Cavity-Free Circulator with Low Insertion Loss Using Hot Atoms

Abstract

Nonreciprocal optical devices, such as isolators and circulators, provide highly desirable functionalities in routing signals. This motivates the active research on high-efficiency nonreciprocal devices, especially for miniaturized and integrable magnetic-free schemes. All the present experimental demonstrations of circulators in optical domains are based on the high-$Q$ factor cavity. In this work, we demonstrate a cavity-free optical circulator with low insertion loss by making use of a far-detuned nonlinear Raman process with the assistance of the atomic Doppler effect. Due to the large detuning, the excited state can be adiabatically eliminated, resulting in nearly vanishing absorption. An optical circulator with average transmission of more than $85\mathrm{%}$ and fidelity above $0.98$ is well achieved in an experiment with hot atoms. Our scheme shows the possibility of cavity-free nonreciprocal optical devices with low insertion loss.