Optomechanical transport of cold atoms induced by structured light

Baio, Giuseppe and Robb, Gordon R. M. and Yao, Alison M. and Oppo, Gian-Luca (2020) Optomechanical transport of cold atoms induced by structured light. Physical Review Research, 2 (2). 023126. ISSN 2643-1564 (https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.2.023126)

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Abstract

Optomechanical pattern forming instabilities in a cloud of cold atoms lead to self-organized spatial structures of light and atoms. Here, we consider the optomechanical self-structuring of a cold atomic cloud in the presence of a phase structured input field, carrying orbital angular momentum. For a planar ring cavity setup, a model of coupled cavity field and atomic density equations describes a wide range of drifting modulation instabilities in the transverse plane. This leads to the formation of rotating self-organized rings of light-atom lattices. Using linear stability analysis and numerical simulations of the coupled atomic and optical dynamics, we demonstrate the presence of macroscopic atomic transport corresponding to the pattern rotation, induced by the structured pump phase profile.

ORCID iDs

Baio, Giuseppe, Robb, Gordon R. M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3004-5926, Yao, Alison M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6260-5852 and Oppo, Gian-Luca ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5376-4309;
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