Subradiance-protected excitation transport

Abstract

We explore excitation transport within a one-dimensional chain of atoms where the atomic transition dipoles are coupled to the free radiation field. When the atoms are separated by distances smaller or comparable to the wavelength of the transition, the exchange of virtual photons leads to the transport of the excitation through the lattice. Even though this is a strongly dissipative system, we find that the transport is subradiant, that is, the excitation lifetime is orders of magnitude longer than the one of an individual atom. In particular, we show that a subspace of the spectrum is formed by subradiant states with a linear dispersion relation, which allows for the dispersionless transport of wave packets over long distances with virtually zero decay rate. Moreover, the group velocity and direction of the transport can be controlled via an external uniform magnetic field while preserving its subradiant character. The simplicity and versatility of this system, together with the robustness of subradiance against disorder, makes it relevant for a range of applications such as lossless energy transport and long-time light storage.

Subradiance-protected excitation spreading in the generation of collimated photon emission from an atomic array

“…7, where we plot the surviving amplitude P = j,µ |P (j) µ | 2 as a function of time for varying fluctuation lengths. For increasing disorder, the excitation decays more quickly, as also observed in other subradiance-protected excitation transfer studies [72]. However, in these cases the lifetime is still much longer than the corresponding case of an in-phase in-plane localized excitation with no disorder.…”

“…Due to the isolation from the environment, subradiant modes have been shown to be useful in transport of excitations [64][65][66][67]. Recent work has explored light transport for closely spaced atoms in arrays with topological edge states [68,69] and in a onedimensional (1D) chain or ring [70][71][72].…”

Preparation of one-dimensional chains and dense cold atomic clouds with a high numerical aperture four-lens system

“…In this way, the interferences can be tailored, making it possible to enhance or suppress the effect of dipole interactions. This second route could pave the way to several applications: for example, mirrors made by an atomic * antoine.glicenstein@institutoptique.fr layer [16][17][18], as recently realized using a two-dimensional (2D) Mott insulator [5], controlled transport of excitations [19,20], and light storage [13,21] or in quantum metrology [12,13,22]. The investigation of collective effects in ordered ensembles is also relevant for optical lattice clocks [9,10,23], as they could limit their accuracy.…”

Superatom Picture of Collective Nonclassical Light Emission and Dipole Blockade in Atom Arrays

“…Correlations can emerge even for the classical optical regime in the limit of low light intensity (LLI) of an incident laser [21,22], and the quest for observing the effects of strong light-mediated interactions is attracting considerable attention [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]. Regular arrays of atoms are particularly interesting for the exploration and manipulation of collective optical responses, as more recently studied also in the quantum regime [35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47]. Transmission-resonance narrowing due to collective subradiance in the classical limit in a planar optical lattice was already observed [48] and other related experiments are rapidly emerging [49].…”