Collective atom-cavity coupling and nonlinear dynamics with atoms with multilevel ground states

Suarez, Elmer; Carollo, Federico; Lesanovsky, Igor; Olmos, Beatriz; Courteille, Philippe W.; Slama, Sebastian

doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.107.023714

Authors

Elmer Suarez

Federico Carollo

IGOR LESANOVSKY Igor.Lesanovsky@nottingham.ac.uk
Professor of Physics

BEATRIZ OLMOS SANCHEZ BEATRIZ.OLMOS-SANCHEZ@NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK
Assistant Professor

Philippe W. Courteille

Sebastian Slama

Abstract

We investigate experimentally and theoretically the collective coupling between atoms with multilevel ground-state manifolds and an optical cavity mode. In our setup the cavity field optically pumps populations among the ground states. The ensuing dynamics can be conveniently described by means of an effective dynamical atom-cavity coupling strength that depends on the occupation of the individual states and their coupling strengths with the cavity mode. This leads to a dynamical backaction of the atomic populations on the atom-cavity coupling strength which results in a nonexponential relaxation dynamics. We experimentally observe this effect with laser-cooled 87Rb atoms, for which we monitor the collective normal-mode splitting in real time. Our results show that the multilevel structure of electronic ground states can significantly alter the relaxation behavior in atom-cavity settings as compared to ensembles of two-level atoms.

Citation

Suarez, E., Carollo, F., Lesanovsky, I., Olmos, B., Courteille, P. W., & Slama, S. (2023). Collective atom-cavity coupling and nonlinear dynamics with atoms with multilevel ground states. Physical Review A, 107(2), Article 023714. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.107.023714

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Jan 19, 2023
Online Publication Date	Feb 15, 2023
Publication Date	Feb 1, 2023
Deposit Date	Mar 1, 2023
Publicly Available Date	Mar 2, 2023
Journal	Physical Review A
Print ISSN	2469-9926
Electronic ISSN	2469-9934
Publisher	American Physical Society
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	107
Issue	2
Article Number	023714
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.107.023714
Public URL	https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/17386146
Publisher URL	https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.107.023714