A mirrorless spinwave resonator

Abstract

Optical resonance is central to a wide range of optical devices and techniques. In an optical cavity, the round-trip length and mirror reflectivity can be chosen to optimize the circulating optical power, linewidth, and free-spectral range (FSR) for a given application. In this paper we show how an atomic spinwave system, with no physical mirrors, can behave in a manner that is analogous to an optical cavity. We demonstrate this similarity by characterising the build-up and decay of the resonance in the time domain, and measuring the effective optical linewidth and FSR in the frequency domain. Our spinwave is generated in a 20 cm long Rb gas cell, yet it facilitates an effective FSR of 83 kHz, which would require a round-trip path of 3.6 km in a free-space optical cavity. Furthermore, the spinwave coupling is controllable enabling dynamic tuning of the effective cavity parameters.

13 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (5)

• LIGO: The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory
• Room temperature quantum bit storage exceeding 39 minutes using ionized donors in 28-silicon
• Compact, thermal-noise-limited optical cavity for diode laser stabilization at 1 x 10-15
• Unconditional Room Temperature Quantum Memory
• Multi-Modal Properties and Dynamics of the Gradient Echo Quantum Memory

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