Resonant coupling in the van der Waals interaction between an excited alkali atom and a dielectric surface: an experimental study via stepwise selective reflection spectroscopy

Failache, H.; Saltiel, S.; Fichet, M.; Bloch, Daniel; Ducloy, M.

doi:10.1140/epjd/e2003-00098-4

Cited by 54 publications

(63 citation statements)

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“…First, in principle, the excited-state shift can be affected by coupling to even higher electronic levels. However, a careful calculation of this contribution34 shows that it is negligible compared with the resonantly enhanced term of equation (5), provided that we work in the regime Q >>Δ p . Second, we have ignored corrections to the shifts owing to surface roughness.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trapping atoms using nanoscale quantum vacuum forces

et al. 2014

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Quantum vacuum forces dictate the interaction between individual atoms and dielectric surfaces at nanoscale distances. For example, their large strengths typically overwhelm externally applied forces, which makes it challenging to controllably interface cold atoms with nearby nanophotonic systems. Here we theoretically show that it is possible to tailor the vacuum forces themselves to provide strong trapping potentials. Our proposed trapping scheme takes advantage of the attractive ground-state potential and adiabatic dressing with an excited state whose potential is engineered to be resonantly enhanced and repulsive. This procedure yields a strong metastable trap, with the fraction of excited-state population scaling inversely with the quality factor of the resonance of the dielectric structure. We analyse realistic limitations to the trap lifetime and discuss possible applications that might emerge from the large trap depths and nanoscale confinement.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trapping atoms using nanoscale quantum vacuum forces

et al. 2014

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“…While the Casimir Polder effect between Rydberg atoms and a metallic surface has been investigated [15], the effect of dielectric walls on Rydberg atoms is virtually unknown. The effect of dielectric surfaces on Rydberg atoms are expected to be stronger than a metal surface because a dielectric surface can become charged and the surface interaction can be enhanced by the resonant interaction with surface polaritons [15,16,17,18]. The effect of the microcell's walls can be a serious impediment to implementing them to make quantum photonic devices.…”

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confidence: 99%

Coherent excitation of Rydberg atoms in micrometre-sized atomic vapour cells

Kübler¹,

Shaffer²,

Baluktsian³

et al. 2010

Nature Photon

181

178

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The coherent control of mesoscopic ensembles of atoms and Rydberg atom blockade are the basis for proposed quantum devices such as integrable gates and single photon sources. So far, experimental progress has been limited to complex experimental setups that use ultracold atoms. Here, we show that coherence times of ∼ 100 ns are achievable with coherent Rydberg atom spectroscopy in µm sized thermal vapor cells. We investigated states with principle quantum numbers between 30 and 50. Our results demonstrate that microcells with a size on the order of the blockade radius, ∼ 2 µm, at temperatures of 100 − 300 • C are robust, promising candidates to investigate low dimensional strongly interacting Rydberg gases, construct quantum gates and build single photon sources.Recently, the mutual interaction between highly excited Rydberg atoms in dense frozen samples has lead to the observation of Rydberg atom excitation blockade [1,2,3]. In Rydberg atom blockade, the excitation of more than one Rydberg atom within a blockade volume is suppressed as the mutual interaction between Rydberg atoms at internuclear separations on the order of micrometers shifts the atomic state out of resonance with a narrow band excitation laser. The corresponding blockade radius, a block , is on the order of several µm for Rydberg states in the range of n= 30 − 50. For example, the 32S state of Rb excited by a 1 MHz bandwidth laser has a block = 2 µm for an ensemble of atoms that do not move on the timescale of excitation [4]. As the huge interaction between individual Rydberg atoms can lead to controlled entanglement of atomic ensembles, Rydberg atom blockade is the basis for several proposals to realize photonic quantum devices, like single photon sources and quantum gates [5,6]. The first promising experimental steps toward this goal using individual well localized pairs of ultracold atoms have been reported [7,8]. Experiments on collective entanglement of ensembles of ultracold atoms have also been performed [1].A technologically interesting alternative approach to ultracold atoms would be to realize Rydberg atom quantum photonic devices in thermal Rb vapor microcells. For this idea, we envision arrays of small blockade sized vapor cells (cavities) etched in glass that can be connected by optical wave guides in a monolithic structure. In such a device, Rydberg atom quantum gates may be realized with mesoscopic ensembles of thermal atoms. Some of the advantages of this approach are the ability to exploit advances in microstructuring technology [9,10,11], the relative simplicity of maintaining and regenerating the sample, the collective enhancement of the laser matter dynamics, and the scalability. We also point out here that a block has a strong scaling with the atomic separation R, proportional to R 6 in the case of Van der Waals interactions. This means that its value for atoms frozen in place only decreases by approximately 2.7 for a thermal distribution of atoms at T = 300 • C, since a block ∝ 6 √ Doppler width.An important point for usin...

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“…However, the atom-surface coupling is known to be strongly sensitive to the virtual dipole couplings to neighbouring energy levels between an atomic level and its neighbours, so that high-lying states are mostly sensitive to a vW interaction whose dominant origin lies in far infrared (IR) couplings [1,6,7]. In such a case, the temperature of the surface, governing at equilibrium the temperature of the vacuum field, may affect the atom-surface interaction [8][9][10][11], hence providing a simple example of atomic quantum properties affected by a thermal bath [12]. Such a modification of the atom-surface interaction can be particularly expected when the atomic coupling in the thermal IR range exhibits a resonant coincidence with a thermally populated surface mode.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We have developed for a long time linear SR spectroscopy, in order to be able to extract, through an elaborate lineshape analysis [1,8,[13][14][15], the strength C 3 of the vW interaction, that shifts the transition energy as C 3 z -3 (z: the atom-surface distance). Indeed, SR spectroscopy, which turns to be a Doppler-free technique in its Frequency-Modulated (FM) version [16], typically probes a region λ/2π away from the surface.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%