We study resonator-induced light forces arising from cooperative atom–light interaction. For such collective processes, the force on the sample can be orders of magnitude larger than the sum of conventional light forces on individual atoms. Since resonator-induced light forces can be dissipative even when the incident light is far detuned from atomic transitions, they may be applicable to target particles with a complex level structure. (Some figures in this article are in colour only in the electronic version)
We study resonator-induced light forces arising from cooperative atom–light interaction. For such collective processes, the force on the sample can be orders of magnitude larger than the sum of conventional light forces on individual atoms. Since resonator-induced light forces can be dissipative even when the incident light is far detuned from atomic transitions, they may be applicable to target particles with a complex level structure. (Some figures in this article are in colour only in the electronic version)
We report on a novel type of collective friction force acting on the center-of-mass motion of a self-organizing atomic sample inside a resonator. The force substantially exceeds the sum of the light forces acting on isolated atoms. We also observe spontaneous symmetry breaking between two equivalent, but spatially oset self-organization patterns in the standing wave resonator, as predicted by Domokos and Ritsch. We identify and experimentally verify the dependencies of the threshold for the self-organization process on incident-light and atomic sample properties. 1 Introduction: Single-atom versus collective light forces The well-known light-induced forces on atoms, such as the conservative dipole force, or the dissipative Doppler and polarization gradient forces 1, arise from the inter-action of the incident light with single atoms. Collective parameters characterizing the sample, such as the number of atoms, their spatial or momentum distribution
Cooperative scattering has been the subject of intense research in the last years. In this article, we discuss the concept of cooperative scattering from a broad perspective. We briefly review the various collective effects that occur when light interacts with an ensemble of atoms. We show that some effects that have been recently discussed in the context of ‘single-photon superradiance’, or cooperative scattering in the linear-optics regime, can also be explained by ‘standard optics’, i.e. using macroscopic quantities such as the susceptibility or the diffusion coefficient. We explain why some collective effects depend on the atomic density, and others on the optical depth. In particular, we show that, for a large and dilute atomic sample driven by a far-detuned laser, the decay of the fluorescence, which exhibits superradiant and subradiant dynamics, depends only on the on-resonance optical depth. We also discuss the link between concepts that are independently studied in the quantum-optics community and in the mesoscopic-physics community. We show that the coupled-dipole model predicts a departure from Ohm’s law for the diffuse light, that incoherent multiple scattering can induce a saturation of fluorescence and we also show the similarity between the weak-localization correction to the diffusion coefficient and the inaccuracy of Lorentz local field correction to the susceptibility.
We report the observation of collective-emission-induced, velocity-dependent light forces. One-third of a falling sample containing $3\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{6}$ cesium atoms illuminated by a horizontal standing wave is stopped by cooperatively emitting light into a vertically oriented, confocal resonator. We observe decelerations up to 1500m/s2 and cooling to temperatures as low as $7\text{ }\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{K}$, well below the free-space Doppler limit. The measured forces substantially exceed those predicted for a single two-level atom.
The interaction of light with an atomic sample containing a large number of particles gives rise to many collective (or cooperative) effects, such as multiple scattering, superradiance, and subradiance, even if the atomic density is low and the incident optical intensity weak (linear optics regime). Tracing over the degrees of freedom of the light field, the system can be well described by an effective atomic Hamiltonian, which contains the light-mediated dipole-dipole interaction between atoms. This long-range interaction is at the origin of the various collective effects, or of collective excitation modes of the system. Even though an analysis of the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of these collective modes does allow distinguishing superradiant modes, for instance, from other collective modes, this is not sufficient to understand the dynamics of a driven system, as not all collective modes are significantly populated. Here, we study how the excitation parameters, i.e., the driving field, determines the population of the collective modes. We investigate in particular the role of the laser detuning from the atomic transition, and demonstrate a simple relation between the detuning and the steady-state population of the modes. This relation allows understanding several properties of cooperative scattering, such as why superradiance and subradiance become independent of the detuning at large enough detuning without vanishing, and why superradiance, but not subradiance, is suppressed near resonance. We also show that the spatial properties of the collective modes allow distinguishing diffusive modes, responsible for radiation trapping, from subradiant modes.
In recent years, the study of quantum electrodynamics (QED) in light-matter interactions has discovered various interesting phenomenons that orient many applications. However, due to the ambient entanglement among photons and atoms, few-particle dynamics remains challenging to analyze precisely and limits the progress in several fields. In few-particle systems, different number of atoms interacting with the light field generates drastically different results, even when there is only a single photon involved in the system. The interference between individual atom’s spontaneous emission wavefunctions can cooperatively alter the effective atom-light coupling strength. Depending on the spatial distance between individual of atoms and the involved cavities in the interaction progresses, the collective spontaneous emission rate can alter drastically from superradiance, where the emission rate is enhanced to a high value proportional to the atom number, to subradiance, where the excited atom ensemble stays in a dark state with the light trapped forever. Superradiance provides a promising mechanism to create an ultra-strong light-matter coupling environment, which is an important ingredient for the design of ultra-fast optical devices, frequency comb generation and quantum mirrors. The dark state of subradiance, on the other hand, is essential for the quantum memory implementation. Also, nontrivial phenomenons also occur when multiple photons interacting with a single atom simultaneously. When a finite number of photons incidents on an atom, their scattering through an atom is highly nonlinear, and one special eigenstate component of such nonlinear process, namely photonic bound states, exhibits many interesting properties in nonlinear quantum optical systems. The photons in such state are strongly bunched with each other, as if a virtual attractive force is in effect. Also, the frequency of photons are anti-correlated so that their total frequency remains a constant value, no matter how arbitrary the frequency of any individual is. Thesefeatures benefit certain nonlinear quantum processes for quantum computing and quantum imaging. Specially for two-photon excitation imaging, the same-parity two-level fluorophore molecules suffers from extremely low excitation efficiencies due to the far off-resonant intermediate states. However, by replacing the current commonly used ultrashort laser pulse illuminations with two photon bound state photon pairs, namely photonic dimers, the efficiency can be enhanced to orders of magnitude higher. Such exceptionally high excitation efficiency can potentially bring the current in vivo deep brain imaging depth from millimeter level to several centimeters. To obtain a stable source of such photonic dimers, it is found that a laser structure with gain medium of two-photon emission materials is capable of generating the coherent state of photonic dimer and can serve as a promising light source for nonlinear quantum optical devices.