Annual Meeting Optical Society of America

Interference and collective behavior in atomic fluorescence

J.C. Robinson, F.L. Moore, Patrick R. Morrow, P.E. Williams, Mark G. Raizen

Published Jan 1, 1993• 0 citations

Abstract

The study of collective atomic behavior is an important problem which has attracted much interest in recent years. Motivated by recent advances in ion trapping technology,1 and by a calculation of interference in the fluorescence from two atoms,2 we have investigated the effects of collective behavior on the interference fringe visibility. Interference in the fluorescence from two atoms separated by a fixed distance is examined as a function of driving laser and cavity parameters. The fringe visibility, a measure of the coherence of the atomic radiation, is calculated for the system of two driven atoms and the cavity mode. In free space, as the atoms are driven towards saturation, the visibility drops due to loss of coherence. The visibility goes from unity, at weak field, to 10% at saturation and falls off to zero asymptotically at higher fields. Dramatic improvement in visibility is found in the presence of the atom-cavity coupling, with the largest enhancement at intermediate driving field. This result indicates that induced coherence is a sensitive measure of collective behavior. Our progress in the experimental realization of this system with laser cooled beryllium ions confined in a linear trap is described, and directions for future work are indicated.

DOI: 10.1364/oam.1993.mqq.3

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