Optical bistability and nonlinear dynamics by saturation of cold Yb atoms in a cavity
Quantum Physics
2019-02-06 v1 Atomic Physics
Optics
Abstract
We observed optical bistability as well as oscillations in the upper bistable branch when cold ytterbium atoms are dispersively coupled to a high finesse optical cavity. Comparable previous observations were explained by atomic density oscillations in case of a Bose-Einstein-Condensate or optical pumping in case of a cold cloud of cesium. Both explanations do not apply in our case of thermal atoms with only a single ground state. We propose a simple two-level model including saturation to describe our experimental results. This paper introduces the experimental setup, derives the mentioned model and compares it to our experimental data. Good quantitative agreement supports our model.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1808.03132,
title = {Optical bistability and nonlinear dynamics by saturation of cold Yb atoms in a cavity},
author = {Hannes Gothe and Tristan Valenzuela and Matteo Cristiani and Jürgen Eschner},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.03132},
year = {2019}
}