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Fortschritte der Physik

Cooperative emission from nuclei: The collective Lamb shift and electromagnetically induced transparency

Ralf Röhlsberger

Published Jun 18, 2012• 16 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract The narrow nuclear resonances of Mössbauer isotopes constitute almost ideal two‐level systems to study cooperative effects in the interaction of x‐rays with matter. Embedding an ensemble of resonant Mössbauer nuclei into a planar cavity facilitates the excitation of superradiant oscillatory eigenmodes via pulses of synchrotron radiation. These modes exhibit a large collective Lamb shift that can be controlled via the excitation conditions and the cavity geometry. Cooperative emission in connection with the radiative coupling of two resonant ensembles in a cavity leads to electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). This contribution gives a review on cooperative effects in nuclear resonant scattering of synchrotron radiation. Special emphasis is given to the basic principles of recent experiments that led to the observation of the collective Lamb shift and EIT with nuclear resonances in the regime of hard x‐rays.

DOI
10.1002/prop.201200074

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Abstract The narrow nuclear resonances of Mössbauer isotopes constitute almost ideal two‐level systems to study cooperative effects in the interaction of x‐rays with matter. Embedding an ensemble of resonant Mössbauer nuclei into a planar cavity facilitates the excitation of superradiant oscillatory eigenmodes via pulses of synchrotron radiation. These modes exhibit a large collective Lamb shift that can be controlled via the excitation conditions and the cavity geometry. Cooperative emission in connection with the radiative coupling of two resonant ensembles in a cavity leads to electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). This contribution gives a review on cooperative effects in nuclear resonant scattering of synchrotron radiation. Special emphasis is given to the basic principles of recent experiments that led to the observation of the collective Lamb shift and EIT with nuclear resonances in the regime of hard x‐rays.
The electromagnetic transitions of Mössbauer nuclei provide ideal two-level systems to study the cooperative effects of X-rays with matter. Recently, we have observed the collective Lamb shift (CLS) in nuclear γ-ray superradiance [Röhlsberger, R.; Schlage, K.; Sahoo, B.; Couet, S.; Rüffer, R. Science 2010, 328, 1248–1251]. An ensemble of resonant 57Fe nuclei was embedded in the center of a planar cavity and was collectively excited by synchrotron radiation into a purely superradiant state. The decay of the superradiant state can be almost two orders of magnitude faster than the single-atom nuclear decay and can be accompanied by a CLS of more than 10 times the natural linewidth. Here we review the basic features of cooperative effects that occur in nuclear γ-ray superradiance in comparison with similar effects observed in the optical regime of the electromagnetic spectrum. We show that nuclear resonant scattering of synchrotron radiation opens new ways for systematic studies of cooperative effects in the interaction of X-rays with matter.
Superradiance, the cooperative spontaneous emission of photons from an ensemble of identical atoms, provides valuable insights into the many-body physics of photons and atoms. We show that an ensemble of resonant atoms embedded in the center of a planar cavity can be collectively excited by synchrotron radiation into a purely superradiant state. The collective coupling of the atoms via the radiation field leads to a substantial radiative shift of the transition energy, the collective Lamb shift. We simultaneously measured the temporal evolution of the superradiant decay and the collective Lamb shift of resonant 57Fe nuclei excited with 14.4-kilo-electron volt synchrotron radiation. Our experimental technique provides a simple method for spectroscopic analysis of the superradiant emission.
Waveguides offer a means to controllably couple atomic ensembles to the electromagnetic field therein. Here, we demonstrate x-ray propagation in planar thin-film waveguides coupled to Mössbauer nuclei under collective resonant excitation by short pulses of synchrotron radiation. We record x-ray photons that have been emitted into resonant modes of the waveguide. Depending on the geometry and mode of excitation, two fundamentally different signatures of the collective emission are observed, for which we present a unifying theoretical model. Our results form a new platform for waveguide quantum electrodynamics in the hard x-ray regime with the potential to provide a coherent narrow band source of x-rays on the nanometer scale.
This thesis is dedicated to the study of collective effects of nuclei in single xray photon superradiance. To this end we investigate aspects of superradiance in both nuclear forward scattering and in thin-film cavities with an embedded 57Fe nuclear layer. A general theoretical framework is developed to investigate a single-photon cooperative emission from a cloud of resonant systems, atoms or nuclei, in the presence of magnetic hyperfine splitting. In the limit of a thick sample, we present our results for two means to coherently control the collective single x-ray photon emission in nuclear forward scattering. In the limit of a thin sample in a thin-film cavity with embedded resonant nuclei, we find out that unlike the magnetic hyperfine splitting of a single atom or nucleus, interesting collective effects may occur which modify the hyperfine level structure. In addition, for a certain parameter regime a spectrum reminiscent of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) can be achieved. Based on this EIT-like effect, a theoretical control mechanism for stopping x-ray pulses in the thin-film x-ray cavity is put forward. Finally, we show theoretically that for the case of two nuclear ensembles in the thin-film cavity, pseudo-Rabi splitting due to the strong coupling between the two layers should occur. The latter findings are confirmed by preliminary experimental data.
Abstract The induced transparency of opaque medium for resonant electromagnetic radiation is a powerful tool for manipulating the field-matter interaction. Various techniques to make different physical systems transparent for radiation from microwaves to x-rays were implemented. Most of them are based on the modification of the quantum-optical properties of the medium under the action of an external coherent electromagnetic field. Recently, an observation of acoustically induced transparency (AIT) of the 57Fe absorber for resonant 14.4-keV photons from the radioactive 57Co source was reported. About 150-fold suppression of the resonant absorption of photons due to collective acoustic oscillations of the nuclei was demonstrated. In this paper, we extend the AIT phenomenon to a novel phase-locked regime, when the transmitted photons are synchronized with the absorber vibration. We show that the advantages of synchrotron Mössbauer sources such as the deterministic periodic emission of radiation and controlled spectral-temporal characteristics of the emitted photons along with high-intensity photon flux in a tightly focused beam, make it possible to efficiently implement this regime, paving the way for the development of the acoustically controlled interface between hard x-ray photons and nuclear ensembles.
The x-ray planar cavity embedded in two nuclear ensembles at node and antinode positions with fixed spacing has been used to study the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT)-like effect previously. In this work, the same x-ray planar cavity but with a flexible spacing configuration is studied theoretically. By developing a concise transfer matrix method, the changing of spacing is reflected conveniently as the phase shift of the propagation matrices, based on which the system can be solved analytically. A periodic characteristic as a function of the spacing is observed, i.e., the first nuclear ensemble locating at any node will result in an EIT effect while the EIT effect will be completely compressed when it is at any antinode. It indicates that the phase shift between the two nuclear ensembles plays a key role for the coupling field. This kind of phase manipulation will enrich the approaches of quantum control in the x-ray regime.