Bose-Einstein condensation of stationary-light polaritons

Details Bose-Einstein condensation of stationary-light polaritons Bose-Einstein condensation of stationary-light polaritons

2008-07-22

arxiv.org/abs/0807.3484v1

Physics

Quantum Physics

4 pages, 3 figures

Scientific paper

10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.163601

We propose and analyze a mechanism for Bose-Einstein condensation of stationary dark-state polaritons. Dark-state polaritons (DSPs) are formed in the interaction of light with laser-driven 3-level Lambda-type atoms and are the basis of phenomena such as electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), ultra-slow and stored light. They have long intrinsic lifetimes and in a stationary set-up with two counterpropagating control fields of equal intensity have a 3D quadratic dispersion profile with variable effective mass. Since DSPs are bosons they can undergo a Bose-Einstein condensation at a critical temperature which can be many orders of magnitude larger than that of atoms. We show that thermalization of polaritons can occur via elastic collisions mediated by a resonantly enhanced optical Kerr nonlinearity on a time scale short compared to the decay time. Finally condensation can be observed by turning stationary into propagating polaritons and monitoring the emitted light.

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