- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review Research

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

Quasiparticle properties of stationary light polaritons in atoms

U-Shin Kim* and Yoon-Ho Kim†

  • *Contact author: usinkimphysics@gmail.com
  • †Contact author: yoonho72@gmail.com
PDF

Phys. Rev. Research 7, 023292 – Published 23 June, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/htzs-ycg9

Abstract

We theoretically analyze the quasiparticle properties of stationary light polariton (SLP) modes in atoms via perturbative approaches of effective atom-light interaction Hamiltonian. First, we explicitly show the five SLP eigenmodes of the Hilbert space of the SLP system. Then, the quasiparticle properties, such as group velocities and effective masses of SLPs, are investigated under various parametric conditions, which include the emergence of negative effective mass and effective mass singularity. Finally, we derive the intrinsic lifetimes of each SLP mode, which features a complementary relation among the lifetimes of SLP modes. Our results offer quantitative analysis of the quasiparticle properties in Hilbert space spanned by the SLP modes, and it is expected to contribute to SLP-based atom-light interaction applications, such as photonic quantum gates, optical simulation of many-body physics, and exotic dispersion engineering.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (36)

  1. M. Bajcsy, A. S. Zibrov, and M. D. Lukin, Stationary pulses of light in an atomic medium, Nature (London) 426, 638 (2003).
  2. J. L. Everett, G. T. Campbell, Y.-W. Cho, P. Vernaz-Gris, D. B. Higginbottom, O. Pinel, N. P. Robins, P. K. Lam, and B. C. Buchler, Dynamical observations of self-stabilizing stationary light, Nat. Phys. 13, 68 (2017).
  3. Y.-H. Chen, M.-J. Lee, W. Hung, Y.-C. Chen, Y.-F. Chen, and I. A. Yu, Demonstration of the interaction between two stopped light pulses, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 173603 (2012).
  4. Y. Zhang, Y. Zhang, X.-H. Zhang, M. Yu, C.-L. Cui, and J.-H. Wu, Efficient generation and control of robust stationary light signals in a double-Λ system of cold atoms, Phys. Lett. A 376, 656 (2012).
  5. K. R. Hansen and K. Mølmer, Trapping of light pulses in ensembles of stationary Λ atoms, Phys. Rev. A 75, 053802 (2007).
  6. A. André and M. D. Lukin, Manipulating light pulses via dynamically controlled photonic band gap, Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 143602 (2002).
  7. A. André, M. Bajcsy, A. S. Zibrov, and M. D. Lukin, Nonlinear optics with stationary pulses of light, Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 063902 (2005).
  8. I. Iakoupov, J. Borregaard, and A. S. Sørensen, Controlled-PHASE gate for photons based on stationary light, Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 010502 (2018).
  9. C. R. Murray and T. Pohl, Coherent photon manipulation in interacting atomic ensembles, Phys. Rev. X 7, 031007 (2017).
  10. D. E. Chang, V. Gritsev, G. Morigi, V. Vuletić, and E. A. Delmer, Crystallization of strongly interacting photons in a nonlinear optical fibre, Nat. Phys. 4, 884 (2008).
  11. D. G. Angelakis, M.-X. Huo, D. Chang, L. C. Kwek, and V. Korepin, Mimicking interacting relativistic theories with stationary pulses of light, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 100502 (2013).
  12. M. Fleischhauer, J. Otterbach, and R. G. Unanyan, Bose-Einstein condensation of stationary-light polaritons, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 163601 (2008).
  13. I. Iakoupov, J. R. Ott, D. E. Chang, and A. S. Sørensen, Dispersion relations for stationary light in one-dimensional atomic ensembles, Phys. Rev. A 94, 053824 (2016).
  14. S. A. Moiseev, A. I. Sidorova, and B. S. Ham, Stationary and quasistationary light pulses in three-level cold atomic systems, Phys. Rev. A 89, 043802 (2014).
  15. F. E. Zimmer, A. André, M. D. Lukin, and M. Fleischhauer, Coherent control of stationary light pulses, Opt. Commun. 264, 441 (2006).
