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On the response of a Bose-Einstein condensate exposed to two counterpropagating ultra-fast laser beams

Priyam Das, Ayan Khan, Anirban Pathak

Published Sep 1, 2018• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

The effect of light-matter interaction is investigated for a situation where counter propagating laser pulses of localized nature are incident on the atomic condensate. In contrast to the earlier investigations on the similar systems, it's assumed that the laser beams are ultra-fast and they have a $\mathrm{sech}^2$ profile. Specifically, we consider a quasi-homogeneous, later extended to inhomogeneous, Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), which is exposed to two counter propagating orthogonally polarized ultra-fast laser beams of equal intensity. The electromagnetic field creates an optical potential for the Bose-Einstein condensate, which in turn modifies the optical field. Hence, light and matter are found to contentiously exchange energy and thus to modify themselves dynamically. In the inhomogenous case, a self-similar method is used here to treat a cigar-shaped BEC exposed to light. Our theoretical analysis in a hither to unexplored regime of BEC-light interaction hints at the solitonic bound state formation in the regime where the atom-atom interaction is repulsive and the light-matter interaction is attractive. The energy diagram also indicates a transfer of energy from photon to atom as the light-matter interaction turns repulsive from attractive.

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The effect of light-matter interaction is investigated for a situation where counter propagating laser pulses of localized nature are incident on the atomic condensate. In contrast to the earlier investigations on the similar systems, it's assumed that the laser beams are ultra-fast and they have a sech2\mathrm{sech}^2sech2 profile. Specifically, we consider a quasi-homogeneous, later extended to inhomogeneous, Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), which is exposed to two counter propagating orthogonally polarized ultra-fast laser beams of equal intensity. The electromagnetic field creates an optical potential for the Bose-Einstein condensate, which in turn modifies the optical field. Hence, light and matter are found to contentiously exchange energy and thus to modify themselves dynamically. In the inhomogenous case, a self-similar method is used here to treat a cigar-shaped BEC exposed to light. Our theoretical analysis in a hither to unexplored regime of BEC-light interaction hints at the solitonic bound state formation in the regime where the atom-atom interaction is repulsive and the light-matter interaction is attractive. The energy diagram also indicates a transfer of energy from photon to atom as the light-matter interaction turns repulsive from attractive.
We theoretically explore coherent information transfer between ultraslow light pulses and Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC's) and find that storing light pulses in BEC's allows the coherent condensate dynamics to process optical information. We consider BEC's of alkali atoms with a $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$ energy level configuration. In this configuration, one laser (the coupling field) can cause a pulse of a second pulsed laser (the probe field) to propagate with little attenuation (electromagnetically induced transparency) at a very slow group velocity $(\ensuremath{\sim}10\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{m}∕\mathrm{s})$ and be spatially compressed to lengths smaller than the BEC. These pulses can be fully stopped and later revived by switching the coupling field off and on. Here we develop a formalism, applicable in both the weak- and strong-probe regimes, to analyze such experiments and establish several results: (1) We show that the switching can be performed on time scales much faster than the adiabatic time scale for electromagnetically induced transparancy even in the strong-probe regime. We also study the behavior of the system changes when this time scale is faster than the excited state lifetime. (2) Stopped light pulses write their phase and amplitude information onto spatially dependent atomic wave functions, resulting in coherent two-component BEC dynamics during long storage times. We investigate examples relevant to 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb experimental parameters and see a variety of novel dynamics occur, including interference fringes, gentle breathing excitations, and two-component solitons, depending on the relative scattering lengths of the atomic states used and the probe to coupling intensity ratio. We find that the dynamics when the levels $\ensuremath{\mid}F=1,{M}_{F}=\ensuremath{-}1⟩$ and $\ensuremath{\mid}F=2,{M}_{F}=+1⟩$ are used could be well suited to designing controlled processing of the information input on the probe. (3) Switching the coupling field on after the dynamics writes the evolved BEC wave functions density and phase features onto a revived probe pulse, which then propagates out. We establish equations linking the BEC wave function to the resulting output probe pulses in both the strong- and weak-probe regimes. We then identify sources of deviations from these equations due to absorption and distortion of the pulses. These deviations result in imperfect fidelity of the information transfer from the atoms to the light fields and we calculate this fidelity for Gaussian-shaped features in the BEC wave functions. In the weak-probe case, we find that the fidelity is affected both by absorption of very-small-length-scale features and absorption of features occupying regions near the condensate edge. We discuss how to optimize the fidelity using these considerations. In the strong-probe case, we find that when the oscillator strengths for the two transitions are equal the fidelity is not strongly sensitive to the probe strength, while when they are unequal the fidelity is worse for stronger probes. Applications to distant communication between BEC's, squeezed light generation, and quantum information are anticipated.
