Optical pattern formation with a 2-level nonlinearity

2015/06/22 by A. Camara, R. Kaiser, Camara, A. +13
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Optics (physics.optics) #physics.atom-ph #physics.optics

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1506.06638

5 pages, 4 figures

arxiv created 2015/06/22 · arxiv updated 2015/06/23

Abstract

We present an experimental and theoretical investigation of spontaneous pattern formation in the transverse section of a single retro-reflected laser beam passing through a cloud of cold Rubidium atoms. In contrast to previously investigated systems, the nonlinearity at work here is that of a 2-level atom, which realizes the paradigmatic situation considered in many theoretical studies of optical pattern formation. In particular, we are able to observe the disappearance of the patterns at high intensity due to the intrinsic saturable character of 2-level atomic transitions.

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