A mirrorless spinwave resonator
Abstract
Optical resonance is central to a wide range of optical devices and techniques. In an optical cavity, the round-trip length and mirror reflectivity can be chosen to optimize the circulating optical power, linewidth, and free-spectral range (FSR) for a given application. In this paper we show how an atomic spinwave system, with no physical mirrors, can behave in a manner that is analogous to an optical cavity. We demonstrate this similarity by characterising the build-up and decay of the resonance in the time domain, and measuring the effective optical linewidth and FSR in the frequency domain. Our spinwave is generated in a 20 cm long Rb gas cell, yet it facilitates an effective FSR of 83 kHz, which would require a round-trip path of 3.6 km in a free-space optical cavity. Furthermore, the spinwave coupling is controllable enabling dynamic tuning of the effective cavity parameters.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1512.05433,
title = {A mirrorless spinwave resonator},
author = {Olivier Pinel and Jesse L. Everett and Mahdi Hosseini and Geoff T. Campbell and Ben C. Buchler and Ping Koy Lam},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1512.05433},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
13 pages, 4 figures