  16. J. Otterbach, J. Ruseckas, R. G. Unanyan, G. Juzeliūnas, and M. Fleischhauer, Effective magnetic fields for stationary light, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 033903 (2010).
  17. M. A. Khamehchi, K. Hossain, M. E. Mossman, Y. Zhang, T. Busch, M. M. Forbes, and P. Engels, Negative-mass hydrodynamics in a spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensate, Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 155301 (2017).
  18. D. Colas, F. P. Laussy, and M. J. Davis, Negative-mass effects in spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensates, Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 055302 (2018).
  19. Z. Dutton, M. Budde, C. Slowe, and L. V. Hau, Observation of quantum shock waves created with ultra- compressed slow light pulses in a Bose-Einstein condensate, Science 293, 663 (2001).
  20. T. P. Simula, P. Engels, I. Coddington, V. Schweikhard, E. A. Cornell, and R. J. Ballagh, Observations on sound propagation in rapidly rotating Bose-Einstein condensates, Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 080404 (2005).
  21. M. A. Hoefer, M. J. Ablowitz, I. Coddington, E. A. Cornell, P. Engels, and V. Schweikhard, Dispersive and classical shock waves in Bose-Einstein condensates and gas dynamics, Phys. Rev. A 74, 023623 (2006).
  22. M. Fleischhauer and M. D. Lukin, Dark-state polaritons in electromagnetically induced transparency, Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 5094 (2000).
  23. M. Fleischhauer and M. D. Lukin, Quantum memory for photons: Dark-state polaritons, Phys. Rev. A 65, 022314 (2002).
  24. S. A. Moiseev and B. S. Ham, Generation of entangled lights with temporally reversed photon wave packets, Phys. Rev. A 71, 053802 (2005).
  25. T. Peters, Y.-H. Chen, J.-S. Wang, Y.-W. Lin, and I. A. Yu, Observation of phase variation within stationary light pulses inside a cold atomic medium, Opt. Lett. 35, 151 (2010).
  26. J.-H. Wu, M. Artoni, and G. C. L. Rocca, Decay of stationary light pulses in ultracold atoms, Phys. Rev. A 81, 033822 (2010).
  27. Y.-W. Lin, W.-T. Liao, T. Peters, H.-C. Chou, J.-S. Wang, H.-W. Cho, P.-C. Kuan, and I. A. Yu, Stationary light pulses in cold atomic media and without Bragg gratings, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 213601 (2009).
  28. F. E. Zimmer, J. Otterbach, R. G. Unanyan, B. W. Shore, and M. Fleischhauer, Dark-state polaritons for multicomponent and stationary light fields, Phys. Rev. A 77, 063823 (2008).
  29. F. Blatt, L. S. Simeonov, T. Halfmann, and T. Peters, Stationary light pulses and narrowband light storage in a laser-cooled ensemble loaded into a hollow-core fiber, Phys. Rev. A 94, 043833 (2016).
  30. S. A. Moiseev and B. S. Ham, Quantum manipulation of two-color stationary light: Quantum wavelength conversion, Phys. Rev. A 73, 033812 (2006).
  31. K.-K. Park, Y.-W. Cho, Y.-T. Chough, and Y.-H. Kim, Experimental demonstration of quantum stationary light pulses in an atomic ensemble, Phys. Rev. X 8, 021016 (2018).
  32. U.-S. Kim, Y. S. Ihn, C.-H. Lee, and Y.-H. Kim, Trapping a free-propagating single-photon into an atomic ensemble as a quantum stationary light pulse, AVS Quantum Sci. 4, 021403 (2022).
  33. U.-S. Kim and Y.-H. Kim, Simultaneous trapping of two optical pulses in an atomic ensemble as stationary light pulses, Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 093601 (2022).
  34. M. Fleischhauer, A. Imamoglu, and J. P. Marangos, Electromagnetically induced transparency: Optics in coherent media, Rev. Mod. Phys. 77, 633 (2005).
  35. B. Eiermann, T. Anker, M. Taglieber, P. Treutlein, K.-P. Marzlin, and M. K. Oberthaler, Bright Bose-Einstein gap solitons of atoms with repulsive interaction, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 230401 (2004).
  36. A. P. Mosk, Atomic gases at negative kinetic temperature, Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 040403 (2005).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. Research 7, 023292– Published 23 June, 2025
  • Received 7 April 2025
  • Accepted 12 June 2025
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation