Alignment-dependent decay rate of an atomic dipole near an optical nanofiber
Abstract
We study the modification of the atomic spontaneous emission rate, i.e. Purcell effect, of Rb in the vicinity of an optical nanofiber (500 nm diameter). We observe enhancement and inhibition of the atomic decay rate depending on the alignment of the induced atomic dipole relative to the nanofiber. Finite-difference time-domain simulations are in quantitative agreement with the measurements when considering the atoms as simple oscillating linear dipoles. This is surprising since the multi-level nature of the atoms should produce a different radiation pattern, predicting smaller modification of the lifetime than the measured ones. This work is a step towards characterizing and controlling atomic properties near optical waveguides, fundamental tools for the development of quantum photonics.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1704.08741,
title = {Alignment-dependent decay rate of an atomic dipole near an optical nanofiber},
author = {Pablo Solano and Jeffrey A. Grover and Yunlu Xu and Pablo Barberis-Blostein and Jeremy N. Munday and Luis A. Orozco and William D. Phillips and Steven L. Rolston},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1704.08741},
year = {2019}
}