English

Quantifying the role of thermal motion in free-space light-atom interaction

Quantum Physics 2017-04-12 v1

Abstract

We demonstrate 17.7(1)% extinction of a weak coherent field by a single atom. We observe a shift of the resonance frequency and a decrease in interaction strength with the external field when the atom, initially at 21(1) μ\muK, is heated by the recoil of the scattered photons. Comparing to a simple model, we conclude that the initial temperature reduces the interaction strength by less than 10%.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1611.08048,
  title  = {Quantifying the role of thermal motion in free-space light-atom interaction},
  author = {Yue-Sum Chin and Matthias Steiner and Christian Kurtsiefer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1611.08048},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

6 pages, 6 figures