Abstract
In recent years, there has been marked increase in research aimed to introduce alkali vapours into guided-wave configurations. Owing to the significant reduction in device dimensions, the increase in density of states, the interaction with surfaces and primarily the high intensities carried along the structure, a plethora of light-vapour interactions can be studied. Moreover, such platform may exhibit new functionalities such as low-power nonlinear light-matter interactions. One immense challenge is to study the effects of quantum coherence and shifts in nanoscale waveguides, characterized by ultra-small mode areas and fast dynamics. Here, we construct a highly compact 17 mm long serpentine silicon-nitride atomic vapour cladding waveguide. Fascinating and important phenomena such as van-der-Waals shifts, dynamical stark shifts and coherent effects such as strong coupling (in the form of Autler-Townes splitting) are observed. Some of these effects may play an important role in applications such as all-optical switching, frequency referencing and magnetometry.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 14461 |
| Journal | Nature Communications |
| Volume | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 9 Feb 2017 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2017 The Author(s).
Funding
We thank Avinoam Stern, Yefim Barash and Benny Levy from Accubeat for the preparation of rubidium cells, and the use of the vacuum facilities and Tilman Pfau and Robert Löw for fruitful discussions. We would like to acknowledge funding from the ERC grant LIVIN. The waveguides were fabricated at the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Horizon 2020 Framework Programme | 648575 |
| European Commission | |
| Hebrew University of Jerusalem |