Düsseldorf 2007 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 1: Quantengase (jointly with Q)

A 1.7: Vortrag

Montag, 19. März 2007, 12:00–12:15, 6J

Superradiant Rayleigh Scattering and Collective Atomic Recoil Lasing with ultracold atoms in a ring-cavity — •Sebastian Slama, Gordon Krenz, Simone Bux, Claus Zimmermann, and Philippe Courteille — Universität Tübingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 14, 72076 Tübingen, Germany

We present experiments with ultracold and Bose-Einstein condensed atoms in an optical high-finesse ring cavity. This represents the first realization of BEC inside an optical resonator.

We load ultracold ⁸⁷Rb atoms into a ring cavity and subsequently pump one of the cavity modes. Scattering of pump light from the atoms leads to the sudden build-up of a probe light field in the non-pumped mode. The characteristic feature is the emission of a sequence of light pulses, typical for Collective Atomic Recoil Lasing (CARL)¹. By changing the finesse of the cavity we are able to reach a regime in which Superradiant Rayleigh Scattering (SRyS) occurs². This is the first observation of cavity-enhanced SRyS. We are able to observe SRyS for temperatures as high as several tens of µK. This demontrates clearly that SRyS does not rely on quantum statistical effects, but on the cooperative behaviour of the atoms.
¹ R. Bonifacio and L. De Salvo, Appl. Phys. B 60, S233 (1995).
² S.Inouye et al., Science 285, 571 (1999).