Transient dynamics in cavity electromagnetically induced transparency with ion Coulomb crystals

Abstract

We experimentally investigate the transient dynamics of an optical cavity field interacting with large ion Coulomb crystals in a situation of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). EIT is achieved by injecting a probe field at the single photon level and a more intense control field with opposite circular polarization into the same mode of an optical cavity to couple Zeeman substates of a metastable level in ${}^{40}{\text{Ca}}^{+}$ ions. The EIT interaction dynamics are investigated both in the frequency-domain – by measuring the probe field steady state reflectivity spectrum – and in the time-domain – by measuring the progressive buildup of transparency. The experimental results are observed to be in excellent agreement with theoretical predictions taking into account the inhomogeneity of the control field in the interaction volume, and confirm the high degree of control on light-matter interaction that can be achieved with ion Coulomb crystals in optical cavities.

Keywords:

• Electromagnetically induced transparency
• cavity qed
• ion Coulomb crystals

Notes

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Carlsberg Foundation Villumfonden, the Danish Natural Science Research Council through the European Science Foundation EuroQUAM ’Cavity Mediated Molecular Cooling’ project and the Sapere Aude initiative, and the STREP project ’Physics of Ion Coulomb Crystals’ under the European Commission FP7 programme.