Superradiant Rayleigh Scattering from a Bose-Einstein Condensate

Inouye, S.; Chikkatur, A. P.; Stamper-Kurn, Dan; Stenger, J.; Pritchard, David E.; Ketterle, Wolfgang

doi:10.1126/science.285.5427.571

Cited by 534 publications

(672 citation statements)

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“…Nevertheless, the spatial coherence, fundamentally lowest kinetic energy and smallest size of a BEC influence its interaction with light and make it the most desirable atomic state in many situations of conceptual and practical interest: the BEC allows to maximize the coupling and avoid decoherence effects associated with spatial inhomogeneities and with atomic motion 15 . In the free-space case, some of these aspects have been shown in detail for the case of superradiance, where reduced Doppler broadening in the condensate increased the coherence time by a factor of 30 over a thermal cloud at the transition temperature, making the effect observable only in the BEC 19 . Here we take advantage of the fact that the BEC has the smallest possible position spread in a given trap.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Strong atom–field coupling for Bose–Einstein condensates in an optical cavity on a chip

Colombe¹,

Steinmetz²,

Dubois³

et al. 2007

Nature

691

711

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An optical cavity enhances the interaction between atoms and light, and the rate of coherent atom-photon coupling can be made larger than all decoherence rates of the system. For single atoms, this "strong coupling regime" of cavity quantum electrodynamics 1,2 (cQED) has been the subject of spectacular experimental advances, and great efforts have been made to control the coupling rate by trapping 3,4 and cooling the atom 5,6 towards the motional ground state, which has been achieved in one dimension so far 5 . For N atoms, the three-dimensional ground state of motion is routinely achieved in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) 7 , but although first experiments combining BECs and optical cavities have been reported recently 8,9 , coupling BECs to strong-coupling cavities has remained an elusive goal. Here we report such an experiment, which is made possible by combining a new type of fibre-based cavity 10 with atom chip technology 11 . This allows single-atom cQED experiments with a simplified setup and realizes the new situation of N atoms in a cavity each of which is identically and strongly coupled to the cavity mode 12 . Moreover, the BEC can be positioned deterministically anywhere within the cavity and localized entirely within a single antinode of the standing-wave cavity field. This gives rise to a controlled, tunable coupling rate, as we confirm experimentally. We study the heating rate caused by a cavity transmission measurement as a function of the coupling rate and find no measurable heating for strongly coupled BECs. The spectrum of the coupled atoms-cavity system, which we map out over a wide range of atom numbers and cavity-atom detunings, shows vacuum Rabi splittings exceeding 20 gigahertz, as well as an unpredicted additional splitting which we attribute to the atomic hyperfine structure. The system is suitable as a light-matter quantum interface for quantum information 13 . 2 The interaction of an ensemble of N atoms with a single mode of radiation has been a recurrent theme in quantum optics at least since the work of Dicke 14 , who showed that under certain conditions the atoms interact with the radiation collectively, giving rise to new effects such as superradiance. Recently, collective interactions with weak fields, with and without a cavity, have become a focus of theoretical and experimental investigations, especially since it became clear that they can turn the ensemble into a quantum memory 13,15 . Such a memory would become a key element for processing quantum information 13,16 if realized with near-unit conversion efficiency and long storage time. The figure of merit determining the probability of converting an atomic excitation into a cavity photon (a "memory qubit" into a "flying qubit") is the between the ensemble and the field, 2 is the cavity photon decay rate and 2 the atomic spontaneous emission rate. (Up to a factor of order 1, C N is the single-pass optical depth of the atomic sample multiplied by the cavity finesse .) For weak excitation, to which we restrict oursel...

