Collective vacuum-Rabi splitting with an atomic spin wave coupled to a cavity mode
Abstract
A promising platform for quantum information research relies on cavity coupled atomic spin-waves, enabling efficient operations such as quantum memories, quantum light generation and entanglement distribution. In this work, we study the strong coupling between non-classical collective spin excitations generated by Raman scattering in a cold atomic ensemble, and a single cavity mode. We report on an intracavity spin wave to single photon conversion efficiency of up to in the quantum domain, as evidenced by a violation of the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. Our work establishes a relationship between the retrieval of an atomic spin wave in the non-classical regime and the vacuum-Rabi splitting. We show that this relationship emerges within the efficiency spectrum, and we finally provide the optimal operational conditions to achieve the maximum intrinsic retrieval efficiency. Our data is well reproduced by simulations based on optical Bloch equations. This work deepens the understanding of cavity-enhanced spin wave readout and its potential applications.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2503.22354,
title = {Collective vacuum-Rabi splitting with an atomic spin wave coupled to a cavity mode},
author = {Félix Hoffet and Alexey Vylegzhanin and Emanuele Distante and Lukas Heller and Síle Nic Chormaic and Hugues de Riedmatten},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.22354},
year = {2025}
}