COHERENCE EFFECTS IN ULTRA-STRONG OPTICAL FORCES IN POLYCHROMATIC LIGHT
Abstract
The present grant, N000141512174, has supported significant progress in the behavior of atoms in non-monochromatic light. Many of the challenges that we proposed in the 2014 proposal have been met and some papers have been published. The details of some of these accomplishments are in Section I of this proposal, and include descriptions of our work in adiabatic rapid passage, the bichromatic force in the transient regime, STIRAP to produce Rydberg atoms via an intermediate state, and a brief summary of our alumni s successes.Our past and planned experiments target the triplet states of He because of several special advantages that make them ideal for fundamental studies of the interaction between atoms and light, as well as exploration of optical forces in multi-frequency light. We propose new experimental and theoretical investigation of the optical forces in non-monochromatic light. These derive from purely stimulated processes that involve two transitions driven by different laser ?fields. Thus they are inherently non-linear so that coherence effects play an important role. Their velocity dependence derives from non-adiabatic processes that do not depend on spontaneous emission. We propose continuation of our present experiments along these lines. Also, we have developed a rigorous measure of the absolute efficiency for STIRAP excitation of Rydberg states via a two step process, and plan to test it on the excitation of Rydberg states of He.Although there has been a trend in AMO physics toward many-body experiments such as BEC, quantum Fermi gases, quantum information, cold plasmas, etc., in our laboratory we have resisted this flow. There is no shortage of fascinating and eventu"ally applicable problems in single atom physics"" so we continue to focus on the elucidation of fundamental processes in simple syst"ems.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jan 23, 2019
- Source ID
- N000141912050
Entities
People
- Harold Metcalf
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- Research Foundation for the State University of New York
- United States Navy