Darmstadt 2008 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 57: Quanteneffekte (QED / Lichtstreuung)
Q 57.7: Talk
Friday, March 14, 2008, 12:30–12:45, 2D
Controlled Coupling of Counterpropagating Whispering-Gallery Modes by a Single Rayleigh Scatterer: A Classical Problem in a Quantum Optical Light — Andrea Mazzei1, •Stephan Götzinger2, Leonardo Menezes1, Gert Zumofen2, Oliver Benson1, and Vahid Sandoghdar2 — 1Institut für Physik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10117 Berlin, Germany — 2Laboratory of Physical Chemistry, ETH Zürich, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland
It is well established that the radiative properties of atoms can be strongly modified by coupling them to resonators. A corner stone of such modifications is the change of the photonic density of states caused by the boundary conditions imposed by a cavity. We investigate the analogy between this quantum optical scenario and the classical phenomenon of Rayleigh scattering in the presence of a high-finesse cavity.
We present experiments where a single subwavelength scatterer is used to examine and control the backscattering induced coupling between counterpropagating high-Q modes of a microsphere resonator [1]. Our measurements reveal the standing wave character of the resulting symmetric and antisymmetric eigenmodes, their unbalanced intensity distributions, and the coherent nature of their coupling. We discuss our findings and the underlying classical physics in the framework common to quantum optics and provide a particularly intuitive explanation of the central processes.
[1] A. Mazzei et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 173603 (2007).