Pauli blocking of atomic spontaneous decay

Abstract

Spontaneous decay of an excited atomic state is a fundamental process that originates from the interaction between matter and vacuum modes of the electromagnetic field. The rate of decay can thus be engineered by modifying the density of final states of the joint atom-photon system. Imposing suitable boundary conditions on the electromagnetic field has been shown to alter the density of vacuum modes near the atomic transition, resulting in modified atomic decay rates. Here we report the first experimental demonstration of suppression of atomic radiative decay by reducing the density of available energy-momentum modes of the atomic motion when it is embedded inside a Fermi sea.

References in corpus (4)

• Theory of ultracold Fermi gases
• Camparison of the Hanbury Brown-Twiss effect for bosons and fermions
• All-optical cooling of Fermi gases via Pauli inhibition of spontaneous emission
• Disentangling Pauli blocking of atomic decay from cooperative radiation and atomic motion in a 2D Fermi gas

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Atomic interferometer based on optical tweezers
• Pauli blocking of stimulated emission in a degenerate Fermi gas
• Observation of bosonic stimulation in light scattering
• High-fidelity imaging of a band insulator in a three-dimensional optical lattice clock
• Quantum Back-action Limits in Dispersively Measured Bose-Einstein Condensates
• Disentangling Pauli blocking of atomic decay from cooperative radiation and atomic motion in a 2D Fermi gas
• Foundational Issues in Dynamical Casimir Effect and Analogue Features in Cosmological Particle Creation
• Collective dynamical Fermi suppression of optically-induced inelastic scattering
• Suppression and enhancement of bosonic stimulation by atomic interactions