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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Prospects of matter wave amplification by optical pumping

Martin Wilkens, U. Janicke

Published May 1, 1997• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We discuss the prospects for a class of laser-like sources of atoms where the stimulated accumulation of atoms in the fundamental mode of a matter wave resonator is achieved by optical pumping. Precooled atoms in an internal state a which is not affected by the resonator trapping potential are excited into a state e by means of laser light. Once the atom is in state e it decays into the electronic ground state g by means of spontaneous emission, thereby occupying one of the resonator modes v equals 0, 1, ... Neglecting reabsorption of the spontaneously emitted photon, the probability for a transition into mode v is proportional to 1 + nv (`gain'), where nv is the number of atoms in mode v prior to the transition. Including linear losses this model shows threshold behavior in the fundamental mode v equals 0, mode competition and Poissonian atom statistics above threshold. We also analyze the `small-signal gain' including reabsorption of the spontaneously emitted photons. We demonstrate that the threshold for matter wave amplification can only be reached in small 3D resonators of linear size comparable to the wavelength of the spontaneous photon, or in resonators with effectively reduced dimensionality.

DOI
10.1117/12.273759

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We discuss the prospects for a class of laser-like sources of atoms where the stimulated accumulation of atoms in the fundamental mode of a matter wave resonator is achieved by optical pumping. Precooled atoms in an internal state a which is not affected by the resonator trapping potential are excited into a state e by means of laser light. Once the atom is in state e it decays into the electronic ground state g by means of spontaneous emission, thereby occupying one of the resonator modes v equals 0, 1, ... Neglecting reabsorption of the spontaneously emitted photon, the probability for a transition into mode v is proportional to 1 + nv (gain'), where nv is the number of atoms in mode v prior to the transition. Including linear losses this model shows threshold behavior in the fundamental mode v equals 0, mode competition and Poissonian atom statistics above threshold. We also analyze the small-signal gain' including reabsorption of the spontaneously emitted photons. We demonstrate that the threshold for matter wave amplification can only be reached in small 3D resonators of linear size comparable to the wavelength of the spontaneous photon, or in resonators with effectively reduced dimensionality.
We present a scheme for a laser-like source of atoms, starting from atomic de Broglie wave resonators, for which we seek to overcome losses by gain. The resonators are blue-detuned optical dipole-force traps, which can be loaded continuously or repetitively with laser-cooled atoms. This is achieved by trapping the atoms in a different internal state than that used for laser cooling. The transfer of cold atoms into the trapped states involves emission of a photon and can be stimulated by the presence of identical bosonic atoms in the final atomic state. Numerical simulations show threshold behaviour, mode competition and Poissonian atom statistics above threshold.
A laser is composed of an optical resonator and a gain medium. When stimulated emission dominates mirror losses, the emitted light becomes coherent. We propose a new class of coherent light sources based on wavelength sized regular structures of quantum emitters whose eigenmodes form high-Q resonators. Incoherent pumping of few atoms induces light emission with spatial and temporal coherence. We show that an atomic nanoring with a single gain atom at the center behaves like a thresholdless laser, featuring a narrow linewidth. Symmetric subradiant excitations provide optimal operating conditions.
We consider ultracold atoms in a far detuned optical lattice across a high-QQQ optical resonator. Applying an external driving laser to the atoms red detuned from the cavity mode by one vibrational quantum induces cavity-enhanced sideband cooling. For a dense and cold enough atomic ensemble we predict an oscillation threshold for optical Raman sideband lasing concurrent with coherent matter-wave amplification. Above threshold, photons and atoms in the lowest band are dominantly created pairwise via stimulated emission with a strong suppression of competing spontaneous processes. In close analogy to a nondegenerate parametric oscillator, we find sub-Poissonian photon statistics and almost perfect nonclassical atom-photon number correlations. Injecting atoms in higher vibrational bands via tunneling or incoherent scattering then leads to continuous, simultaneous generation of a coherent atom beam and laser light with nonclassical atom-field correlations.
Resonant optical pumping in dense atomic media is discussed, where the absorption length is less than the smallest characteristic dimension of the sample. It is shown that reabsorption and multiple scattering of spontaneous photons (radiation trapping) can substantially slow down the rate of optical pumping. A very slow relaxation out of the target state of the pump process is then sufficient to make optical pumping impossible. As model systems an inhomogeneously and a radiatively broadened 3-level system resonantly driven with a strong broad-band pump field are considered.
We develop a Green's function based mean-field theory for coherent mixing of matter- and light-waves. To demonstrate the utility of this approach, we analyse a co-propagating Raman matter-wave amplifier. We find that for a given laser intensity, a significantly faster amplification process can be achieved employing resonant rather than off-resonance driving. The ratio of the matter-wave gain to atom loss-rate due to spontaneous emission is given by the optical depth of the sample, and is the same both on- and off-resonance. Furthermore, we show that for short-times, the single-mode approximation for the matter-waves gives exact agreement with the full spatial dynamics. For long times, the off-resonant case shows suppressed amplification due to a spatially inhomogenous AC Stark shift associated with laser depletion. This suppression is absent on-resonance, where the AC Stark shift is absent.