Polaritonic modes in a dense cloud of atoms
Atomic Physics
2016-06-29 v2 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Quantum Gases
Optics
Abstract
We analyze resonant light scattering by an atomic cloud in a regime where near-field interactions between scatterers cannot be neglected. We first use a microscopic approach and calculate numerically the eigenmodes of the cloud for many different realizations. It is found that there always exists a small number of polaritonic modes that are spatially coherent and superradiant. We show that scattering is always dominated by these modes. We then use a macroscopic approach by introducing an effective permittivity so that the atomic cloud is equivalent to a dielectric particle. We show that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the microscopic polaritonic modes and the modes of a homogeneous particle with an effective permittivity.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1510.07993,
title = {Polaritonic modes in a dense cloud of atoms},
author = {Nick Schilder and Christophe Sauvan and Jean-Paul Hugonin and Stephan Jennewein and Yvan Sortais and Antoine Browaeys and Jean-Jacques Greffet},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1510.07993},
year = {2016}
}