Abstract
Cold atomic clouds in collective atomic recoil lasing are usually confined by an optical cavity, which forces the light-scattering to befall in the mode fixed by the resonator. Here we consider the system to be in free space, which leads into a vacuum multimode collective scattering. We show that the presence of an optical cavity is not always necessary to achieve coherent collective emission by the atomic ensemble and that a preferred scattering path arises along the major axis of the atomic cloud. We derive a full vectorial model for multimode collective atomic recoil lasing in free space. Such a model consists of multi-particle equations capable of describing the motion of each atom in a 2D/3D cloud. These equations are numerically solved by means of molecular dynamic algorithms, usually employed in other scientific fields. The numerical results show that both atomic density and collective scattering patterns are applicable to the cloud’s orientation and shape and to the polarization of the incident light.
Highlights
In the original configuration of the Collective Atomic Recoil Lasing (CARL, [1,2]) an ensemble of N initially randomly distributed atoms set in the arm of a ring cavity scatters photons in the reverse direction of an incident laser injected along the cavity axis [3,4]
We presented a model able to describe collective scattering of light by an atomic cloud into multiple vacuum modes, when this is irradiated by an optical field [13]
The main scope of this work is to show the density grating formation caused by collective atomic recoil lasing, triggered in a cold atomic cloud when a polarized external optical field is applied
Summary
In the original configuration of the Collective Atomic Recoil Lasing (CARL, [1,2]) an ensemble of N initially randomly distributed atoms set in the arm of a ring cavity scatters photons in the reverse direction of an incident laser injected along the cavity axis [3,4]. In [5], superradiant scattered light was observed to propagate along the major axis of the atomic cloud, simultaneous with the formation of a matter-wave momentum grating in the cloud Some features of this phenomenon have been described by single-mode/mean-field models similar to that of the (CARL) [7,8,9,10,11,12]. The resulting N coupled equations, where each atom of the cloud is subdued to the radiation force produced by the other N − 1 atoms, are accounting for the polarization effects of the incident and scattered fields These new equations, more complex due to the presence of addition short-range terms, are eligible to be implemented in MD codes.
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