Observation of modified radiative properties of cold atoms in vacuum near a dielectric surface

Abstract

We have observed a distance-dependent absorption linewidth of cold ${}^{87}$Rb atoms close to a dielectric-vacuum interface. This is the first observation of modified radiative properties in vacuum near a dielectric surface. A cloud of cold atoms was created using a magneto-optical trap (MOT) and optical molasses cooling. Evanescent waves (EW) were used to observe the behavior of the atoms near the surface. We observed an increase of the absorption linewidth with up to 25% with respect to the free-space value. Approximately half the broadening can be explained by cavity-quantum electrodynamics (CQED) as an increase of the natural linewidth and inhomogeneous broadening. The remainder we attribute to local Stark shifts near the surface. By varying the characteristic EW length we have observed a distance dependence characteristic for CQED.

6 pages, 6 figures, some minor revisions

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• Alkali adsorbate polarization on conducting and insulating surfaces probed with Bose-Einstein condensates
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Cited by in corpus (8)

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• Bosonic enhancement of spontaneous emission near an interface
• Surface-plasmon based dispersive detection and spectroscopy of ultracold atoms
• Quantized Media with Absorptive Scatterers and Modified Atomic Emission Rates
• Excitation spectrum of a multilevel atom coupled with a dielectric nanostructure