Enhanced third-order and fifth-order Kerr nonlinearities in a cold atomic system via Rydberg-Rydberg interaction

Abstract

We investigate the optical Kerr nonlinearities of an ensemble of cold Rydberg atoms under the condition of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). By using an approach beyond mean-field theory, we show that the system possesses not only enhanced third-order nonlinear optical susceptibility, but also giant fifth-order nonlinear optical susceptibility, which has a cubic dependence on atomic density. Our results demonstrate that both the third-order and the fifth-order nonlinear optical susceptibilities consist of two parts, contributed respectively by photon-atom interaction and Rydberg-Rydberg interaction. The Kerr nonlinearity induced by the Rydberg-Rydberg interaction plays a leading role at high atomic density. We find that the fifth-order nonlinear optical susceptibility in the Rydberg-EIT system may be five orders of magnitude larger than that obtained in traditional EIT systems. The results obtained may have promising applications in light and quantum information processing and transmission at weak-light level.

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• Self-induced transparency in warm and strongly interacting Rydberg gases
• Fast-Responding Property of Electromagnetically Induced Transparency in Rydberg Atoms
• Stable high-dimensional weak-light soliton molecules and their active control
• Self-organized structures of two-component laser fields and their active controls in a cold Rydberg atomic gas
• Structural Phase Transitions of Optical Patterns in Atomic Gases with Microwave Controlled Rydberg Interactions
• Two-Color Optical Nonlinearity in an Ultracold Rydberg Atom Gas Mixture
• Quantum Reflections of Nonlocal Optical Solitons in a Cold Rydberg Atomic Gas
• Dynamics of vortex-antivortex pairs and rarefaction pulses in liquid light
• Accessing and Manipulating Dispersive Shock Waves in a Nonlinear and Nonlocal Rydberg Medium
• Shock wave generation and propagation in dissipative and nonlocal nonlinear Rydberg media
• A comparative study of focusing with scalar and vector beams in an active Raman gain system
• Robust light bullets in Rydberg gases with moiré lattice
• Dephasing of ultracold cesium $80D_{5/2}$-Rydberg Electromagnetically Induced Transparency
• Nonlocal Nonlinear Control of Photonic Spin Hall Effect in Strongly Interacting Rydberg Media
• Optimal optical Ferris wheel solitons in a nonlocal Rydberg medium