Nonlinear Faraday Rotation and Superposition-State Detection in Cold Atoms

Abstract

We report on the first observation of nonlinear Faraday rotation with cold atoms at a temperature of ~100 uK. The observed nonlinear rotation of the light polarization plane is up to 0.1 rad over the 1 mm size atomic cloud in approximately 10 mG magnetic field. The nonlinearity of rotation results from long-lived coherence of ground-state Zeeman sublevels created by a near-resonant light. The method allows for creation, detection and control of atomic superposition states. It also allows applications for precision magnetometry with high spatial and temporal resolution.

5 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (5)

• High-Resolution Magnetometry with a Spinor Bose-Einstein Condensate
• Sensing electric and magnetic fields with Bose-Einstein Condensates
• Polarization-based Light-Atom Quantum Interface with an All-optical Trap
• Electromagnetically Induced Transparency versus Nonlinear Faraday Effect. Coherent Control of the Light Beam Polarization
• Faraday spectroscopy of atoms confined in a dark optical trap

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Saturated-absorption spectroscopy revisited: atomic transitions in strong magnetic fields ($>$20 mT) with a micrometer-thin cell
• A Cold Atom Radio-Frequency Magnetometer
• Coherent control of group index and magneto-optical anisotropy in a multilevel atomic vapor
• Polarization Self-rotation in Ultracold Atomic Rb
• Linear and nonlinear magneto-optical rotation on the narrow strontium intercombination line
• Atomic-state diagnostics and optimization in cold-atom experiments
• Single-shot Stern-Gerlach magnetic gradiometer with an expanding cloud of cold cesium atoms
• Coherence creation in an optically thick medium by matched propagation of a chirped laser pulse pair
• Stabilization and time resolved measurement of the frequency evolution of a modulated diode laser for chirped pulse generation