An atom-photon pair laser

Abstract

We study the quantum dynamics of an ultracold atomic gas in a deep optical lattice within an optical high-$Q$ resonator. The atoms are coherently illuminated with the cavity resonance tuned to a blue vibrational sideband, so that photon scattering to the resonator mode is accompanied by vibrational cooling of the atoms. This system exhibits a threshold above which pairwise stimulated generation of a cavity photon and an atom in the lowest vibrational band dominates spontaneous scattering and we find a combination of optical lasing with a buildup of a macroscopic population in the lowest lattice band. Including output coupling of ground-state atoms and replenishing of hot atoms into the cavity volume leads to a coherent, quantum correlated atom-photon pair source very analogous to twin light beam generation in a nondegenerate optical parametric oscillator.

10 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (12)

• Cold bosonic atoms in optical lattices
• An Atom Laser with a cw Output Coupler
• Correlations and Counting Statistics of an Atom Laser
• Cold atom dynamics in a quantum optical lattice potential
• Vacuum-stimulated cooling of single atoms in three dimensions
• Measuring the temporal coherence of an atom laser beam
• Cooling trapped atoms in optical resonators
• Realization of a magnetically guided atomic beam in the collisional regime
• Cooling many particles at once
• Single-atom lasing induced atomic self trapping
• Theory of a single-atom laser including light forces
• Lasing and cooling in a hot cavity

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Cold atoms in cavity-generated dynamical optical potentials
• Cavity QED with Quantum Gases: New Paradigms in Many-Body Physics
• Continuous multi-step pumping of the optical clock transition in alkaline-earth atoms with minimal perturbation
• Twin stimulated amplification of light and matter waves in an atom-photon pair laser