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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-EQEC)

Ultra-sensitive Faraday rotation measurements from an atom-light quantum interface

Marco Koschorreck, M. Napolitano, B. Dubost, N. Behbood, Morgan W. Mitchell

Published Jun 1, 2009• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Atomic ensembles have gained a lot of interest in the last decade for their prospective use as quantum memories, in precision measurements and other applications in quantum information processing. The atomic part of the interface presented here is an all-optically trapped atomic ensemble of 87Rb at a temperature of 25 muK. The ensemble consists of 106atoms and has an elongated shape with an aspect ratio of about 250:1. The resonant optical depth is around 50. The light part is an off-resonant polarized laser beam which dispersively probes the atomic state. The detection is a shot-noise limited polarization measurement of light pulses of a few mus and 3 x 105photons.

DOI
10.1109/cleoe-eqec.2009.5191565

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Light interacting with atomic ensembles allows the possibility of strong, and thus deterministic, quantum interface processes. Recently demonstrated processes of interest for quantum networking include quantum memory for light and teleportation of a quantum state from light to matter. Many important results have been accomplished with room temperature ensembles, which has thus far limited the experiments to relatively long interaction times, ~ ms, large numbers of atoms ~1012, and far-detuned interactions. In contrast, a cold, trapped atomic ensemble can have the same optical depth with far fewer atoms ~106, simultaneous with faster ~mus interaction times. For a combination of technical and fundamental reasons, this allows for new types of experiments using light-ensemble interfaces. Here we describe methods to detect non-gaussian states and perform spin-state tomography.

Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-EQEC)•Jun 1, 2007•0 citations
Atomic ensembles have gained a lot of interest in the last decade for their prospective use as quantum memories, in precision measurements and other applications in quantum information processing. The atomic part of the interface presented here is an all-optically trapped atomic ensemble of 87Rb at a temperature of 25 muK. The ensemble consists of 106atoms and has an elongated shape with an aspect ratio of about 250:1. The resonant optical depth is around 50. The light part is an off-resonant polarized laser beam which dispersively probes the atomic state. The detection is a shot-noise limited polarization measurement of light pulses of a few mus and 3 x 105photons.
We describe the implementation of a system for studying light-matter interactions using an ensemble of 106{10}^{6}106 cold rubidium 87 atoms trapped in a single-beam optical dipole trap. In this configuration the elongated shape of the atomic cloud increases the strength of the collective light-atom coupling. Trapping all optically allows for long storage times in a low decoherence environment. We are able to perform several thousands of measurements on one atomic ensemble with little destruction. We report results on paramagnetic Faraday rotations from a macroscopically polarized atomic ensemble. Our results confirm that strong light-atom coupling is achievable in this system which makes it attractive for single-pass quantum information protocols.
The subject of this thesis is the construction and characterization of an experimental setup for studying the interaction of an ensemble of 10^5 - 10^6 cold 87 Rb atoms held in a far off-resonance optical dipole trap with a probe detuned by about 100 natural line widths, a regime in which refractive effects are resonantly enhanced but absorption is small. An important feature of this type of atom-light interface is that it facilitates quantum non-demolition measurements which in turn have numerous applications in quantum information technology, as well as in the field of ultra-precise metrology where they allow the measurements to overcome the so-called standard quantum limit. The use of a dipole trap has several advantages over more conventional approaches in which vapor cells or magneto-optical traps (MOT) have been used. Most importantly interaction strength of comparable magnitude can be achieved with a far lower number of atoms and with longer coherence times. The elongated geometry that can be realized in a dipole trap maximizes the interaction strength. One of the complications that arise is that the achievable interaction strength is highly sensitive to the mode-matching between the trapped ensemble and the probe beam. The theoretical description of the interaction between a trapped ensemble and a freely-propagating probe beam is provided in the framework of continuous variables. The relevant quantities are a pseudo-spin, defined for an ensemble of atoms in their ground state, and the Stokes vector that characterizes the polarization state of light. In practice the experiment consists of four main blocks: the atom traps, the optical pumping setup, the probe laser setup, and the photodetection. Before loading into the dipole trap, atoms are cooled in a MOT. An existing MOT setup has been improved by implementing a new, more powerful laser system. A dedicated dipole trap, which had been constructed in collaboration with another project, has been thoroughly characterized and the results are presented in this thesis. Setups for optical pumping and for the probe have been built, characterized and incorporated into the apparatus. Several experimental techniques have been developed and tested in order to optimize the alignment of the probe with the trapped ensemble. The effect of the geometrical overlap on the achievable signal to noise ratio is discussed and illustrated using simple, intuitive models. Photo-detection is a critical part of the setup. In order to facilitate detection of non-classical (squeezed) states of the atomic (pseudo-) spin, the detection system must be shot-noise limited within the range of photon numbers used in the experiments. Such a system has been constructed and tested, and is described in detail. It employs a charge-sensitive amplifier (CSA) but, unlike earlier implementations, it does not use a pulse-shaping stage. Instead, an algorithm has been devised and implemented that derives the quantities of interest directly from the output signal of the CSA. This novel approach avoids the technical problems that arise in systems using hardware-based pulse shaping. It also makes the detector more flexible in terms of the shape and timing of the probe pulses that can be used. The atomic states produced in the setup are intrinsically sensitive to stray magnetic fields. Therefore an efficient cancellation of stray fields is essential. On the other hand having the possibility to apply a fully controlled, external magnetic field makes the experimental setup more versatile. Both goals can be achieved with a magnetic field control unit that has been built during this project. It facilitates active cancellation of stray magnetic fields at the frequency of the mains and in addition allows to apply an arbitrary waveform magnetic fields along all three axes. One of the main results reported in this thesis is the observation of polarization rotation caused by population imbalance created in the process of optical pumping and, in a separate series of measurements, due to an applied magnetic field. These measurements have allowed us to assess the strength of the atom-light interaction available in the current setup. They indicate that with the necessary modifications to the optical pumping scheme the system should prove successful in implementing quantum information protocols, in particular quantum memory for light. An interesting off-shoot has been the spectroscopic characterization of the atomic state in the dipole trap. In these measurements Doppler free spectra are recorded in a very simple setup without the need to use nonlinear techniques. Apart from providing a method to characterize the efficiency of the optical pumping into the hyperfine level of interest, the acquired spectra are a very direct illustration of the power of the laser cooling techniques developed in the recent years and without which this work would not have been possible.
This work considers an atom-light interface consisting of pulses of polarized light that interacts with an ensemble of 106cold87Rb in dipole trap. Measurements of polarization changes in the light is used in probing the atomic state. In such polarization-based atom-light interface, a Hamiltonian nonlinear in the Stokes operators can be produced through optical nonlinearities. This work investigates the application of light and cold atomic ensembles to precision measurements with better-than-Heisenberg scaling. The effective nonlinear polarizability of atoms due to ns-duration illumination pulses and the resulting polarization rotation are also calculated in detail.
Over the past half century, atomic ensembles have been used to create sensors, clocks, and quantum information systems. As these devices become more compact, and as the number of atoms increases to improve the sensitivity for detection, the atomic samples are increasing in density and optical depth. As such, the spectroscopic properties of the atomic media are modified due to interactions among the particles in the ensemble. We report investigation of near-resonance light scattering from a cold atomic sample of 87Rb. Initially prepared in a magneto-optical trap, the atoms are loaded into a far-off-resonance optical dipole trap (FORT) in which the ensemble has a temperature near 100 mK and initial Gaussian radii of approximately 3 mm and 280 mm in the transverse and longitudinal directions, respectively. With atomic densities in the range of 1010 - 1013 atoms/cm3, measurements are made on the F=2 -> F'=3 nearly closed hyperfine transition. The experimental geometry consists of projecting a near-resonance collimated laser beam onto the entire volume of the FORT and detecting the diffusely scattered light. The measured scattered light intensity as a function of detuning, atomic number, and sample size suggests that collective light scattering depends on the optical depth of the system.
Light interacting with atomic ensembles allows the possibility of strong, and thus deterministic, quantum interface processes. Recently demonstrated processes of interest for quantum networking include quantum memory for light and teleportation of a quantum state from light to matter. Many important results have been accomplished with room temperature ensembles, which has thus far limited the experiments to relatively long interaction times, ~ ms, large numbers of atoms ~1012, and far-detuned interactions. In contrast, a cold, trapped atomic ensemble can have the same optical depth with far fewer atoms ~106, simultaneous with faster ~mus interaction times. For a combination of technical and fundamental reasons, this allows for new types of experiments using light-ensemble interfaces. Here we describe methods to detect non-gaussian states and perform spin-state tomography.