Observation of an Electromagnetically Induced Grating in Cold 85Rb Atoms

Hengfei Zhang,Shichao Dong,Jinpeng Yuan,Chaohua Wu,Lirong Wang

doi:10.3390/app10175740

Abstract

Electromagnetically induced grating (EIG) is extensively investigated as an artificial periodic structure in recent years owed to its simple reconfiguration and flexible adjustability. We report the experimental observation of EIG in cold rubidium atoms. The coupling and probe lasers are corresponding to the 5S1/2−5P1/2 and 5S1/2−5P3/2 transitions of a V-type electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) configuration, respectively. A clear spatial intensity distribution of the probe laser with distinguished third-order diffraction pattern is recorded to character the EIG. The influence of the pertinent experimental parameters, such as coupling laser intensity and two-photon detuning on the diffraction pattern is investigated in detail. This is the first observation in visual form of the EIG in cold rubidium atoms. These results may potentially provide a nondestructive method to image cold atoms and pave the way for investigating non-Hermitian physics and the control of light dynamics.

Highlights

The success in the production of cold atoms opens up many interesting research fields, among which the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) [1,2,3] implemented in cold atomic systems has been extensively investigated in recent years [4,5]
The cold atomic medium is regarded as a periodic structure with periodically modulated refractive index
The diffraction patterns with different coupling laser powers and two-photon detunings are investigated in detail

Summary

Introduction

The success in the production of cold atoms opens up many interesting research fields, among which the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) [1,2,3] implemented in cold atomic systems has been extensively investigated in recent years [4,5]. While studying EIT generally focuses on the traveling wave of the laser field, more recently there has been considerable interest in electromagnetically induced grating (EIG), which replaces traveling wave fields of EIT with strong coupling standing-wave fields [6,7,8]. By adopting this method, the dispersion and absorption of the probe laser beam will be modulated spatially in an atomic medium. The visual research can observe the diffraction grating of EIG more vividly, and can intuitively obtain more information about the characteristic parameters under different experimental conditions. These results will further motivate the non-Hermitian physics simulation and provide a nondestructive method to image cold atoms

Experiment Setup

Results and Discussion

Conclusions