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Forward Light Scattering in an Extended Sample of Cold Atoms

S.J. Roof

Published Jan 1, 2016• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present results on the forward emitted light from a cold atomic sample of 87Rb. Specifically,we study single-photon superradiance which is characterized by a rapid decay faster than the single atom lifetime with the light preferentially emitted in the forward direction. Additionally, we report measurements on its counterpart, the cooperative Lamb shift. The results are interpreted using microscopic light scattering theory as well as techniques from classical optics. The comparison of the two analytical techniques provides a new perspective on what is meant by cooperative and collective scattering effects in cold atomic physics.

DOI
10.25777/ecqe-a987

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We present results on the forward emitted light from a cold atomic sample of 87Rb. Specifically,we study single-photon superradiance which is characterized by a rapid decay faster than the single atom lifetime with the light preferentially emitted in the forward direction. Additionally, we report measurements on its counterpart, the cooperative Lamb shift. The results are interpreted using microscopic light scattering theory as well as techniques from classical optics. The comparison of the two analytical techniques provides a new perspective on what is meant by cooperative and collective scattering effects in cold atomic physics.
Superradiance has been extensively studied in the 1970s and 1980s in the regime of superfluorescence, where a large number of atoms are initially excited. Cooperative scattering in the linear-optics regime, or "single-photon superradiance," has been investigated much more recently, and superradiant decay has also been predicted, even for a spherical sample of large extent and low density, where the distance between atoms is much larger than the wavelength. Here, we demonstrate this effect experimentally by directly measuring the decay rate of the off-axis fluorescence of a large and dilute cloud of cold rubidium atoms after the sudden switch off of a low-intensity laser driving the atomic transition. We show that, at large detuning, the decay rate increases with the on-resonance optical depth. In contrast to forward scattering, the superradiant decay of off-axis fluorescence is suppressed near resonance due to attenuation and multiple-scattering effects.
Abstract We investigate the spectral shift known as the collective Lamb shift in forward scattering for a cold dense atomic cloud. The shift results from resonant dipole–dipole interaction mediated by real and virtual photon exchange, forming many-body states displaying various super- and subradiant behaviour. However, the scattering spectrum reflects the overall contributions from these states but also averages out the radiative details associated with the underlying spin orders, causing ambiguity in determination and raising controversy on the scaling property of this shift. We employ a Monte–Carlo simulation to study how the collective states contribute to emission. We thus distinguish two kinds of collective shift that follow different scaling laws. One results from dominant occupation of the near-resonant collective states. This shift is usually small and insensitive to the density or the number of participating atoms. The other comes from large spatial correlation of dipoles, associated with the states of higher degree of emission. This corresponds to larger collective shift that is approximately linearly dependent on the optical depth. We further demonstrate that the spatial spin order plays an essential role in superradiant emission. Our analysis provides a novel perspective for understanding collective scattering and cooperative effects.
The problem of the interaction of N atoms with a laser beam and vacuum modes can give rise to many interesting phenomena concerning the spontaneous emission of light and its propagation in the medium. The cooperative effects, for example, such as superadiance and subradiance, are effects related to the coherence created between the atoms when a photon is emitted spontaneously by a single excited atom. Superradiance can be defined as the enhancement of the spontaneous emission due to constructive interference of the scattered light. Its counterpart, subradiance, is the trapping of some remaining light due to destructive interference. In cold atoms, some previous theoretical works predict and characterize these two cooperative effects in a large and diluted atomic cloud, in the regime of low intensities and large detunings of the incident laser. The theoretical model is a coupled-dipole model for two-level atoms driven by a low-intensity field and in the scalar approach. The experiment consists in measuring the super- and subradiant decay rates from the temporal emitted intensity after the switch off of the incident laser in the steady state. Our experimental setup consists in a magneto-optical trap of rubidium 87 atoms at large resonant optical thicknesses. A probe beam excites the atoms close to the D2 line. The intensity emitted is detected by a single photon detector with no afterpulsing and a calibration procedure allows us to determine the resonant optical thickness of the cloud and its temperature. In this work, we report the experimental observation of super- and subradiance in a large cloud of cold atoms. For subradiance, the main result is the linear evolution of the characteristic time with the resonant optical thickness of the cloud and its independence of the detuning. For superradiance, we observe superradiance out of the forward direction. We verify the validity of our interpretations with the predictions of the coupled-dipole model. Finally, we discuss the interplay of subradiance and radiation trapping, as well as theoretical predictions for: a setup of a phased cloud, to control the subradiant amplitude emission; and temperature effects, where subradiance is shown to be robust in a large range of temperatures.
We report enhanced transmission in measurements of the spectral dependence of forward light scattering by a high-density and cold ensemble of 87Rb atoms. This phenomenon, which is a result of dipole-dipole interaction induced cooperative light scattering in the atomic sample, implies a significant departure from the traditional density dependence of the transmitted light as embodied in the Beer-Lambert Law. Absolute values of the density-dependent forward light scattering cross-section are extracted from the measurements.
A semi-classical theory of coherent light scattering from an elongated sample of cold atoms exposed to an off-resonant laser beam is presented. The model, which is a direct extension of that of the collective atomic recoil laser (CARL), describes the emission of two superradiant pulses along the sample's major axis simultaneous with the formation of a bidimensional atomic grating inside the sample. It provides a simple physical picture of the recent observation of collective light scattering from a Bose-Einstein condensate [S. Inouye et al., Science N.285, p. 571 (1999)]. In addition, the model provides an analytical description of the temporal evolution of the scattered light intensity which shows good quantitative agreement with the experimental results of Inouye et al.