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Physical Review A

Decoherence effects in an electromagnetically induced transparency and slow light experiment

Jin Wang

Published Mar 24, 2010• 19 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This article develops a model that shows the effects of decoherence originating from both dephasing and population relaxation on rubidium vapor in the electromagnetically induced transparency regime. This article quantifies the effect of decoherence on the large Faraday rotation, susceptibility, transmission, population, and coherence relationships of the system. The model derived in this article is in excellent agreement with experimental results [H. Gao, M. Rosenberry, J. Wang, and H. Batelaan, J. Phys. B 38, 1857 (2005)]. The total decoherence rate for the experiment has been found by fitting the experimental data to the model. This article also includes a discussion of other types of experiments that this model could be adapted to, such as dipole-induced transmission and the detection of single atoms.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.81.033841

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This article develops a model that shows the effects of decoherence originating from both dephasing and population relaxation on rubidium vapor in the electromagnetically induced transparency regime. This article quantifies the effect of decoherence on the large Faraday rotation, susceptibility, transmission, population, and coherence relationships of the system. The model derived in this article is in excellent agreement with experimental results [H. Gao, M. Rosenberry, J. Wang, and H. Batelaan, J. Phys. B 38, 1857 (2005)]. The total decoherence rate for the experiment has been found by fitting the experimental data to the model. This article also includes a discussion of other types of experiments that this model could be adapted to, such as dipole-induced transmission and the detection of single atoms.
This study explores electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) with a focus on the influence of external magnetic fields, examining effects such as decoherence, Faraday rotation, coherence decay, and signal detuning. This model extends previous analyses by introducing dimensions of coherence decay across atomic densities, nonlinear Faraday rotation dependencies, and transmission responses to detuning. The findings show strong agreement with experimental observations in rubidium vapor systems and provide new insights relevant to applications in quantum memory, magnetic sensing, and optical modulation. Additionally, an analogy to classical RLC circuits is employed to offer an intuitive framework for understanding decoherence’s impact on EIT.
We report on experimental and theoretical study of the nonlinear Faraday effect under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency at the $5{S}_{1/2}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}5{P}_{3/2}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}5{D}_{5/2}$ two-photon transition in rubidium vapor. These transitions realize the inverted YYY model which combines the $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$ and ladder systems. Strong nonlinearity allowing for large rotation angles of a probe beam tuned to the $S\ensuremath{\rightarrow}P$ transition was obtained by creation of quantum superpositions of magnetic sublevels (Zeeman coherences) in the rubidium ground state ($\ensuremath{\Lambda}$ scheme). Additionally, electromagnetically induced transparency was accomplished in a ladder scheme by acting with a second strong coupling laser on the $P\ensuremath{\rightarrow}D$ transition. Under conditions of a two-photon resonance the rotation was significantly reduced, which is interpreted as a competition between the coherent processes. The effect was observed in sub-Gauss magnetic fields and could be used for efficient coherent control of generation of the ground-state coherences, e.g., for controlling the polarization state of the probe light.
In this paper, we consider the effects of strong dipole-dipole interactions on three-level interference phenomena such as coherent population trapping and electromagnetically induced transparency. Experiments are performed on laser cooled rubidium atoms and the results compared to a many-body theory based on either a reduced many-body density matrix expansion or Monte Carlo simulations of many-body rate equations. We show that these approaches permit quantitative predictions of the experimentally observed excitation and transmission spectra. Based on the calculations, we moreover predict a universal scaling of the nonlinear response of cold Rydberg gases.
We perform spectroscopic measurements of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in a strongly interacting Rydberg gas. We observe a significant spectral shift and attenuation of the transparency resonance due to the presence of interactions between Rydberg atoms. We characterize the attenuation as the result of an effective dephasing and show that the shift and the dephasing rate increase versus atomic density, probe Rabi frequency, and principal quantum number of Rydberg states. Moreover, we find that the spectral shift is reduced if the size of a Gaussian atomic cloud is increased and that the dephasing rate increases with the EIT pulse duration at large-parameter regimes. We simulate our experiment with a semianalytical model, which yields results in good agreement with our experimental data.
It was shown by Kocharovskaya and Khanin [Sov. Phys. JETP 63, 945 (1986)] that a comb of optical pulses can induce a ground-state atomic coherence and change the optical response of an atomic medium. In our experiment, we studied the propagation of a comb of optical pulses produced by a mode-locked diode laser in rubidium atomic vapor. Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) was observed when the pulse repetition rate is a subharmonic of the hyperfine splitting of the ground state. The width of the EIT resonance is determined by the relaxation rate of the ground-state coherence. Possible applications to magnetometery, atomic clocks, and frequency chains are discussed.
The effect of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) combined with Rydberg-state atoms provides high optical nonlinearity to efficiently mediate the photon-photon interaction. However, the decay rate of Rydberg coherence, i.e., the decoherence rate, plays an important role in optical nonlinear efficiency and can be largely influenced by laser frequency fluctuation. In this work, we carried out a systematic study of the effect of laser frequency fluctuation on the decoherence rate. We derive an analytical formula that quantitatively describes the relationship between the decoherence rate and laser frequency fluctuation. The formula is experimentally verified by using the $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$-type EIT system of laser-cooled 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb atoms, in which one can either completely eliminate or controllably introduce the effect of laser frequency fluctuation. We also include the effect of Doppler shift caused by the atomic thermal motion in the formula, which can be negligible in the $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$-type EIT experiment but significant in the Rydberg-EIT experiment. Utilizing the atoms of 350 $\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{K}$, we study the decoherence rate in the Rydberg-EIT system involving the state of $|32{D}_{5/2}\ensuremath{\rangle}$. The experimental data are consistent with the predictions from the formula. We are able to achieve a rather low decoherence rate of $2\ensuremath{\pi}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}48$ kHz at a moderate coupling Rabi frequency of $2\ensuremath{\pi}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}4.3$ MHz.