Quantum Optics in Dense Atomic Media: From Optical Memories to Fluids of Light

Abstract

This Habilitation manuscript describes the work done at JQI-NIST and LKB-ENS-Sorbonne University since 2010. After a brief introduction of the needed concepts for non-linear and quantum optics in optically dense atomic medium, I review several experiments about the Gradient Echo Memory protocol in warm atomic vapors and in cold atomic clouds, and especially the multi-mode properties of this memory. In the next chapter I describe two experiments of quantum optics in dense atomic medium : the possibility to image using quantum noise and the propagation of quantum mutual information in a fast-light medium. In chapter 4 I study two recents experiments about hydrodynamics of light in exciton-polariton systems and in warm atomic vapor. Finally I present the future project of my group at LKB. The main goal of this manuscript is to provide the tools to connect non-linear and quantum optics to quantum fluids of light. Because the physics of matter quantum fluids and fluids of light has long been the territory of condensed matter physicists, it is uncommon to find textbooks which draw the analogies with quantum optics. I have taken the reverse trajectory, being trained as a quantum optician and moving progressively to quantum gases and quantum fluids of light. Naturally, I try to use the concepts and resources developed by the quantum optics community to improve experiment about fluids of light, but I also reverse the approach and ask a very simple question: what does the concept of fluid of light bring to our understanding of non-linear and quantum optics ? It can be rephrased as an operational question: which new effects can we predict (and possibly observe) using the photon fluid formalism ?