2019/04/30 by Ohr Lahad, Ran Finkelstein, Omri Davidson +3 · 20 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Absorption (acoustics) #Absorption cross section #Absorption spectroscopy #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Atomic physics #Chemical physics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Cross section (physics) #Homogeneous #Limit (mathematics) #Materials science #Molecular physics #Optics #Physics #Quantum #Quantum mechanics #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #Resonance (particle physics) #Statistical physics #physics.optics #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.123.173203
published in Physical Review Letters 123(17), 173203 (American Physical Society) · 5 pages, 5 figures
openalex publication_date 2019/10/25 · arxiv created 2019/11/21 · arxiv updated 2019/11/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The resonant absorption of light by an ensemble of absorbers decreases when the resonance is inhomogeneously broadened. Recovering the lost absorption cross section is of great importance for various applications of light-matter interactions, particularly in quantum optics, but no recovery mechanism has yet been identified and successfully demonstrated. Here, we formulate the limit set by the inhomogeneity on the absorption, and present a mechanism able to circumvent this limit and fully recover the homogeneous absorption of the ensemble. We experimentally study this mechanism using two different level schemes in atomic vapors and demonstrate up to fivefold enhancement of the absorption above the inhomogeneous limit. Our scheme relies on light shifts induced by auxiliary fields and is thus applicable to various physical systems and inhomogeneity mechanisms.