Atomic mercury vapor inside a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber

Abstract

We demonstrate high atomic mercury vapor pressure in a kagomé-style hollow-core photonic crystal fiber at room temperature. After a few days of exposure to mercury vapor the fiber is homogeneously filled and the optical depth achieved remains constant. With incoherent optical pumping from the ground state we achieve an optical depth of 114 at the $6^3{P}_2-6^3{D}_3$ transition, corresponding to an atomic mercury number density of $6\times 10^{10}$ cm${}^{-3}$. The use of mercury vapor in quasi one-dimensional confinement may be advantageous compared to chemically more active alkali vapor, while offering strong optical nonlinearities in the ultraviolet region of the optical spectrum.

arXiv comment7 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Efficient all-optical switching using slow light within a hollow fiber
• Crystallization of strongly interacting photons in a nonlinear optical fiber
• Rydberg atoms in hollow-core photonic crystal fibres
• Damage-free single-mode transmission of deep-UV light in hollow-core PCF
• A one-dimensional ultracold medium of extreme optical depth
• Triple resonant four-wavemixing boosts the yield of continuous coherent VUV generation
• Mimicking interacting relativistic theories with stationary pulses of light

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Ultrahigh and persistent optical depths of caesium in Kagomé-type hollow-core photonic crystal fibres
• Continuous generation of Rubidium vapor in hollow-core photonic band-gap fibers
• Depolarized guided acoustic wave Brillouin scattering in hollow-core photonic crystal fibers
• Cavity polaritons with Rydberg blockade and long-range interactions
• Squeezing via self-induced transparency in mercury-filled photonic crystal fibers
• Benchmarking quantum phase-space methods for near-resonant light propagation