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Optics Express

Propagation dynamics of a wavepacket through an optical cavity

Xinyu Zhang, Rui Li, Xiaotian Zhang, Haibin Wu

Published Jan 29, 2016• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

We experimentally investigate propagation dynamics of a wavepacket through a high finesse optical cavity. Narrow-band and quasi-percussional excitations of a cavity field by a wavepacket are studied. When the spectral width of an incident wavepacket is narrowed compared with the cavity linewidth, the transmitted pulse is adiabatically followed the time evolution of the incoming pulse. For the quasi-percussional excitation of very short pulse in time, the cavity is excited on the time duration of the incoming pulse. The falling edge of the wavepacket loses its original information and experiences a characteristic decay determined by the intracavity photon lifetime. The measured time delay of the pulse peak, in contrast to the constant delay predicted, greatly depends on the pulse width of the incoming wavepacket. We also examine the cavity high-reflected transient spike of optical precursors at the excitation of a step-modulated pulse. The experimental results show a very good agreement with a simple theoretical calculation.

DOI
10.1364/oe.24.002383

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We experimentally investigate propagation dynamics of a wavepacket through a high finesse optical cavity. Narrow-band and quasi-percussional excitations of a cavity field by a wavepacket are studied. When the spectral width of an incident wavepacket is narrowed compared with the cavity linewidth, the transmitted pulse is adiabatically followed the time evolution of the incoming pulse. For the quasi-percussional excitation of very short pulse in time, the cavity is excited on the time duration of the incoming pulse. The falling edge of the wavepacket loses its original information and experiences a characteristic decay determined by the intracavity photon lifetime. The measured time delay of the pulse peak, in contrast to the constant delay predicted, greatly depends on the pulse width of the incoming wavepacket. We also examine the cavity high-reflected transient spike of optical precursors at the excitation of a step-modulated pulse. The experimental results show a very good agreement with a simple theoretical calculation.
We experimentally examined the propagation of temporally square modulated optical pulses through a coupled ring resonator. Sharp transient spikes appeared as the square pulses entered the system. The main signal gradually grew up through coupled-resonator-induced transparency (CRIT), with the time constant determined by a second resonator. Transient spikes were attributed to the higher and lower spectral components of the incident pulse, to which the resonators cannot respond; hence, they were interpreted as optical precursors. The experiments, therefore, demonstrated that precursors and the main signal can be observed separately, with amplitudes comparable to that of the incident step in CRIT.
We describe a method to couple a light pulse into a cavity with arbitrarily high finesse, with an efficiency that in theory can approach 100% even if the pulse duration is much longer than the round-trip time of the cavity. The spectrum of the pulse is compressed into a single narrow mode in an adiabatic and reversible way. The method uses an input coupler with a variable effective reflectivity which is adapted to match the known temporal shape of the pulse. In addition to a theoretical description of the method, we demonstrate the principle experimentally.
The experiments discussed in this thesis focus on the interaction of a single trapped atom with the single mode of a high-finesse optical cavity, in the regime of strong coupling. Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction, after which Chapter 2 describes our recent measurements of the transmission spectrum of the atom-cavity system. The spectrum exhibits a clearly resolved vacuum-Rabi splitting, in good quantitative agreement with theoretical predictions. A new Raman scheme for cooling atomic motion along the cavity axis enables a complete spectrum to be recorded for an individual atom trapped within the cavity mode, in contrast to all previous measurements of this type that have required averaging over 10^3-10^5 atoms. Chapter 3 discusses our observations of photon blockade for the transmitted light in the presence of one trapped atom. Excitation of the atom-cavity system by a first photon blocks the transmission of a second one, thereby converting an incident Poissonian stream of photons into a sub-Poissonian, anti-bunched stream, as confirmed by measurements of the photon statistics of the transmitted field. The intensity correlations of the cavity transmission also reveal the energy distribution for oscillatory motion of the trapped atom. Chapter 4 details a set of simple but necessary measurements of relevant experimental parameters such as cavity geometry, linewidth, mirror properties, birefringence, and detection efficiency. The thesis concludes with Appendix A, describing the efficient laser setup we use for our magneto-optical traps.
One of the canonical questions in quantum optics is the nature of the radiative properties of an atom when the normal vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic reservoir are replaced by the asymmetric, reduced fluctuations of a squeezed vacuum. While the basic radiative linewidth-narrowing effect has been known for over a decade [C. W. Gardiner, Phys. Rev. Lett. 56, 1917 (1986)], experimental realizations with operationally definable definitive manifestations of the quantum nature of the squeezed reservoir have been largely lacking from subsequent investigations. This paper presents measurements on an experimentally realized atom--squeezed-light system, in which the squeezed-light output of a subthreshold optical parametric oscillator illuminates an atom strongly coupled to a high-finesse optical resonator. Transmission of a weak probe field incident on the atom-cavity system is investigated both theoretically and experimentally. Alteration of the transmitted probe spectrum has been observed, as has a transmission modulation that depends on the phase of the squeezed field relative to a saturating coherent field (displaced squeezing). In certain parameter regimes, properties unique to the quantum nature of the squeezed light have been identified in the theoretical treatment, but complications in the experiment prevent their unequivocal measure. It is found that the observed effects of the squeezed light are dramatically reduced relative to the predictions of an idealized theory. This is quantitatively attributed to the effects of atomic beam fluctuations and a simple modeling of the atomic beam as an additional loss mechanism in the theory leads to reasonable agreement with the data.
We report theoretical and experimental studies of the propagation of a square-modulated laser pulse through a laser-cooled atomic ensemble of two-level absorbers, as well as through a three-level system with electromagnetically induced transparency. We find that the transmission characteristics over a wide range of optical depth can be fully accounted for as optical coherent transients excited by the wide spectral content of the square-modulated optical pulse. We show that both time-domain atom-field coupled equations and frequency-domain linear dispersion theory give precisely the same description of the optical transients at a weak power limit. At low optical depth with moderate absorption, resonant excitation dominates and free-induction decay (FID) contributes mostly to the transient field. At high optical depth when absorption and propagation effects become significant, lossless optical precursors start to dominate the transient response. By varying the optical depth from 0 to 45, we observe that optical transients evolve gradually from FID to optical precursors. We thus show that FID and optical precursors, which have been considered as two different optical transients for many decades, can be unified within a single theoretical frame and they are the manifestations of the same physical process in two different regimes.