Azimuthal modulation of electromagnetically induced transparency using structured light

Abstract

Recently a scheme has been proposed for detection of the structured light by measuring the transmission of a vortex beam through a cloud of cold rubidium atoms with energy levels of the Λ-type configuration [N. Radwell et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 123603 (2015)]. This enables observation of regions of spatially dependent electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). Here we suggest another scenario for detection of the structured light by measuring the absorption profile of a weak nonvortex probe beam in a highly resonant five-level combined tripod and Λ (CTL) atomlight coupling setup. We demonstrate that due to the closed-loop structure of CTL scheme, the absorption of the probe beam depends on the azimuthal angle and orbital angular momentum (OAM) of the control vortex beams. This feature is missing in simple Λ or tripod schemes, as there is no loop in such atom-light couplings. One can identify different regions of spatially structured transparency through measuring the absorption of probe field under different configurations of structured control light.

Atomic Compass: Detecting 3D Magnetic Field Alignment with Vector Vortex Light

“…It fails, however, to describe some of the subtle atomic response, especially when dealing with B fields that are largely orthogonal to the optical propagation direction, or for higher probe power. A rigorous treatment, based on optical Bloch equations [25,42,43], results in simulations which are in excellent quantitative agreement with our measurements, however without permitting a simple analytical description. See Supplemental Material at [URL will be inserted by publisher] for an overview.…”

“…Our ability to design complex vector light fields now allows the full exploration of vectorial light-matter interaction [5]. One of the earliest examples is the prediction [15] and measurement [16] of the rotational Doppler effect, with more recent applications including complex image memories [17,18], manipulation of non-linear effects [19,20], investigations of spatial anisotropy [21][22][23], and spatially dependent electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) [24][25][26].…”

Spatially Structured Optical Effects in a Four‐Level Quantum System Near a Plasmonic Nanostructure

“…[ 5 ] Such beams of light (the so‐called optical vortices) carry orbital angular momentum (OAM) with helical wavefronts focusing to rings, rather than points. The interaction of such structured light beams with cold atoms results in a plethora of interesting effects, including light‐induced‐torque, [ 6 ] atom vortex beams, [ 7 ] entanglement of OAM states of photon pairs, [ 8 ] OAM‐based four‐wave mixing, [ 9,10 ] spatially dependent electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) and its applications, [ 11–17 ] as well as vortex slow light and transfer of optical vortices between light fields. [ 18–29 ]…”

Microwave-induced orbital angular momentum transfer

“…Several nonlinear optical processes have been studied in different quantum systems using LG beams 16 such as the second-harmonic generation 9,17 , sum frequency generation 18 , and four-wave mixing (FWM) 19–22 . The spatially structured optical transparency is theoretically investigated in a five-level combined tripod and Λ atom-light coupling scheme 23 . Mahmoudi et al .…”