Collective effects in the photon statistics of thermal atomic ensembles

Abstract

We investigate the collective scattering of coherent light from a thermal alkali-metal vapor with temperatures ranging from 350 to 450 K, corresponding to average atomic spacings between $0.7\lambda$ and $0.1\lambda$. We develop a theoretical model treating the atomic ensemble as coherent, interacting, radiating dipoles. We show that the two-time second-order correlation function of a thermal ensemble can be described by an average of randomly positioned atomic pairs. Our model illustrates good agreement with the experimental results. Furthermore, we show how fine-tuning of the experimental parameters may make it possible to explore several photon statistics regimes.

12 pages, 5 figures. Comments are welcomed

References in corpus (7)

• Coherent imaging of a pure phase object with classical incoherent light
• Photon statistics from a resonantly driven quantum dot
• Photon blockade with ground-state neutral atoms
• Light from an ion crystal: bunching or antibunching?
• Observation of second-order temporal interference with thermal light: Interference beyond the coherence time
• Controlling photon bunching and antibunching of two quantum emitters near a core-shell sphere
• Robust coherent transport of light in multi-level hot atomic vapors

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Weak localization of light in hot atomic vapors