Publications [#324413] of Daniel J. Gauthier

Papers Published

1. Schmittberger, BL; Gauthier, DJ, Transverse optical and atomic pattern formation, Journal of the Optical Society of America B, vol. 33 no. 7 (July, 2016), pp. 1543-1551, The Optical Society [doi]
   (last updated on 2019/07/17)

   Abstract:
   © 2016 Optical Society of America. The study of transverse optical pattern formation has been studied extensively in nonlinear optics, with a recent experimental interest in studying the phenomenon using cold atoms, which can undergo real-space self-organization. Here, we describe our experimental observation of pattern formation in cold atoms, which occurs using less than 1 W of applied power. We show that the optical patterns and the self-organized atomic structures undergo continuous symmetry breaking, which is characteristic of nonequilibrium phenomena in a multimode system. To theoretically describe pattern formation in cold atoms, we present a self-consistent model that allows for tight atomic bunching in the applied optical lattice. We derive the nonlinear refractive index of a gas of multilevel atoms in an optical lattice, and we derive the threshold conditions under which pattern formation occurs. We show that by using small detunings and sub-Doppler temperatures, one achieves intensity thresholds for pattern formation that are reduced by two orders of magnitude compared to warm atoms.