Ultrahigh and persistent optical depths of caesium in Kagomé-type hollow-core photonic crystal fibres

Abstract

Alkali-filled hollow-core fibres are a promising medium for investigating light-matter interactions, especially at the single-photon level, due to the tight confinement of light and high optical depths achievable by light-induced atomic desorption. However, until now these large optical depths could only be generated for seconds at most once per day, severely limiting the practicality of the technology. Here we report the generation of highest observed transient ($>10^5$ for up to a minute) and highest observed persistent ($>2000$ for hours) optical depths of alkali vapours in a light-guiding geometry to date, using a caesium-filled Kagomé-type hollow-core photonic crystal fibre. Our results pave the way to light-matter interaction experiments in confined geometries requiring long operation times and large atomic number densities, such as generation of single-photon-level nonlinearities and development of single photon quantum memories.

Author Accepted version

References in corpus (6)

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• Fiber-integrated spectroscopy device for hot alkali vapor
• High Efficiency Raman Memory by Suppressing Radiation Trapping
• Cold atoms in micromachined waveguides: a new platform for atom-photon interaction
• Controlling Frequency-Domain Hong-Ou-Mandel Interference via Electromagnetically Induced Transparency
• Characterization of near-infrared to telecom frequency conversion in a rubidium-filled hollow-core photonic-crystal fiber
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