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Ultracold atoms excite surface plasmons with high efficiency

Claus Zimmermann, Sebastian Slama

Published Jan 23, 2015• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A new scheme, based on positioning ultracold atoms at submicron distances from a gold surface and directing their fluorescence photons into surface plasmons, may enable the readout of quantum information.
DOI
10.1117/2.1201501.005735

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The paper reports on the optical detection and spectroscopy of ultracold atoms near a gold surface.A probe light field is used to excite surface plasmon polaritons.The refractive index of the atomic gas shifts the plasmon resonance and changes the reflected light power.Thus, the sensitivity of the detection is plasmonically enhanced.Absorption of photons from the evanescent wave is avoided by detuning the laser from atomic resonance which makes the detection scheme potentially nondestructive.The spectrum of the signal is determined by a Fano resonance.We show that atoms can be detected nondestructively with single atom resolution for typical parameters in cold atom experiments.Thus, the method is suitable for quantum nondemolition measurements of matter wave amplitudes.Experimentally, we measure a technically limited sensitivity of 30 atoms and extend the detection scheme to dispersively image the atom cloud near the surface.
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Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are known to preserve quantum optical properties --such as squeezing-- over distances far exceeding those of classical field amplitudes. However, the surviving squeezing typically becomes so weak that its detection requires prohibitively large numbers of measurements. Here we introduce a fundamentally new paradigm for plasmonic communication in which nonclassicality itself carries the information. We (i) encode classical data (bits or dits) directly into the {\it degree of nonclassicality} (e.g., squeezing) of SPPs, thereby enabling information transfer over distances where classical amplitude encoding fails. We further (ii) show that this information can be retrieved from long-lived correlations generated at the readout stage via a beam splitter. Crucially, we demonstrate that (iii) encoding on initially noisy states leads to a counterintuitive enhancement: the encoded information remains accessible after long propagation distances using only a few measurements, outperforming both squeezed vacuum and amplitude-based schemes by orders of magnitude. Finally, (iv) in the THz regime --relevant for graphene and carbon-nanotube platforms at room temperature-- we \textit{exploit}, rather than suppress, the intrinsic thermal background, enabling robust, high-bandwidth nanoscale communication.