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Photonics

An atomic dimmer switch

Nature volume 396, pages 217–219 (1998)Cite this article

On page 239 of this issue1, Doron Meshulach and Yaron Silberberg of the Weizmann Institute show how atoms can be made to absorb light more or less readily, or not at all, simply by controlling the phase of light shone at them. This joins a growing list of new ‘coherent control’ methods for manipulating the internal quantum dynamics of atoms and molecules using the coherence properties of light, rather than its intensity or colour.

All atoms and molecules can absorb light. The absorption usually occurs for light that has a frequency v at resonance — that is where the energy of a single photon in the light beam, h v, equals the energy difference between the ground state and an excited quantum state of the system. But when an atom is subjected to intense light, such as that produced by a laser, nonlinear absorption is also possible. In nonlinear absorption, two or more photons pool their energy to excite the atom, and the sum of the photon energies equals the excited-state energy difference. The photons must not only have the right total energy, they must also arrive at the target at nearly the same time, so nonlinear optical effects are usually stronger when the light is compressed into a short, intense pulse. This is the principle behind several practical devices in lasers such as harmonic frequency converters.

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Figure 1
Figure 2: Spectral power distributions.
Figure 3

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  1. The Department of Physics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 48109-1120, Michigan, USA

    Philip H. Bucksbaum

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  1. Philip H. Bucksbaum
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Bucksbaum, P. An atomic dimmer switch. Nature 396, 217–219 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/24269

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