2014/09/11 by Philip J. Harding, Pepijn W. H. Pinkse, Allard P. Mosk +1 · 4 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic physics #Band gap #Caesium #Crystal (programming language) #Dispersion (optics) #Electromagnetically induced transparency #Materials science #Molecular physics #Nanophotonics #Nanostructure #Nanotechnology #Optics #Optoelectronics #Photonic Crystals and Applications #Photonic and Optical Devices #Photonic crystal #Photonics #Physics #Plasmonic and Surface Plasmon Research #Resonance (particle physics) #Slow light #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.91.045123
published in Physical Review B 91(4) (American Physical Society) · 8 pages, 6 figures
arxiv created 2014/09/11 · openalex publication_date 2015/01/20 · arxiv updated 2015/04/28 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We study a hybrid system consisting of a narrow-band atomic optical resonance and the long-range periodic order of an opaline photonic nanostructure. To this end, we have infiltrated atomic cesium vapor in a thin silica opal photonic crystal. With increasing temperature, the frequencies of the opal's reflectivity peaks shift down by >20% due to chemical reduction of the silica. Simultaneously, the photonic bands and gaps shift relative to the fixed near-infrared cesium D1 transitions. As a result the narrow atomic resonances with high finesse (\ensuremathω/\ensuremathΔ\ensuremathω=8\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fi105) dramatically change shape from a usual dispersive shape at the blue edge of a stop gap, to an inverted dispersion line shape at the red edge of a stop gap. The line shape, amplitude, and off-resonance reflectivity are well modeled with a transfer-matrix model that includes the dispersion and absorption of Cs hyperfine transitions and the chemically reduced opal. An ensemble of atoms in a photonic crystal is an intriguing hybrid system that features narrow defectlike resonances with a strong dispersion, with potential applications in slow light, sensing, and optical memory.