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Physical Review A

Transient absorption by a Rydberg atom in a resonant cavity

Mark Mallalieu, Jonathan S. Parker, Carlos R. Stroud

Published Jun 1, 1988• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A theoretical analysis is presented describing the interaction of the field in a high-Q microwave cavity with an atom that is suddenly excited to the lower of two Rydberg levels that are resonantly coupled by the field. It is found that the field initially in the cavity is canceled by interference with the source field emitted by the atom. The absorption may be characterized as a ``darkness wave packet'' emitted by the atom and reflected by the cavity walls.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.37.4765

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A theoretical analysis is presented describing the interaction of the field in a high-Q microwave cavity with an atom that is suddenly excited to the lower of two Rydberg levels that are resonantly coupled by the field. It is found that the field initially in the cavity is canceled by interference with the source field emitted by the atom. The absorption may be characterized as a ``darkness wave packet'' emitted by the atom and reflected by the cavity walls.
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A theoretical study of the dynamics of Rydberg atoms in a microwave cavity driven by a strong bichromatic field is presented. The resonator is assumed to operate in the low-Q regime. As a consequence, photons emitted by the atoms are dissipated in the cavity walls during the interaction time of the atoms inside the resonator. In this situation the cavity field follows the atomic dynamics adiabatically. The transient behavior of the system is analyzed in terms of Floquet states, and cavity-induced transition rates between these states are calculated for a large range of parameters of the bichromatic field. Narrow resonances are found in the transition rates, in agreement with recent experimental investigations of cavity Rydberg atoms subjected to strong bichromatic driving. We explain in detail the structure of the resonances, which is determined by the frequency-dependent cavity-mode density as well as the Rabi frequencies of the applied fields. The intensity-dependent shifts of the resonance frequencies are also calculated and found to be largely insensitive to inhomogeneous broadening. Finally, the numerical results are compared with experimental observations.
We analyse the force on an atom resonantly coupled to the vacuum field in a high-Q microwave cavity. The atom is prepared in the upper level of the atomic transition coupled to the cavity mode. The force results from the reversible exchange of a single excitation between the atom and the cavity. It derives from a potential which reflects the spatial variations of the r.m.s. vacuum field inside the cavity. Depending upon the atom-cavity dressed state into which the system is prepared, this potential presents either a maximum or a minimum at the point where vacuum fluctuations are largest. Very slow circular Rydberg atoms may be reflected back as they enter the cavity, or trapped around cavity centre.
We study the dynamics of a system composed of two coupled cavities, each interacting with a single Rydberg atom. The interplay between Rydberg-Rydberg interaction and photon hopping enables the transition of the atoms from the collective ground state to the double Rydberg excitation state by individually interacting with the optical normal modes and suppressing the upconversion process between them. The atomic transition is accompanied by the two-photon absorption and emission of the normal modes. Since the energy level structure of the atom-cavity system is photon number dependent there is only a pair of states being in the two-photon resonance. Therefore, the system can act as a quantum nonlinear absorption filter through the nonclassical quantum process, converting coherent light field into a nonclassical state. Meanwhile, the vacuum field in the cavity inspires the Rydberg atoms to simultaneously emit two photons into the normal mode, resulting in obvious emission enhancement of the mode.
Remarkable quantum effects are predicted for an initially excited two-level wave packet incident on a broadband vacuum-field reservoir with sharp spatial boundaries: (a) reflection of the excited wave packet from the boundary (skin effect); (b) transient three-dimensional binding of the decayed wave packet to the boundary by photons carrying more energy than the incident wave packet. These effects are realizable for cold atoms in cavities where excitation decay is nearly exponential but strongly enhanced.
We present a theoretical treatment of the problem of a Rydberg atom near-resonantly coupled to a mode in a microwave cavity. We analyze the properties of cavity-induced spontaneous emission in the case of the cavity being driven by one or two near-resonant microwave fields. We find that the spontaneous emission of the atom can be turned off by one strong field (dynamical suppression) and that the addition of a second strong field can break this dynamical suppression and allow the atom to fluoresce in the presence of both fields. The analysis is cast both in a full master-equation treatment and in a Floquet treatment of an atom driven bichromatically in vacuum, the latter allowing for an interpretation of the full calculation. The calculations are performed in the intermediately strong coupling limit, in which both atomic and cavity dynamics must be considered.