Related papers: Polarization Independent Atomic Prism filter for r…
We demonstrate extremely narrow resonances for polarization rotation in an atomic vapor. The resonances are created using a strong control laser on the same transition, which polarizes the atoms due to optical pumping among the magnetic…
Vacuum-stimulated Raman transitions are driven between two magnetic substates of a rubidium-87 atom strongly coupled to an optical cavity. A magnetic field lifts the degeneracy of these states, and the atom is alternately exposed to laser…
We demonstrate a tunable, narrow-band filter based on optical-pumping-induced circular dichroism in rubidium vapor. The filter achieves a peak transmission of 14.6%, a linewidth of 80 MHz, and an out-of-band extinction >35 dB. The…
Amplified spontaneous emission is a source of broadband noise that parasitically limits the achievable gain in laser amplifiers. While optical bandpass filtering elements can suppress these broadband noise contributions, such filters are…
We present a novel approach to precisely synthesize arbitrary polarization states of light with a high modulation bandwidth. Our approach consists of superimposing two laser light fields with the same wavelength, but with opposite circular…
We demonstrate an atomic bandpass optical filter with an equivalent noise bandwidth less than 1 GHz using the D$_1$ line in a cesium vapor. We use the ElecSus computer program to find optimal experimental parameters, and find that for…
Relativistic spin-polarized electron beams are important for fundamental research and the industry, but their generation currently requires conventional accelerators or ultrastrong laser facilities, limiting their accessibility and broad…
Gain-switching laser diodes is a well-established technique for generating optical pulses with random phases, where the quantum randomness arises naturally from spontaneous emission. However, the maximum switching rate is limited by phase…
We investigate the propagation of ultra-short laser pulses in atomic rubidium vapor. The pulses are intensive enough to ionize the atoms and are directly resonant with the 780 nm $D_2$ line. We derive a relatively simple theory for…
We experimentally demonstrate robust selective excitation and attenuation of atomic Rydberg level populations in sodium vapor (Na I) using intense laser pulses in the strong field limit ($> 10^{12} W/cm^{2}$). The coherent control of the…
We designed and built a new astronomical photo-polarimeter that can measure linear polarization simultaneously in three spectral bands. It has a Calcite beamdisplacement prism as the analyzer. The ordinary and extra-ordinary emerging beams…
We have experimentally demonstrated an ultra-dispersive optical prism made from coherently driven Rb atomic vapor. The prism possesses spectral angular dispersion that is six orders of magnitude higher than that of a prism made of optical…
We have studied relative-intensity fluctuations for a variable set of orthogonal elliptic polarization components of a linearly polarized laser beam traversing a resonant $^{87}$Rb vapor cell. Significant polarization squeezing at the…
A new astronomical photo-polarimeter that can measure linear polarization of point sources simultaneously in three spectral bands was designed and built in Indian Institute of Astrophysics. The polarimeter has a Calcite beam-displacement…
We present an application of the Faraday effect to produce a narrow band atomic filter in an alkali metal vapor. In our experiment two Raman beams separated in frequency by the ground state hyperfine splitting in 87Rb are produced using an…
We investigate spontaneous radiative processes in a driven polar two-level system whose interaction with the laser field is dominated by broken inversion symmetry rather than by the usual transition dipole coupling. Using a polaron…
We report the generation of optical squeezed vacuum states by means of polarization self-rotation in rubidium vapor following a proposal by Matsko et al. [Phys. Rev. A 66, 043815 (2002)]. The experimental setup, involving in essence just a…
We investigate spontaneous emission of a two-level atom with an arbitrarily polarized electric dipole in front of a flat dielectric surface. We treat the general case where the atomic dipole matrix element is a complex vector, that is, the…
A frequency-stable, broadband laser is presented for experiments on trapped ions. Since the design is based on widely available semiconductor optical amplifier technology, similar lasers can be realized for virtually any wavelength in the…
We exploit the effect of light-induced atomic desorption to produce high atomic densities ($n\gg k^3$) in a rubidium vapor cell. An intense off-resonant laser is pulsed for roughly one nanosecond on a micrometer-sized sapphire-coated cell,…