Light propagation beyond the mean-field theory of standard optics
Light propagation beyond the mean-field theory of standard optics
With ready access to massive computer clusters we may now study light propagation in a dense cold atomic gas by means of basically exact numerical simulations. We report on a direct comparison between traditional optics, that is, electrodynamics of a polarizable medium, and numerical simulations in an elementary problem of light propagating through a slab of matter. The standard optics fails already at quite low atom densities, and the failure becomes dramatic when the average interatomic separation is reduced to around 1/k, where k is the wave number of resonant light. The difference between the two solutions originates from correlations between the atoms induced by light-mediated dipole-dipole interactions.
993-1001
Javanainen, Juha
ae127878-c1cf-4e23-bebb-c3ec76b61081
Ruostekoski, Janne
2beb155e-64b0-4ee9-9cfe-079947a9c9f4
12 January 2016
Javanainen, Juha
ae127878-c1cf-4e23-bebb-c3ec76b61081
Ruostekoski, Janne
2beb155e-64b0-4ee9-9cfe-079947a9c9f4
Javanainen, Juha and Ruostekoski, Janne
(2016)
Light propagation beyond the mean-field theory of standard optics.
Optics Express, 24 (2), .
(doi:10.1364/OE.24.000993).
Abstract
With ready access to massive computer clusters we may now study light propagation in a dense cold atomic gas by means of basically exact numerical simulations. We report on a direct comparison between traditional optics, that is, electrodynamics of a polarizable medium, and numerical simulations in an elementary problem of light propagating through a slab of matter. The standard optics fails already at quite low atom densities, and the failure becomes dramatic when the average interatomic separation is reduced to around 1/k, where k is the wave number of resonant light. The difference between the two solutions originates from correlations between the atoms induced by light-mediated dipole-dipole interactions.
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oe-24-2-993.pdf
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Accepted/In Press date: 5 January 2016
e-pub ahead of print date: 12 January 2016
Published date: 12 January 2016
Organisations:
Mathematical Sciences
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 386175
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/386175
ISSN: 1094-4087
PURE UUID: 66d5cb19-224e-4da2-a6e6-5b33491ddd00
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Date deposited: 29 Jan 2016 11:18
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 22:28
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Author:
Juha Javanainen
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