the case of the uniform superfluid. Superimposed on this translation an oscillatory motion is also present. A superposition of translation along a channel and an oscillation is also found with a single vortex when the system is bounded inside a circular trap. These oscillatory motions can be both longitudinal, i.e., along the channel, as well as transverse. In all cases the transverse motions are one sided, in the sense that the vortex core never crosses the equilibrium position nearest the starting position. In the case of the 2D lattices we study (square, triangular, and honeycomb), the two vortices of a dipole move mainly by jumps between equilibrium positions and approach each other until annihilation. This behavior has some similarity with what has been found for a vortex dipole in the supersolid state of dipolar bosons. We show that a rapid ramp down of the optical potential improves the visibility of the density holes at the vortex core.
In the present work we introduce and explore a technique for the efficient removal of vortices from an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate, through the application and subsequent removal of a one-dimensional optical lattice. We showcase a prototypical experimental realization of the technique that motivates a detailed theoretical study of vortex removal mechanisms. Through simulations of the condensate dynamics during application of the optical lattice, we also discover a vortex removal mechanism that arises in narrow, optical-lattice-induced atomic density channels for which the channel width is on the order of the nominal vortex core size and healing length. This mechanism involves the density profile typically associated with a vortex core spatially separating from the phase singularity associated with the vortex. By analyzing numerical experiments covering a wide range of variations of the optical lattice amplitude and fringe periodicity, we identify the existence of an optimal set of parameters that enables the efficient removal of all vortices from the condensate. This analysis paves the way for further studies aimed at understanding vortex dynamics in narrow channels, and adds to an experimental toolkit for working with vortices and controlling the dynamical states of condensates.