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Strong atom–field coupling for Bose–Einstein condensates in an optical cavity on a chip

Colombe¹,

Steinmetz²,

Dubois³

et al. 2007

Nature

691

711

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“…Light scattering is thus quite sensitive to the presence of excitations in the condensate, as confirmed by the recent observation of superradiant light scattering from a condensate which is due to the buildup of excited particles in a preferred mode [32]. However, inserting Eq.…”

Section: Mean-field Theory Determination Of S( Q ω)mentioning

confidence: 92%

“…16a) and was determined from a calibration of the Bragg process at high laser powers, where the diffracted atoms were clearly visible in the images. The amplification pulse alone, although above the threshold for superradiance [32], did not generate a discernible signal of atoms in the recoil mode (Fig. 16b).…”

Section: Phase-coherent Amplification Of Matter Wavesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Spinor Condensates and Light Scattering from Bose-Einstein Condensates

Stamper-Kurn¹,

Ketterle²

Les Houches - Ecole D’Ete De Physique Theorique

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“…Gg; 03.75.Hh; 42.50.Nn; 42.50.Gy The coherent nature of Bose-Einstein condensates has led to new and rapid developments in atom optics and studies on coherent interaction between light and matter waves, with the demonstration of efficient matter wave interferometers, Bragg diffraction, wave mixing, matter wave amplifiers. Superradiant scattering was for the first time analyzed using a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in a seminal experiment by Ketterle et al [1]. In this experiment the initial matter grating, formed due to Rayleigh scattering of a pumping beam by an elongated Bose-Einstein condensate and subsequent recoil into a moving matter wave, was self amplified by resonant light diffraction in a phenomenon called amplification of matter waves.…”

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confidence: 99%

Mode competition in superradiant scattering of matter waves

et al. 2011

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Superradiant Rayleigh scattering in a Bose gas released from an optical lattice is analyzed with incident light pumping at the Bragg angle for resonant light diffraction. We show competition between superradiance scattering into the Bragg mode and into end-fire modes clearly leads to suppression of the latter at even relatively low lattice depths. A quantum light-matter interaction model is proposed for qualitatively explaining this result.PACS numbers: 03.75. Gg; 03.75.Hh; 42.50.Nn; 42.50.Gy The coherent nature of Bose-Einstein condensates has led to new and rapid developments in atom optics and studies on coherent interaction between light and matter waves, with the demonstration of efficient matter wave interferometers, Bragg diffraction, wave mixing, matter wave amplifiers. Superradiant scattering was for the first time analyzed using a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in a seminal experiment by Ketterle et al. [1]. In this experiment the initial matter grating, formed due to Rayleigh scattering of a pumping beam by an elongated Bose-Einstein condensate and subsequent recoil into a moving matter wave, was self amplified by resonant light diffraction in a phenomenon called amplification of matter waves. Absorption of pumping photons and preferential scattering into so-called end-fire modes along the BEC's long axis lead to the observation of patterns of coherently recoiling atoms. Amplification of matter waves was further characterized with the use of an initial matter wave seed formed via Bragg diffraction of a Bose condensate and its coherence nature was demonstrated [2,3].For an elongated BEC, superradiant Rayleigh scattering light is emitted along the long axis because the gain for superradiance is maximum in this direction. However, different superradiant modes can be obtained when a matter wave seed with non-zero momentum is created before pumping since light can then be resonantly diffracted in a different direction [4]. No precise analysis of competition between different superradiant scattering modes has been carried out yet. Such analysis would be useful for calibrating precisely superradiance gains and initial Rayleigh scattering rates if one wants to use quantitatively superradiance for the analysis of coherence in Bose gases [5,6]. Analyzing superradiance with non common configurations is also important as combining early stage superradiance described with quantum theory and long timescale superradiance which is well captured within a semi-classical theory taking into account propagation effects is currently a topic of high interest [7,8] We present in this article an experimental analysis of mode competition in superradiance scattering. Rather than relying on an initial matter wave seed formed via Bragg diffraction of a BEC [2-4] our superradiance experiment is performed after initial adiabatic loading of a BEC along its long axis inside a 1D optical lattice [9]. The choice of contra propagating optical beams (wave vector ± k L ) for the optical lattice loading leads to the formation of a matte...

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Superradiant Rayleigh Scattering from a Bose-Einstein Condensate

Cited by 534 publications

References 23 publications

Strong atom–field coupling for Bose–Einstein condensates in an optical cavity on a chip

Strong atom–field coupling for Bose–Einstein condensates in an optical cavity on a chip

Spinor Condensates and Light Scattering from Bose-Einstein Condensates

Mode competition in superradiant scattering of matter waves

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