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Physical Review A

Electromagnetically induced transparency in the strong blockade regime using the four-photon excitation process in thermal rubidium vapor

Tanim Firdoshi, Sujit Garain, Vishu Gupta, Dushmanta Kara, Ashok Kumar Mohapatra

Published Jul 12, 2021• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present a theoretical model of a four-photon excitation process to the Rydberg state in thermal atomic vapor where the motion-induced dephasing in the system is eliminated. This is achieved by arranging the four laser beams in a suitable geometry such that the residual wave vector is reduced to zero. The method of adiabatic elimination has been used to reduce the complex five-level system to an effective three-level system to study electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) where the transition from ground state to second excited state can be considered as the effective probe and second excited state to the Rydberg state as the effective coupling transition. The effect of the blockade phenomenon is observed in the strong interaction regime, where the two atoms are considered to be moving with independent velocities and the system is Doppler averaged using Monte Carlo simulation technique. Also, the dephasing mechanisms in the system are investigated in detail. Though the system is not frozen during the excitation process, a strong blockade effect is still observed similar to the cold atom system. We conclude the paper with a proposal for experimentally investigating the four-photon excitation process to the Rydberg state in thermal rubidium vapor.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.104.013711

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We present a theoretical model of a four-photon excitation process to the Rydberg state in thermal atomic vapor where the motion-induced dephasing in the system is eliminated. This is achieved by arranging the four laser beams in a suitable geometry such that the residual wave vector is reduced to zero. The method of adiabatic elimination has been used to reduce the complex five-level system to an effective three-level system to study electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) where the transition from ground state to second excited state can be considered as the effective probe and second excited state to the Rydberg state as the effective coupling transition. The effect of the blockade phenomenon is observed in the strong interaction regime, where the two atoms are considered to be moving with independent velocities and the system is Doppler averaged using Monte Carlo simulation technique. Also, the dephasing mechanisms in the system are investigated in detail. Though the system is not frozen during the excitation process, a strong blockade effect is still observed similar to the cold atom system. We conclude the paper with a proposal for experimentally investigating the four-photon excitation process to the Rydberg state in thermal rubidium vapor.
We study electromagnetically induced transparency in a three-level ladder type configuration in ultracold atomic gases, where the upper level is an electronically highly excited Rydberg state. An effective distance dependent two-body dephasing can be induced in a regime where dipole-dipoles interaction couple nearly degenerate Rydberg pair states. We show that strong two-body dephasing can enhance the excitation blockade of neighboring Rydberg atoms. Due to the dissipative blockade, transmission of the probe light is reduced drastically by the two-body dephasing in the transparent window. The reduction of transmission is accompanied by a strong photon-photon anti-bunching. Around the Autler-Townes doublets, the photon bunching is amplified by the two-body dephasing, while transmission is largely unaffected. Besides relevant to the ongoing Rydberg atom studies, our study moreover provides a setting to explore and understand two-body dephasing dynamics in many-body systems.
We report on the observation of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) and absorption (EIA) of highly excited Rydberg states in thermal Cs vapor using a four-step excitation scheme. The advantage of this four-step scheme is that the final transition to the Rydberg state has a large dipole moment and one can achieve similar Rabi frequencies to two- or three-step excitation schemes using two orders of magnitude less laser power. This scheme enables new applications such as dephasing free Rydberg excitation. The observed lineshapes are in good agreement with simulations based on multilevel optical Bloch equations.
We present the experimental demonstration of Rydberg blockade in thermal atomic vapor where the atoms are not necessarily be frozen. We show that not all the interacting atoms but only the atoms with same velocity collectively participate in the blockade process. Using this observation, we formulated a suitable model based on super atom picture to study blockade interaction in thermal vapor. We performed an experiment to measure Rydberg population in rubidium thermal vapor using optical heterodyne detection technique and density dependent suppression of Rydberg population is observed in suitable experimental parameter regime. Further analysis of the experimental data using the model verifies the scaling law for van der Waals interaction strength (C6)(C_{6})(C6​) with principal quantum number of the Rydberg state with 11%11\%11% error. Our result suggests multi-photon excitation in thermal vapor with suitable laser configuration to probe Rydberg blockade interaction based optical nonlinearity and many body effects.
We report on the observation of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) with intrinsic phase transitions in a three-level ladder system within rubidium atomic vapor. The observed abrupt transitions between low and high Rydberg occupancy states manifest in the probe beam transmission, depending on the principal quantum number, the Rabi frequency of the coupling field, atomic density, and probe beam detuning. Our study elucidates the underlying interaction mechanisms governing the EIT phase transition and enriches the existing experiments of multi-parameter regulation phase transitions. These findings establish a robust platform for investigating nonequilibrium phase transitions in atomic ensembles, bridging the gap between classical mean-field theories and microscopic quantum dynamics.
Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) is investigated in a system of cold, interacting cesium Rydberg atoms. The utilized cesium levels 6S 1/2 , 6P 3/2 and nD 5/2 constitute a cascade three-level system, in which a coupling laser drives the Rydberg transition, and a probe laser detects the EIT signal on the 6S 1/2 to 6P 3/2 transition. Rydberg EIT spectra are found to depend on the strong interaction between the Rydberg atoms. Diminished EIT transparency is obtained when the Rabi frequency of the probe laser is increased, whereas the corresponding linewidth remains unchanged. To model the system with a three-level Lindblad equation, we introduce a Rydberg-level dephasing rate γ3 = κ × (ρ33/Ω p ) 2 , with a value κ that depends on the ground-state atom density and the Rydberg level. The simulation results are largely consistent with the measurements. The experiments, in which the principal quantum number is varied between 30 and 43, demonstrate that the EIT reduction observed at large Ω p is due to the strong interactions between the Rydberg atoms.
We report on time-resolved pulsed four-wave mixing (FWM) signals in a thermal Rubidium vapor involving a Rydberg state. We observe FWM signals with dephasing times up to 7 ns, strongly dependent on the excitation bandwidth to the Rydberg state. The excitation to the Rydberg state is driven by a pulsed two-photon transition on ns timescales. Combined with a cw de-excitation laser, a strongly directional and collective emission is generated according to a combination of the phase matching effect and averaging over Doppler classes. In contrast to a previous report (Huber et al. in Phys Rev A 90: 053806, 2014) using off-resonant FWM, at a resonant FWM scheme we observe additional revivals of the signal shortly after the incident pulse has ended. We infer that this is a revival of motion-induced constructive interference between the coherent emissions of the thermal atoms. The resonant FWM scheme reveals a richer temporal structure of the signals, compared to similar, but off-resonant excitation schemes. A simple explanation lies in the selectivity of Doppler classes. Our numerical simulations based on a four-level model including a whole Doppler ensemble can qualitatively describe the data.