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arXiv · 2103.06600

Collective effects in the photon statistics of thermal atomic ensembles

Sofia Ribeiro·Thomas F. Cutler·Charles S. Adams·Simon A. Gardiner
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Abstract

We investigate the collective scattering of coherent light from a thermal alkali-metal vapor with temperatures ranging from 350 to 450 K, corresponding to average atomic spacings between $0.7 λ$ and $0.1 λ$. We develop a theoretical model treating the atomic ensemble as coherent, interacting, radiating dipoles. We show that the two-time second-order correlation function of a thermal ensemble can be described by an average of randomly positioned atomic pairs. Our model illustrates good agreement with the experimental results. Furthermore, we show how fine-tuning of the experimental parameters may make it possible to explore several photon statistics regimes.

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Sofia Ribeiro, Thomas F. Cutler, Charles S. Adams, Simon A. Gardiner. 2021-07-12. Collective effects in the photon statistics of thermal atomic ensembles. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.104.013719

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