S. A. Pulkin, Evgenii N. Borisov, M. V. Balabas, S. V. Savelyeva, Svetlana Uvarova, V. S. Shevtsov, Alexey A. Kalinichev, Vladislav I. Shoev, Dmitrii Venediktov
A means of nonlinear interferential comb spectroscopy with increased sensitivity is propsed. Radiation from the comb-generator of a femtosecond laser is focused at the center of a cell with vapors of rubidium atoms, mounted in an arm of a Michelson interferometer. This technique is an improvement of Rozhdestvenski hooks method, with digital registration by the detectors on a CCD array being substituted for the photographic registration of interferograms, resulting in increased interferometric sensitivity (holographic interferometry). A primary spectrogram is processed in digital form on a dual-beam interferometer equipped with a phase modulator to improve sensitivity with the possibility of an a posteriori increase in interferometric sensitivity. Dispersive signals appear in the interferogram spectrogram on two-photon absorption lines when the pumping radiation is focused at the center of a cell with Rb vapors. Nonlinear processes of coherent radiation due to nonlinear interference effects are studied. Numerical simulations are performed that confirm the proposed theoretical model.
A means of nonlinear interferential comb spectroscopy with increased sensitivity is propsed. Radiation from the comb-generator of a femtosecond laser is focused at the center of a cell with vapors of rubidium atoms, mounted in an arm of a Michelson interferometer. This technique is an improvement of Rozhdestvenski hooks method, with digital registration by the detectors on a CCD array being substituted for the photographic registration of interferograms, resulting in increased interferometric sensitivity (holographic interferometry). A primary spectrogram is processed in digital form on a dual-beam interferometer equipped with a phase modulator to improve sensitivity with the possibility of an a posteriori increase in interferometric sensitivity. Dispersive signals appear in the interferogram spectrogram on two-photon absorption lines when the pumping radiation is focused at the center of a cell with Rb vapors. Nonlinear processes of coherent radiation due to nonlinear interference effects are studied. Numerical simulations are performed that confirm the proposed theoretical model.
The aim of this book is to present new results in rapidly developing fields of nonlinear optics such as atomic coherence, magneto-optics of atomic media, Doppler-free spectroscopy, time-domain spectroscopy of dense atomic vapors, frequency comb spectroscopy and atom-surface interactions. The discovery of such coherent effects as coherent population trapping (CPT), electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) and electromagnetically induced absorption (EIA) opened a new avenue for development in many fields of nonlinear optics. Investigations during the last decade have shown many related new results and approaches in nonlinear optics. These include nonlinear magneto-optical processes (NMOP) in the context of high precision magnetometry, quantum information storage and processing, magnetic resonance imaging and magnetic particle detection; the use of ultra-thin (nanometric length) atomic vapor cells in magneto-optical experiments, which show new peculiarities of both coherent effects and NMOP; the use of frequency and amplitude modulated laser beams for NMOP studies in atomic vapors with the aim of extending the range of ultra-precise magnetometers to stronger, particularly geomagnetic fields; application of the counter-propagating beam technique to reveal the Doppler free nonlinear Faraday rotation signals, as a spectroscopic tool and for applications; enhanced nonlinearity due to atomic coherence in multi-state systems; experimental study of EIT in solids; the use of the phase stabilized frequency domain combs of femtosecond laser pulses for velocity selective optical pumping of atomic hyperfine levels, as a direct frequency comb spectroscopy; time-domain nonlinear spectroscopy of dense atomic vapors; atom-surface interactions and laser induced adsorption and desorption of alkali atoms on the surface of solid materials for nanotechnology applications
Based upon two cascade four-wave mixing processes in two identical hot rubidium vapor cells, a nonlinear interferometer has been experimentally realized [Jing et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 99, 011110 (2011); Hudelist et al., Nat. Commun. 5, 3049 (2014)]. It has a higher degree of phase sensitivity than a traditional linear interferometer and has many potential applications in quantum metrology. Phase locking of the nonlinear interferometer is needed before it can find its way into applications. In this letter, we investigate the experimental implementation of phase locking of the relative phase between the three beams at different frequencies involved in such a nonlinear interferometer. We have utilized two different methods, namely, beat note locking and coherent modulation locking. We find that coherent modulation locking can achieve much better phase stability than beat note locking in our system. Our results pave the way for real applications of a nonlinear interferometer in precision measurement and quantum manipulation, for example, phase control in phase-sensitive N-wave mixing process, N-port nonlinear interferometer and quantum-enhanced real-time phase tracking.
