Raman Lasing with a Cold Atom Gain Medium in a High-Finesse Optical Cavity

Vrijsen, Geert; Hosten, Onur; Lee, Jongmin; Bernon, Simon; Kasevich, Mark A.

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.107.063904

Cited by 32 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…These represent improvements by more than an order of magnitude in atom number for singleatom resolution [12][13][14][15][16][17][18], and by ∼ 10 dB in measurement variance (relative to the SQL) over the best previous detection [11]. While spatially varying coupling of atoms to the probe light standing wave prevents direct observation of a quantized atom number signal, we demonstrate the ability to measure differences of one atom in our system and hence to perform the parity measurement that would detect a GHZ state in a uniformly coupled system [33]. When combined with entangled-state preparation by unitary cavity squeezing as proposed in [23,34] We probe the atoms with near-resonant light of wavelength 2π/k = 780 nm inside a standing-wave optical cavity, while the atoms are trapped in a far-detuned intracavity standing wave of wavelength 2π/k t = 852 nm.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The demonstrated sensitivity enables the parity measurement that characterizes a GHZ state, with parity fringe visibility of about 30% for 20-30 atoms and 50% for a few atoms. Uniform atomcavity coupling, required to observe a quantized atomic signal in the cavity system, can be achieved by using a trap wavelength that equals twice the probe wavelength [33]. The generation of GHZ states via atom-cavity interaction [24,34] will require strong atom-cavity coupling η > 1 to avoid decoherence by free-space scattering, and the readout resolution is likely to further improve in such a system.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Collective State Measurement of Mesoscopic Ensembles with Single-Atom Resolution

et al. 2012

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We demonstrate single-atom resolution, as well as detection sensitivity more than 20 dB below the quantum projection noise limit, for hyperfine-state-selective measurements on mesoscopic ensembles containing 100 or more atoms. The measurement detects the atom-induced shift of the resonance frequency of an optical cavity containing the ensemble. While spatially-varying coupling of atoms to the cavity prevents the direct observation of a quantized signal, the demonstrated measurement resolution provides the readout capability necessary for atomic interferometry substantially below the standard quantum limit, and down to the Heisenberg limit. PACS numbers:The rapidly progressing field of quantum metrology takes advantage of entangled ensembles of particles to improve measurement sensitivity beyond the standard quantum limit (SQL) arising from quantum projection noise for measurements on uncorrelated particles. Spinsqueezed states [1,2] improve the measurement signalto-noise ratio by redistribution of quantum noise, while GHZ states [3][4][5] enhance the signal via faster-evolving collective phase. GHZ states enable measurement at the Heisenberg limit, where noise-to-signal ratio scales with atom number N as 1/N [5].In both cases, very-high-precision readout is necessary to realize metrological gain. The performance of an entangled interferometer is determined not by the intrinsic fluctuations of the quantum system after detection noise subtraction, but by the full observed noise including detection noise [6][7][8][9][10][11]. Thus, the best observed spin squeezing of 6 dB [7] in a spin-1 2 system, and 8 dB of spin-nematic squeezing in a spin-1 system [11], were both limited by detection. For GHZ states, read-out of the collective phase requires a measurement of the parity of the population difference between two atomic states [5]. A state-selective measurement of atom number with singleatom resolution, which can be used to implement parity detection, therefore represents an important enabling technique for metrology beyond the SQL.An optical cavity can be used both to collect photons in a single mode [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22], and to generate entangled states via light-mediated atom-atom interactions [7,23,24]. With respect to atom detection, counting of up to 4 atoms [12][13][14][15][16][17][18] and high-fidelity readout of the hyperfine state of a single neutral atom [19][20][21] have been achieved using cavity transmission measurements. Larger ensembles containing up to N = 70 atoms have been measured with atom detection variance (∆N ) 2 = 6 [25]. Spinsqueezed states of atoms in a cavity have also been prepared [7,22,26], and have enabled an atomic clock operating with variance a factor of 3 below the standard quantum limit [27].Single-atom resolution has also been achieved via fluorescence detection in free space. In optical lattices, the parity of site occupation has been measured for up to 5 atoms per lattice site without internal-state discrimination [28][29][30]. For strongly trapped ions...

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Collective State Measurement of Mesoscopic Ensembles with Single-Atom Resolution

et al. 2012

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the opposite regime to our work, a laser-cooled 87 Rb Raman laser was recently demonstrated to operate deep in the good-cavity regime in Ref. [19].…”

Section: Laser Regime Comparisonmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Most optical lasers operate in the good-cavity limit (one example is the cold atom Raman laser of Ref. [19]), with microcavity diode lasers [20] and far infrared (FIR) gas lasers, using Xe [21], NH 3 [22,23], and HeXe/HeNe [12], operating in the vicinity of the crossover, polariton-like regime. Our cold atom Raman laser is unique both in terms of operating so deeply into the bad-cavity regime, and also in that the steady-state intracavity photon number can be made much less than one.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A quasi-continuous superradiant Raman laser with < 1 intracavity photon

Bohnet

Chen

Weiner

et al. 2013

EPJ Web of Conferences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Steady-state collective emission from ensembles of laser cooled atoms has been proposed as a method for generating sub-millihertz linewidth optical lasers, with potential for broad impacts across science and technology. We have built a model system that tests key predictions for such active oscillators using a Raman laser with laser cooled atoms as the gain medium. The laser operates deep in the badcavity, or superradiant, regime of laser physics, where the cavity decay rate is much greater than the atomic coherence decay rate. Specifically, we demonstrate that a system of 10 6 87 Rb atoms trapped in a 1D standing wave optical lattice can spontaneously synchronize and collectively emit a quasi-continuous coherent optical output, even when the intracavity field contains on average < 1 photon.

show abstract

“…This gain mechanism has been used in different beautiful experiments on lasing with cold atoms in different regimes [105][106][107] and our experiment on random lasing also uses this gain (see sections 3.3.4 and 3.4).…”

Section: Raman Gain Using Zeeman Sublevelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cold and Hot Atomic Vapors: A Testbed for Astrophysics?

Baudouin

Guerin

Kaiser

2014

Annual Review of Cold Atoms and Molecules

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Atomic physics experiments, based on hot vapors or laser-cooled atomic samples, may be useful to simulate some astrophysical problems, where radiation pressure, radiative transport or light amplification are involved. We discuss several experiments and proposals, dealing with multiplescattering of light in hot and cold atomic vapors, random lasing in cold atoms and light-induced long-range forces, which may be relevant in this context.

show abstract

Raman Lasing with a Cold Atom Gain Medium in a High-Finesse Optical Cavity

Cited by 32 publications

References 12 publications

Collective State Measurement of Mesoscopic Ensembles with Single-Atom Resolution

Collective State Measurement of Mesoscopic Ensembles with Single-Atom Resolution

A quasi-continuous superradiant Raman laser with < 1 intracavity photon

Cold and Hot Atomic Vapors: A Testbed for Astrophysics?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About