Optical Transmission of an Atomic Vapor in the Mesoscopic Regime

Peyrot, T.; Sortais, Y. R. P.; Greffet, J.-J.; Browaeys, A.; Sargsyan, A.; Keaveney, J.; Hughes, I. G.; Adams, C. S.

Abstract

By measuring the transmission of near-resonant light through an atomic vapor confined in a nanocell we demonstrate a mesoscopic optical response arising from the nonlocality induced by the motion of atoms with a phase coherence length larger than the cell thickness. Whereas conventional dispersion theory—where the local atomic response is simply convolved by the Maxwell-Boltzmann velocity distribution—is unable to reproduce the measured spectra, a model including a nonlocal, size-dependent susceptibility is found to be in excellent agreement with the measurements. This result improves our understanding of light-matter interaction in the mesoscopic regime and has implications for applications where mesoscopic effects may degrade or enhance the performance of miniaturized atomic sensors.

Citation

Peyrot, T., Sortais, Y., Greffet, J.-J., Browaeys, A., Sargsyan, A., Keaveney, J., Hughes, I., & Adams, C. (2019). Optical Transmission of an Atomic Vapor in the Mesoscopic Regime. Physical Review Letters, 122(11), Article 113401. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.122.113401

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 8, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Mar 20, 2019
• Publication Date: Mar 20, 2019
• Deposit Date: Mar 21, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 21, 2019
• Journal: Physical Review Letters
• Print ISSN: 0031-9007
• Electronic ISSN: 1079-7114
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 122
• Issue: 11
• Article Number: 113401
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.122.113401
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1305524
• Related Public URLs: https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.08852