Heidelberg 2015 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 62: Poster: Quantum Optics and Photonics III

Q 62.12: Poster

Thursday, March 26, 2015, 17:00–19:00, C/Foyer

Nonlinear nonlocal response of thermal Rydberg atoms — •Lida Zhang and Jörg Evers — Max-Planck-Institut für Kern- physik, Saupfercheckweg 1, D-69117 Heidelberg

A novel approach is proposed to describe light propagation through thermal Rydberg atoms. Under the crucial approximation that the temporal variation in the dipole-dipole interactions due to atomic motions can be neglected in an ensemble average, an analytical form can be obtained for the nonlocal nonlinear atomic response of the thermal medium. Based on this analytical result, we find that in the the near-resonant regime the nonlinear absorption for the probe field is weakened as the temperature increases. On the contrary, when the laser fields are far-off resonant, the nonlocal nonlinear dispersion remains almost unchanged while the nonlocal nonlinear absorption is initially enhanced and then weakened as the temperature grows. Consequently, the modulational instability (MI) is initially suppressed, and then strengthened with increasing temperature. In contrast to purely dispersive cold nonlinear media, counterintuitively, we find that in absorptive nonlinear media each wave component exhibits the MI effect, which however competes with the nonlocal nonlinear absorption, and eventually is suppressed.