165 research outputs found
Attractive Optical Forces from Blackbody Radiation
Blackbody radiation around hot objects induces ac Stark shifts of the energy
levels of nearby atoms and molecules. These shifts are roughly proportional to
the fourth power of the temperature and induce a force decaying with the third
power of the distance from the object. We explicitly calculate the resulting
attractive blackbody optical dipole force for ground state hydrogen atoms.
Surprisingly, this force can surpass the repulsive radiation pressure and
actually pull the atoms against the radiation energy flow towards the surface
with a force stronger than gravity. We exemplify the dominance of the
"blackbody force" over gravity for hydrogen in a cloud of hot dust particles.
This overlooked force appears relevant in various astrophysical scenarios, in
particular, since analogous results hold for a wide class of other broadband
radiation sources
Self-organised Limit-Cycles, Chaos and Phase-Slippage with a Superfluid inside an Optical Resonator
We study dynamical phases of a driven Bose-Einstein condensate coupled to the
light field of a high-Q optical cavity. For high field seeking atoms at red
detuning the system is known to show a transition from a spatially homogeneous
steady-state to a self-organized regular lattice exhibiting super-radiant
scattering into the cavity. For blue atom pump detuning the particles are
repelled from the maxima of the light-induced optical potential suppressing
scattering. We show that this generates a new dynamical instability of the
self-ordered phase, leading to the appearance of self-ordered stable
limit-cycles characterized by large amplitude self-sustained oscillations of
both the condensate density and cavity field. The limit-cycles evolve into
chaotic behavior by period doubling. Large amplitude oscillations of the
condensate are accompanied by phase-slippage through soliton nucleation at a
rate which increases by orders of magnitude in the chaotic regime. Different
from a superfluid in a closed setup, this driven dissipative superfluid is not
destroyed by the proliferation of solitons since kinetic energy is removed
through cavity losses.Comment: 4 figure
An atom-photon pair laser
We study the quantum dynamics of an ultracold atomic gas in a deep optical
lattice within an optical high- resonator. The atoms are coherently
illuminated with the cavity resonance tuned to a blue vibrational sideband, so
that photon scattering to the resonator mode is accompanied by vibrational
cooling of the atoms. This system exhibits a threshold above which pairwise
stimulated generation of a cavity photon and an atom in the lowest vibrational
band dominates spontaneous scattering and we find a combination of optical
lasing with a buildup of a macroscopic population in the lowest lattice band.
Including output coupling of ground-state atoms and replenishing of hot atoms
into the cavity volume leads to a coherent, quantum correlated atom-photon pair
source very analogous to twin light beam generation in a nondegenerate optical
parametric oscillator.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure
Collective Enhancement and Suppression of Excitation Decay in Optical Lattices
We calculate radiative lifetimes of collective electronic excitations of
atoms in an infinite one dimensional lattice. The translational symmetry along
the lattice restricts the photon wave vector component parallel to the lattice
to the exciton wave number and thus the possible emission directions. The
resulting radiation damping rate and emission pattern of the exciton strongly
deviates from independent atom. For some wave numbers and polarizations the
excitons superradiantly decay very fast, while other excitons show zero
radiation damping rate and form propagating meta-stable excitations. Such
states could be directly coupled via tailored evanescent fields from a nearby
fiber.Comment: 4 pages, 7 figure
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