We investigate the ground state (GS) of a collisionless Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) trapped in a soft one-dimensional optical lattice (OL), which is formed by two counterpropagating optical beams perturbed by the BEC density profile through the local-field effect (LFE). We show that LFE gives rise to an envelope-deformation potential, a nonlocal potential resulting from the phase deformation, and an effective self-interaction of the condensate. As a result, stable photon-atomic (polaritonic) lattice solitons, including an optical component, in the form of the deformation of the soft OL, in a combination with a localized matter-wave component, are generated in the blue-detuned setting, without any direct interaction between atoms. These self-trapped modes, which realize the system's GS, are essentially different from the gap solitons supported by the interplay of the OL potential and collisional interactions between atoms. A transition to tightly bound modes from loosely bound ones occurs with the increase of the number of atoms in the BEC.
The non-equilibrium dynamics of the superradiant scattering of light from a BEC is experimentally investigated by monitoring the time evolution of the population in the condensate. In the experiment, a cigar-shaped Bose-Einstein condensate of /sup 87/Rb atoms is produced and is exposed to a single off-resonant laser pulse directed along the condensate symmetry axis. The superradiant back-scattering of light creates a matter wave pulse moving in the same direction of the laser beam at twice the photon recoil velocity with respect to the original condensate. The efficiency of the process is limited by decoherence between the two atomic spatially overlapped wavepackets. The temporal evolution of the condensate observed in the experiment as well as the results of a simple semiclassical model in which the condensate is described by a density operator for the motional states. The population of the two matter wavepackets as a function of the light pulse duration is reported, together with the experimental points with the analytical formula resulting from the theory of collective atomic recoil laser (CARL).
We discuss the possible observation of a new type of standing nonlinear atomic matter wave in the condensate: the nonlinear impurity mode. It is investigated dynamical effects of a bright soliton in Bose-Einstein-condensed (BEC) systems with local space variations of the two-body atomic scattering length. A rich dynamics is observed in the interaction between the soliton and an inhomogeneity. Processes as trapping, reflection and transmission of the bright matter soliton due to the impurity are studied considering an analytical time-dependent variational approach and also by full numerical simulation. A condition is obtained for the collapse of the bright solitary wave in the quasi-one-dimensional BEC with attractive local inhomogeneity.
We investigate dynamical effects of a bright soliton in Bose–Einstein condensed (BEC) systems with local and smooth space variations of the two-body atomic scattering length. It includes a discussion about the possible observation of a new type of standing nonlinear atomic matter wave in cigar-type traps. A rich dynamics is observed in the interaction between the soliton and an inhomogeneity. By considering an analytical time-dependent variational approach and also full numerical simulation of one-dimensional and three-dimensional Gross–Pitaevskii equations, we study processes such as trapping, reflection and transmission of the bright matter soliton due to the impurity. We also derive conditions for the collapse of the bright solitary wave, considering a quasi-one-dimensional BEC with attractive local inhomogeneity.
We propose a setup to generate giant Kerr nonlinearity and polaritonic solitons via matter-wave superradiant scattering. The system we consider is a long cigar-shaped Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), pumped by a red-detuned laser field with a space-dependent intensity distribution in transverse directions. The pump and the scattered fields propagate along the longitudinal direction. We show that by means of the atom-photon and atom-atom interactions in the system it is possible to produce a giant nonlinear optical effect. We further show that a backward scattering of the laser field from the BEC is favorable for the formation and stable propagation of polaritonic solitons, which are collective nonlinear excitations of the BEC coupled with the scattered laser field. In the case of backward Stokes (anti-Stokes) scattering the system may support robust bright (dark) polaritonic solitons propagating with superluminal (subluminal) velocity.