Coupling Thermal Atomic Vapor to Slot Waveguides

Abstract

We study the interaction of thermal rubidium atoms with the guided mode of slot waveguides integrated in a vapor cell. Slot waveguides provide strong confinement of the light field in an area that overlaps with the atomic vapor. We investigate the transmission of the atomic cladding waveguides depending on the slot width, which determines the fraction of transmitted light power interacting with the atomic vapor. An elaborate simulation method has been developed to understand the behavior of the measured spectra. This model is based on individual trajectories of the atoms and includes both line shifts and decay rates due to atom-surface interactions that we have calculated for our specific geometries using the discrete dipole approximation. Furthermore, we investigate density-dependent effects on the line widths and line shifts of the rubidium atoms in the subwavelength interaction region of a slot waveguide.

Nanostructured Alkali-Metal Vapor Cells

“…Promising further technological developments on the micrometer scale include integrated diffractive elements [54]. As well as the fundamental interest in atom-light interactions at the nanoscale already highlighted, there is also interest in interfacing thermal vapors with nanophotonics [55][56][57][58] and integrated opto-mechanical features [59]. However, much work remains to be done before nanometer-scale vapor-based devices can be used in technological applications, e.g., for local sensing [15] or quantum networks [36,60].…”

Cavity-Free Optical Isolators and Circulators Using a Chiral Cross-Kerr Nonlinearity

“…Implementation. -The required 1D nonlinear waveguide embedded with alkali atoms can be made with various methods and platforms [42,[46][47][48][49][50][69][70][71][72][73][74]. A feasible platform can be a cm-scale hollow-core photonic crystal fiber filled with Rb atoms at room temperature [49,74].…”

“…A few-photon-level memory and a strong XKerr nonlinearity have been demonstrated with a weak control field in such platform [49,74]. For an on-chip realization, we consider a zigzag waveguide cladded with high-density Rb atoms, allowing a coherent light-atom interaction [71][72][73]. To conduct a N-type configuration, we couple the lasers to the D 1 lines of the Rb atom, yielding ω p /2π ∼ 384 THz.…”

DC electric fields in electrode-free glass vapor cell by photoillumination

“…In addition, for applications such as RF and microwave sensing where stray DC electric fields will limit the sensitivity of the device 41,42 , a detailed understanding and characterization of the DC fields inside glass-only vapor cells is necessary, especially when miniaturized devices are required. In such devices, Rydberg atoms start to interact with the device enclosures 43,44 either though quasi-static or retarded image charge interactions or by resonant Rydberg-surface plasmon coupling 45 .…”