Quantum optics has become a key field of development for investigations of quantum physics principles, leading to novel quantum technologies. In this view Integrated Optics allows implementing complex quantum circuits that can give rise to significant outcomes, difficult to reach using traditional approaches based on discrete components. In this framework, a non-linear Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (MZI) was implemented by using two commercial 50:50 directional fibre couplers. One of the MZI arms was equipped with a single mode Er:LiNbO3 optical waveguide, acting as non-linear component whereas the other MZI arm was provided with an undoped LiNbO3 single mode optical waveguide, used to obtain a phase shift through the application of a controlled voltage ramp. The injection in the MZI of a 980nm wavelength laser radiation allowed to collect structured interferogrammes, that could be ascribed exclusively to the pump photons, as all frequency conversion events are localized only in one arm of the Interferometer. The Fourier Transform elaboration of such interferogrammes, produces multiple peak spectra that tightly match the typical transition spectrograms of Er:LiNbO3 when excited by a 980nm radiation. Thus it is possible to perform a spectrometry of the noninterfering converted photons only by using the interfering pump photons. In this work, the experimental apparatus and the most interesting results, obtained in different experimental conditions, are described. Finally, a possible interpretation is outlined.
Abstract Dual-comb interferometry harnesses the interference of two laser frequency combs to provide unprecedented capability in spectroscopy applications. In the past decade, the state-of-the-art systems have reached a point where the signal-to-noise ratio per unit acquisition time is fundamentally limited by shot noise from vacuum fluctuations. To address the issue, we propose an entanglement-enhanced dual-comb spectroscopy protocol that leverages quantum resources to significantly improve the signal-to-noise ratio performance. To analyze the performance of real systems, we develop a quantum model of dual-comb spectroscopy that takes practical noises into consideration. Based on this model, we propose quantum combs with side-band entanglement around each comb lines to suppress the shot noise in heterodyne detection. Our results show significant quantum advantages in the uW to mW power range, making this technique particularly attractive for biological and chemical sensing applications. Furthermore, the quantum comb can be engineered using nonlinear optics and promises near-term experimentation.
In this work, we present a set of experiments involving four-wave mixing processes in rubidium atoms. We employ several experimental configurations exploring two- and three-level systems in cascade or Λ configurations, all of which are in a copropagating geometry, to investigate different physical phenomena present in each scenario. In the first experiment, we combine a cw diode laser and a 1 GHz femtosecond pulse train to generate coherent blue light through the four-wave mixing process in hot rubidium vapor. The generated coherent signal is analyzed by scanning either the diode frequency or the repetition rate of the frequency comb. In both cases, the cw laser induces an Autler- Townes splitting with a wide separation in the doublet structure due to the configuration of copropagating fields. To model these results, we employ the density matrix formalism to write the Bloch equations and solve them numerically. The solutions allow us to explore other cases beyond those involving our experimental setup, comparing the response of the upper-level population and the generated signal coherence for homogeneously and non-homogeneously broadened systems. Moreover, in this same experiment, we also observed an unexpected interference effect between excitation routes of the four-wave mixing process when the repetition rate of the pulse train is scanned. The theoretical model demonstrates that the interfering effect appears only when the repetition rate is carefully chosen to produce a pair of modes of the frequency comb resonant with both one- and two-photon transitions for the same atomic velocity group. In the second experiment, still with a hot rubidium vapor, we explore two symmetrical degenerate four- wave mixing signals induced by two almost copropagating laser beams, with~ka and~kb wave-vectors, and detected simultaneously in the 2~ka −~kb and 2~kb −~ka directions. Each spectrum has a single peak with a short frequency separation between them, which our model indicates is due to the nonlinear behavior of the refractive indexes, a consequence of the high intensity of both input fields. Finally, we use the same experimental setup for the two symmetrical signals to study the field intensity fluctuations of the degenerate four-wave mixing signals and the transmission signals. In this case, the sample is an ensemble of cold rubidium atoms in a magneto-optical trap. There is an intensity- intensity cross-correlation between the signals due to the resonant phase-noise to amplitude-noise conversion. In this type of cold system, we can neglect the Doppler- broadening, allowing a straightforward study of the dependency of the correlations on the laser detuning. In these measurements, we observe a type of oscillation in the correlation curves that the theoretical model indicates to be connected with Rabi oscillations, revealed by the fluctuations long after the transient period.
A theoretical analysis is carried out for the recently developed three-pulse photon echo spectroscopy employing dual frequency combs (DFC) as the light sources. In this method, the molecular sample interacts with three pulse trains derived from the DFC, and the generated third-order signal is displayed as a two-dimensional (2D) spectrum that depends on the waiting time introduced by employing the asynchronous optical sampling method. Through the analysis of the heterodyne-detected signal interferogram using a local oscillator derived from one of the optical frequency combs, we show that the 2D spectrum closely matches the spectrum expected from a conventional approach with four pulses derived from a single femtosecond laser pulse, and the waiting time between the second and third field-matter interactions is given by the down-converted detection time of the interferogram. The theoretical result is applied to a two-level model system with solvation effect described by solvatochromic spectral density. The model 2D spectrum reproduces spectral features such as the loss of frequency correlation, dephasing, and spectral shift as a function of the population time. We anticipate that the present theory will be the general framework for quantitative descriptions of DFC-based nonlinear optical spectroscopy.