Influence of disorder on electromagnetically induced transparency in chiral waveguide quantum electrodynamics

Abstract

We study single photon transport in a one-dimensional disordered lattice of three-level atoms coupled to an optical waveguide. In particular, we study atoms of \Lambda-type that are capable of exhibiting electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) and separately consider disorder in the atomic positions and transition frequencies. We mainly address the question of how preferential emission into waveguide modes (chirality) can influence the formation of spatially localized states. Our work has relevance to experimental studies of cold atoms coupled to nanoscale waveguides and has possible applications to quantum communications.