A giant electro-optic effect using polarizable dark states

By A. Mohapatra, M. Bason, B. Butscher, K. Weatherill, Charles S. Adams. 2008

167 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The electro-optic effect, where the refractive index of a medium is modified by an electric field, is of central importance in nonlinear optics, laser technology, quantum optics and optical communications. In general, electro-optic coefficients are very weak and a medium with a giant electro-optic coefficient could have profound implications for precision electrometry and nonlinear optics at the single-photon level. Here we propose and demonstrate a giant d.c. electro-optic effect on the basis of polarizable (Rydberg) dark states. When a medium is prepared in a dark state consisting of a superposition of ground and Rydberg energy levels, it becomes transparent and acquires a refractive index that is dependent on the energy of the highly polarizable Rydberg state. We demonstrate phase modulation of the light field in the Rydberg-dark-state medium and measure an electro-optic coefficient that is more than six orders of magnitude larger than in usual Kerr media. Coupling of the Rydberg states of an ensemble of rubidium atoms gives rise to a d.c. Kerr effect that is six orders of magnitude greater than in conventional Kerr media. Such phenomena could enable the development of high-precision electric field sensors and other nonlinear optical devices.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5e84cfa34385a46420d042bea720a3dc20dc35f6

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

Citations in the corpus

Coherent Conversion Between Microwave and Optical Photons—An Overview of Physical Implementations (2019, unknown): “Ensembles of cold trapped Rydberg atoms [117] also exhibit a useful level structure, large dipole moments [118], and a giant electro-optic effect [119], allowing microwave-to-optical conversion [120].”
Atomic Sensors – A Review (2011, unknown): “Frequency shifts can be measured by use of microwave [113] or laser [12] spectroscopy.”
Waveguide-Coupled Rydberg Spectrum Analyzer from 0 to 20 GHz (2020, methodology): “[8] A.”
Assessment of Rydberg atoms for wideband electric field sensing (2019, unknown): “The transmitted probe light is measured using an optical homodyne method similar to those in [3, 49] which allows for precise, photon-shot-noise limited measurements in”
Quantum information with Rydberg atoms (2009, background): “The narrow EIT line width thus makes it possible to detect a very small electric field, or, conversely, to control the transmission properties of an atomic ensemble with very weak switching fields (Bason et al., 2008; Mohapatra et al., 2008, 2007).”