Collective Lamb Shift of a Nanoscale Atomic Vapor Layer within a Sapphire Cavity

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Collective Lamb Shift of a Nanoscale Atomic Vapor Layer within a Sapphire Cavity

T. Peyrot, Y. R. P. Sortais, A. Browaeys, A. Sargsyan, D. Sarkisyan, J. Keaveney, I. G. Hughes, and C. S. Adams

Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 243401 – Published 12 June 2018

Abstract

We measure the near-resonant transmission of light through a dense medium of potassium vapor confined in a cell with nanometer thickness in order to investigate the origin and validity of the collective Lamb shift. A complete model including the multiple reflections in the nanocell reproduces accurately the observed line shape. It allows the extraction of a density-dependent shift and width of the bulk atomic medium resonance, deconvolved from the cavity effect. We observe an additional, unexpected dependence of the shift with the thickness of the medium. This extra dependence demands further experimental and theoretical investigations.

Received 22 December 2017
Revised 17 April 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.243401

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