Erlangen 2018 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 62: Poster: Quantum Optics and Photonics V

Q 62.13: Poster

Thursday, March 8, 2018, 16:15–18:15, Redoutensaal

Surface Plasmon Enhanced Multipole Transitions of Rydberg Atoms — •Yijia Zhou and Weibin Li — School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK

The dipole approximation is widely used in describing light-matter interactions due to the fact that sizes of emitters are far smaller than wave lengths of the coupling light. This is changed qualitatively when an emitter approaches to two dimensional surfaces, where dispersion relations of surface plasmons turn out to be nonlinear and their wave length can be shrunken up to hundreds of times relative to light in free space. This can enhance the otherwise forbidden higher order multipolar transitions and multiphoton emissions (Rivera2016). Emitters have to be located a few nm above the surface, and that the shrinking factor is typically larger 100, which are experimentally challenging. We study nondipole effects using Rydberg atoms instead of groundstate atoms. Large orbital sizes of the electron in electronically high-lying states bring an additional amplifying factor to the light-atom coupling, which depends nonlinearly on the principal quantum numbers n. When n≫1, this significantly enhances multipolar couplings, permitting us to observe these effects with smaller shrinking factors, as well as at large separations between Rydberg atoms and the surface.