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Single-photon-level light storage with distributed Rydberg excitations in cold atoms

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Frontiers of Physics

Abstract

We present an improved version of the superatom (SA) model to examine the slow-light dynamics of a few-photons signal field in cold Rydberg atoms with van der Waals (vdW) interactions. A main feature of this version is that it promises consistent estimations on total Rydberg excitations based on dynamic equations of SAs or atoms. We consider two specific cases in which the incident signal field contains more photons with a smaller detuning or less photons with a larger detuning so as to realize the single-photon-level light storage. It is found that vdW interactions play a significant role even for the slow-light dynamics of a single-photon signal field as distributed Rydberg excitations are inevitable in the picture of dark-state polariton. Moreover, the stored (retrieved) signal field exhibits a clearly asymmetric (more symmetric) profile because its leading and trailing edges undergo different (identical) traveling journeys, and higher storage/retrieval efficiencies with well preserved profiles apply only to weaker and well detuned signal fields. These findings are crucial to understand the nontrivial interplay of single-photon-level light storage and distributed Rydberg excitations.

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Acknowledgements

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 11534002 and 12074061), and the Cooperative Program by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (No. PGR00960), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 11861131001).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Quantum Sciences and School of Physics, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, 130024, China

    Hanxiao Zhang & Jinhui Wu

  2. Department of Engineering and Information Technology and Istituto Nazionale di Ottica (INO-CNR), Brescia University, 25133, Brescia, Italy

    M. Artoni

  3. Scuola Normale Superiore and CNISM, 56126, Pisa, Italy

    G. C. La Rocca

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  1. Hanxiao Zhang
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Correspondence to Jinhui Wu.

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This article can also be found at http://journal.hep.com.cn/fop/EN/10.1007/s11467-021-1105-6.

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Zhang, H., Wu, J., Artoni, M. et al. Single-photon-level light storage with distributed Rydberg excitations in cold atoms. Front. Phys. 17, 22502 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11467-021-1105-6

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