Hannover 2013 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 20: Ultracold plasmas and Rydberg atoms
Q 20.5: Talk
Monday, March 18, 2013, 17:45–18:00, E 415
Crystallization of photons via light storage in Rydberg gases — Johannes Otterbach1,2, •Matthias Moos1, Dominik Muth1, and Michael Fleischhauer1 — 1Fachbereich Physik and Forschungszentrum OPTIMAS, Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany — 2Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Light exciting atoms to Rydberg states under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) can be described in terms of slow-light Rydberg-polaritons. The strong interaction mediated by the Rydberg atoms can give rise to crystallization of photons, i.e., to density waves with long-range power-law correlations. In an 1D setting the low-energy physics can be described by a Luttinger liquid model. When the corresponding Luttinger parameter K becomes smaller than 1/2, the density wave dominates the correlations marking the onset of crystallization. We calculate the K parameter by DMRG simulations and compare it to analytic approximations. We find that under typical slow-light conditions K is much larger than 1/2 and thus no crystalline order can emerge. However, storing the polaritons in a stationary spin wave by switching off the control laser the effective mass and thus the kinetic energy vanish and K approaches zero. If the storage is done sufficiently adiabatic, long range crystalline order can be generated. We analyze the dynamics of this build-up in terms of a time-dependent Luttinger theory and derive conditions for an optimal storage scenario.