Optical magnetism and wavefront control by arrays of strontium atoms

Abstract

By analyzing the parameters of electronic transitions, we show how bosonic Sr atoms in planar optical lattices can be engineered to exhibit optical magnetism and other higher-order electromagnetic multipoles that can be harnessed for wavefront control of incident light. Resonant $\lambda \simeq 2.6\mu$m light for the ${}^3{D}_1\to {}^3{P}_0$ transition mediates cooperative interactions between the atoms while the atoms are trapped in a deeply subwavelength optical lattice. The atoms then exhibit collective excitation eigenmodes, e.g., with a strong cooperative magnetic response at optical frequencies, despite individual atoms having negligible coupling to the magnetic component of light. We provide a detailed scheme to utilize excitations of such cooperative modes consisting of arrays of electromagnetic multipoles to form an atomic Huygens' surface, with complete $2\pi$ phase control of transmitted light and almost no reflection, allowing nearly arbitrary wavefront shaping. In the numerical examples, this is achieved by controlling the atomic level shifts of Sr with off-resonant ${{}^{3}P}_J\to {{}^{3}D}_1$ transitions, which results in a simultaneous excitation of arrays of electric dipoles and electric quadrupoles or magnetic dipoles. We demonstrate the wavefront engineering for a Sr array by realizing the steering of an incident beam and generation of a baby-Skyrmion texture in the transmitted light via a topologically nontrivial transition of a Gaussian beam to a Poincaré beam, which contains all possible polarizations in a single cross-section.

References in corpus (63)

• High-efficiency light-wave control with all-dielectric optical Huygens' metasurfaces
• An atom-by-atom assembler of defect-free arbitrary 2d atomic arrays
• High-Efficiency All-Dielectric Metasurfaces for Ultra-Compact Beam Manipulation in Transmission Mode
• Bloch oscillations and mean-field effects of Bose-Einstein condensates in 1-D optical lattices
• Optical skyrmions in evanescent electromagnetic fields
• Exponential improvement in photon storage fidelities using subradiance and "selective radiance" in atomic arrays
• Deep-subwavelength features of photonic skyrmions in a confined electromagnetic field with orbital angular momentum
• Quantum State Engineering and Precision Metrology using State-Insensitive Light Traps
• JILA SrI Optical Lattice Clock with Uncertainty of $2.0\times 10^{-18}$
• Degenerate Fermi Gases of Ytterbium
• Coreless vortex formation in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate
• A subradiant optical mirror formed by a single structured atomic layer
• Quantum computing with alkaline earth atoms
• Paraxial Skyrmionic beams
• Particle-like topologies in light
• Dynamical polarizability of atoms in arbitrary light fields: general theory and application to cesium
• Storing light with subradiant correlations in arrays of atoms
• Observation of Topologically Stable 2D Skyrmions in an Antiferromagnetic Spinor Bose-Einstein Condensate
• Theory of Subradiant States of a One-Dimensional Two-Level Atom Chain
• Subradiant Bell states in distant atomic arrays
• Quantum field theory of cooperative atom response: Low light intensity
• Generalized magnetic mirrors
• Long-range interacting many-body systems with alkaline-earth-metal atoms
• Creation of ultracold Sr2 molecules in the electronic ground state
• Light interacting with atomic ensembles: collective, cooperative and mesoscopic effects
• Twist of generalized skyrmions and spin vortices in a polariton superfluid
• Competing magnetic orders in a bilayer Hubbard model with ultracold atoms
• Storage and release of subradiant excitations in a dense atomic cloud
• Beam steering with dielectric metalattices
• Many-body subradiant excitations in metamaterial arrays: Experiment and theory
• Robust Bilayer Charge-Pumping for Spin- and Density-Resolved Quantum Gas Microscopy
• Microscopic Theory of Scattering of Weak Electromagnetic Radiation by a Dense Ensemble of Ultracold Atoms
• AC Stark shift of the Cs microwave atomic clock transitions
• Collective resonance fluorescence in small and dense atom clouds: Comparison between theory and experiment
• Light propagation beyond the mean-field theory of standard optics
• Photon blockade with ground-state neutral atoms
• A Mott Insulator of Ultracold Alkaline-Earth-Like Atoms
• A superatom picture of collective nonclassical light emission and dipole blockade in atom arrays
• Stochastic methods for light propagation and recurrent scattering in saturated and nonsaturated atomic ensembles
• Precision Measurement of the 87-Rb Tune-Out Wavelength in the Hyperfine Ground State F=1 at 790 nm
• Engineering Quantum States of Matter for Atomic Clocks in Shallow Optical Lattices
• Quantum and Nonlinear Effects in Light Transmitted through Planar Atomic Arrays
• Photon control and coherent interactions via lattice dark states in atomic arrays
• Quantum single-photon control, storage, and entanglement generation with planar atomic arrays
• Subradiance-protected excitation spreading in the generation of collimated photon emission from an atomic array
• Magic Wavelengths for Terahertz Clock Transitions
• Quantum metamaterials with magnetic response at optical frequencies
• Phase-imprinted multiphoton subradiant states
• Optical excitations of Skyrmions, knotted solitons, and defects in atoms
• Maximum refractive index of an atomic medium
• Ultracold atoms in an optical lattice with dynamically variable periodicity
• Optical Magnetism and Huygens' Surfaces in Arrays of Atoms Induced by Cooperative Responses
• Signatures of optical phase transitions in super- and subradiant arrays of atoms
• Dark states of multilevel fermionic atoms in doubly-filled optical lattices
• Nanoscale continuous quantum light sources based on driven dipole emitter arrays
• Cooperative optical wavefront engineering with atomic arrays
• Bistable optical transmission through arrays of atoms in free space
• Controlled creation of a singular spinor vortex by circumventing the Dirac belt trick
• Unidirectional absorption, storage, and emission of single photons in a collectively responding bilayer atomic array
• Parity-time symmetry and coherent perfect absorption in a cooperative atom response
• Interplay of phase separation and itinerant magnetism for correlated few fermions in a double-well
• Atom Pairing in Optical Superlattices
• Radiative toroidal dipole and anapole excitations in collectively responding arrays of atoms

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Cooperative quantum-optical planar arrays of atoms
• Single atom in a superoscillatory optical trap
• Spontaneous symmetry breaking in frustrated triangular atom arrays due to cooperative light scattering
• Green's function approach to interacting lattice polaritons and optical nonlinearities in subwavelength arrays of quantum emitters
• Superradiant phase transition in a large interacting driven atomic ensemble in free space
• Cooperative optical pattern formation in an ultrathin atomic layer
• Metalens formed by structured arrays of atomic emitters