Atomic interference in light fields

Veniamin P. Chebotayev, B. Dubetsky, A. P. Kazantsev +1 more

V. Ia. Dubetskii, A. P. Kazantsev, V. P. Chebotaev +1 more

Anantharaman Kumarakrishnan, Andreas Karpf, Z. Khaliq +3 more

Pippa Storey, Matthew J. Collett, Daniel F. Walls

The position of an atom passing through a standard light wave is localized by making a quadrature phase measurement on the light field. This localization can be thought of as the creation of a virtual slit (or slits) for the atom by the field measurement. Diffraction and interference behavior may be observed in the far field.

C. K. Hong, Z. Y. Ou, L. Mandeļ

Fluorescent photons emitted from an atom will interfere with a classical field only if the atom is not in a pure excited state. This is a strictly quantum-mechanical condition, which can be tested, in principle, by allowing the light emitted from an atom undergoing Rabi oscillations to interfere with the coherent pumping field. The theory of this process is discussed.

Chun-Hua Yuan, L. Q. Chen, Z. Y. Ou +1 more

We theoretically propose a method to enhance Raman scattering by injecting a seeded light field which is correlated with the initially prepared atomic spin wave. Such a light-atom correlation leads to an interference in the Raman scattering. The interference is sensitive to the relative phase between the seeded light field and initially prepared atomic spin wave. For constructive interference, the Raman scattering is greatly enhanced. Such an enhanced Raman scattering may find applications in quantum information, nonlinear optics, and optical metrology due to its simplicity.