Atom-induced nonlinear photonic interactions

Abstract

This project addresses the nonlinear interactions between photons in clouds of cold neutral atoms. While dipole-dipole interactions are known to lead to non-classical atomic states and potentially entanglement, the possibility to generate non-classical light is essentially unexplored. As a first step, we propose to investigate the anti-blockade mechanism, in analogy with Rydberg atoms, to understand how pairs or triplets of photons may be produced in chains of atoms. As a second step, we aim at stepping in the regime of many-body localization, where multi-excitation states may be sustained by disorder-induced effects, with the objective of seeking beyond-classical signatures in the radiated light. (AU)