Author(s)

Suying Bai¹, Xiaoxuan Han¹, Yunchun Jiao¹, Liping Hao¹, Jianming Zhao^1,2*, Suotang Jia^1,2

¹State Key Laboratory of Quantum Optics and Quantum Optics Devices, Institute of Laser Spectroscopy, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, China.
²Collaborative Innovation Center of Extreme Optics, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, China.

Radiation pressure due to the interaction between a probe light and cold atoms is investigated in a standard cesium magneto-optical trap. The radiation pressure alters the absorption spectroscopy of cold atoms, leading to line shapes and linewidths after resonant interaction that are different for positive and negative probe chirps. The difference is attributed to the radiation pressure of the probe laser, due to which atoms become accelerated at the resonance. The effect of the radiation pressure is also seen in electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) involving an excited Rydberg level. The density matrix equation accounting for the radiation pressure is used to simulate the experiments. The simulations agree well with the measurements both for absorption and EIT spectra. We find that the effect of the radiation pressure is reduced at low probe intensities, and can be neglected when the probe intensity is smaller than I_sat/2 .

Radiation Pressure, Interaction, Rydberg EIT

Bai, S. , Han, X. , Jiao, Y. , Hao, L. , Zhao, J. and Jia, S. (2017) Radiation-Pressure Effects in Cold-Atom Absorption Spectroscopy and Electromagnetically Induced Transparency. Journal of Modern Physics, 8, 1884-1893. doi: 10.4236/jmp.2017.811111.