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Published on: November 11, 2013
Optical Transmission of an Atomic Vapor in the Mesoscopic Regime
T Peyrot1, Y R P Sortais1, J-J Greffet1
1Laboratoire Charles Fabry, Institut d'Optique Graduate School, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay, F-91127 Palaiseau Cedex, France.
Abstract:
By measuring the transmission of near-resonant light through an atomic vapor confined in a nanocell we demonstrate a mesoscopic optical response arising from the nonlocality induced by the motion of atoms with a phase coherence length larger than the cell thickness. Whereas conventional dispersion theory-where the local atomic response is simply convolved by the Maxwell-Boltzmann velocity distribution-is unable to reproduce the measured spectra, a model including a nonlocal, size-dependent susceptibility is found to be in excellent agreement with the measurements. This result improves our understanding of light-matter interaction in the mesoscopic regime and has implications for applications where mesoscopic effects may degrade or enhance the performance of miniaturized atomic sensors.
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