2022/10/03 by Pierre Lassègues, Lassègues, Pierre, Mateus Antônio Fernandes Biscassi +17
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph) #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences #Optics (physics.optics) #Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas) #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Quantum optics and atomic interactions
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2210.01003
openalex publication_date 2022/10/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Light is a precious tool to probe matter, as it captures microscopic and macroscopic information on the system. We here report on the transition from a thermal (classical) to a spontaneous emission (quantum) mechanism for the loss of light coherence from a macroscopic atomic cloud. The coherence is probed by intensity-intensity correlation measurements realized on the light scattered by the atomic sample, and the transition is explored by tuning the balance between thermal coherence loss and spontaneous emission via the pump strength. Our results illustrate the potential of cold atom setups to investigate the classical-to-quantum transition in macroscopic systems.