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

Characterization of atomic coherence decay for the storage of light

Eden V. Figueroa, Frank Vewinger, J. Appel, G. Günter, Alexander I. Lvovsky

Published Aug 31, 2006• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present an experimental study of decoherence of the ground energy levels of 87Rb atoms in vapor cells. We measure the decoherence of the ground state using three different methods: measuring the decay constant of the storage of light in atomic vapor, the decay rates of transient coherence oscillations of the ground state, and the width of the electromagnetically induced transparency resonances. The measurements showed decoherence rates on the scale of 104 s-1.

DOI
10.1117/12.681295

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We present an experimental study of decoherence of the ground energy levels of 87Rb atoms in vapor cells. We measure the decoherence of the ground state using three different methods: measuring the decay constant of the storage of light in atomic vapor, the decay rates of transient coherence oscillations of the ground state, and the width of the electromagnetically induced transparency resonances. The measurements showed decoherence rates on the scale of 104 s-1.
We report characterization of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) resonances in the D1 line of (87)Rb under various experimental conditions. The dependence of the EIT linewidth on the power of the pump field was investigated at various temperatures for the ground states of the lambda system associated with different hyperfine levels of the atomic 5S(1/2) state as well as magnetic sublevels of the same hyperfine level. Strictly linear behavior was observed in all cases. A theoretical analysis of our results shows that dephasing in the ground state is the main source of decoherence, with population exchange playing a minor role.
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We examine the role of ground-state coherence on the fluorescence from the excited state in a three-level $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$ system under continuous-wave excitation. When resonantly pumped, the fluorescence is strongly affected by any perturbation in the ground-state coherent population trapping. From our analytical results, we suggest how to use this strong dependence of fluorescence on the ground-state decays as a new method for the measurement of the ground-state decoherence rates. Our calculations should work well for a wide range of systems such as atomic vapors with a buffer gas, active dopants in solids, and quantum dots, etc. We present a proof of principle experiment using 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb vapor.
Antirelaxation coatings in atomic vapor cells allow ground-state coherent spin states to survive many collisions with the cell walls. This reduction in the ground-state decoherence rate gives rise to ultranarrow-bandwidth features in electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) spectra, which can form the basis of, for example, long-time scale slow and stored light, sensitive magnetometers, and precise frequency standards. Here we study, both experimentally and theoretically, how Zeeman EIT contrast and width in paraffin-coated rubidium vapor cells are determined by cell and laser-beam geometry, laser intensity, and atomic density. Using a picture of Ramsey pulse sequences, where atoms alternately spend ``bright'' and ``dark'' time intervals inside and outside the laser beam, we explain the behavior of EIT features in coated cells, highlighting their unique characteristics and potential applications.
We report characterization of EIT resonances in the D1 line of Rb 87 under various experimental conditions. The dependence of the EIT linewidth on the power of the control field investigated. Strictly linear behavior between the ground levels as the main source of decoherence. We therefore formulated a new theory assuming pure dephasing to be the main decoherence mechanism. We also performed experiments where we created additional decoherence mechanisms by means of a counter-propagating repumper field. This field caused the ground-state population exchange, thus reproducing conditions in which the original theory is valid.
We study the transient response dynamics of 87Rb atomic vapor buffered in 8 torr Ne gas through an electromagnetically induced transparency configured in Λ-scheme. Experimentally, the temporal transmission spectra versus probe detuning by switching on and off the coupling one show complex structures. The transmitted probe light intensity drops to a minimum value when the coupling light turns off, showing a strong absorption. Even at the moment of turning on the coupling light at a subsequent delayed time, the atomic medium shows a fast transient response. To account for the transient switching feature, in the time-dependent optical Bloch equation, we must take the transverse relaxation dephasing process of atomic vapor into account, as well as the fluorescence relaxation along with the optical absorption. This work supplies a technique to quantify the transverse relaxation time scale and to sensitively monitor its variation along the environment by observing the transient dynamics of coherent medium, which is helpful in characterizing the coherent feature of the atomic medium.