München 2004 – scientific programme
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Q: Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 41: Quanteneffekte III
Q 41.7: Talk
Thursday, March 25, 2004, 18:15–18:30, HS 218
Collective interference of N driven atomic dipoles with a high-Q cavity mode — •Stefano Zippilli1, Giovanna Morigi1, and Helmut Ritsch2 — 1Abteilung fuer Quantenphysik, Universitaet Ulm, Albert-Einstein-Allee 11, D-89069 Ulm — 2Institut fuer Theoretische Physik, Universitaet Innsbruck, Technickerstr. 25/2, A-6020 Innsbruck
We study the dynamics of N coherently driven two-level atoms strongly coupled to a high finesse optical resonator. Analogous to a single driven atom in a lossless cavity [1], the quantum interference of the cavity mode field and the pump field creates an intensity minimum in the vicinity of each driven atom and suppresses spontaneous emission and light shift. Even for strong driving fields the atoms are only weakly saturated and the probe absorption spectra reveals the vacuum Rabi splitting. We find that, even in the case of an empty-cavity linewidth bigger than the atomic linewidth, one regains destructive interference through the cooperative action of many atoms. Despite of opening more loss channels, cavity decay becomes the dominant decay channel with growing atom number. The magnitude of the effect shows a strong dependence on the relative atomic distances being maximum for a regular lattice of atoms. Both of these results can give a new key to understand recent experiments on collective cavity cooling [2].
[1] P. Alsing et al, Phys. Rev. A 45, 5135 (1992).
[2] A.T. Black et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 203001 (2003).