Collective effects in the photon statistics of thermal atomic ensembles

Ribeiro, Sofia; Cutler, Thomas F.; Adams, Charles S.; Gardiner, Simon A.

Abstract

We investigate the collective scattering of coherent light from a thermal alkali-metal vapor with temperatures ranging from 350 to 450 K, corresponding to average atomic spacings between 0.7 λ and 0.1 λ. We develop a theoretical model treating the atomic ensemble as coherent, interacting, radiating dipoles. We show that the two-time second-order correlation function of a thermal ensemble can be described by an average of randomly positioned atomic pairs. Our model illustrates good qualitative agreement with the experimental results. Furthermore, we show how fine-tuning of the experimental parameters may make it possible to explore several photon statistics regimes.

Citation

Ribeiro, S., Cutler, T. F., Adams, C. S., & Gardiner, S. A. (2021). Collective effects in the photon statistics of thermal atomic ensembles. Physical Review A, 104(1), Article 013719. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.104.013719

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 28, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Jul 21, 2021
• Publication Date: 2021
• Deposit Date: Sep 20, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 1, 2021
• Journal: Physical Review A
• Print ISSN: 2469-9926
• Electronic ISSN: 2469-9934
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 104
• Issue: 1
• Article Number: 013719
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.104.013719
• Related Public URLs: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.06600