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Physical Review Letters

Observation of Two-Photon Decay of Rydberg Atoms in a Driven Cavity

W. Lange, G. S. Agarwal, HERBERT WALTHER

Published Apr 29, 1996• 14 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Enhanced two-photon decay has been observed for the first time in an electric dipole transition between two Rydberg levels coupled to a single mode of a strongly driven microwave cavity. This was achieved by dynamically suppressing the otherwise dominant single-photon decay. The experiment is compared with a dressed-state model which treats the external driving field exactly. Cavity-induced emission and absorption rates are calculated to fourth order in the interaction to include two-photon processes, and are found to fit the experimental data well.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.76.3293

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Enhanced two-photon decay has been observed for the first time in an electric dipole transition between two Rydberg levels coupled to a single mode of a strongly driven microwave cavity. This was achieved by dynamically suppressing the otherwise dominant single-photon decay. The experiment is compared with a dressed-state model which treats the external driving field exactly. Cavity-induced emission and absorption rates are calculated to fourth order in the interaction to include two-photon processes, and are found to fit the experimental data well.
The decay characteristics of two-state Rydberg atoms are investigated in a microwave cavity driven simultaneously by two strong rf fields. Tuning one of the driving fields leads to sharp resonances in the decay rate of the upper atomic level. Their width may become smaller than the cavity linewidth and transit time broadening. We present a theoretical model, interpreting the resonances as cavity-induced decay of Floquet states of the composite atom-field system. The observed phenomena arise from the interplay of cavity-modified Bloch-Siegert shifts and dynamic enhancement of spontaneous emission at single-photon and multiphoton resonances.
We report a Rydberg-atom experiment, demonstrating the dynamic suppression of spontaneous emission in a resonant microwave cavity driven by a resonant external field. If the Rabi frequency of the injected field is larger than the atomic and cavity line widths, the atoms almost completely decouple from the cavity mode due to suppressed field fluctuations at the sideband frequencies of the Mollow triplet. This was achieved with about 100 microwave photons in the cavity. The reduced decay rate is a consequence of non-Markovian dynamics induced by the finite cavity-response time.
Rydberg atoms excited in microwave resonators are ideal systems to test quantum electrodynamics on an unusual scale.1 Owing to their very large electric dipole sizes, these atoms are indeed coupled so strongly to infrared and millimeter-wave radiation that the field of a few photons—ultimately the one of a single photon—stored in a cavity is large enough to induce important transition rates during the atomic time of flight across the cavity. As a result quantum radiative effects are observed in a range of frequencies where usual atomic systems behave as purely classical radiators. The enhancement of the spontaneous emission rate of a single atom prepared in a tuned cavity has already been observed.2 For a resonant cavity with very small losses, a point should be reached where the atom can no longer decay but instead reversibly oscillates between the two states involved in the transition resonant with the cavity mode. Experiments aimed at the observation of this new regime of quantum electrodynamics evolution are under way
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.
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 investigated the dynamically modified interaction between Rydberg atoms and a single mode of a microwave cavity driven by a strong external field.With a monochromatic injected field we observed dynamic suppression of spontaneous emission, when the intracavity Rabi frequency exceeds the cavity linewidth.We discuss a theoretical model using non-Markovian decay rates, which is in excellent agreement with experiment.When a bichromatic driving field is used, enhanced decay reappears in narrow resonance zones as the detunings and injected intensities are varied.These results are interpreted in terms of cavity-modified transitions between the Floquet states of a two-level atom.Striking aspects of these transitions are their small linewidth and an asymmetry between emission and absorption.