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Updated: Aug 14, 2026

Cooling an Optically Trapped Ultracold Fermi Gas by Periodical Driving
Published on: March 30, 2017
Radial confinement of light in an ultracold anisotropic medium
Mukund Vengalattore1, Mara Prentiss
1Center for Ultracold Atoms, Jefferson Laboratory, Physics Department, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. mukundv@calmail.berkeley.edu
Abstract:
We demonstrate radial confinement and waveguiding of light in an ultracold anisotropic gas. The waveguiding medium is a laser cooled ensemble of rubidium atoms confined in a trap of large aspect ratio. A recoil induced resonance (RIR) is used to create strong dispersion and large gain in this ensemble. The combination of the anisotropic trap and the RIR give rise to a spatially varying group refractive index resulting in a slow-light optical waveguide. Waveguided pulses of light experience strong gain (approximately 50), low group velocities (c approximately 1500 m/s), and long group delays (delta approximately 7 micros) due to the enhanced path length.
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