Cavity-Controlled Collective Scattering at the Recoil Limit

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates cavity-controlled collective scattering in Bose-Einstein condensates, showing how a high-finesse cavity can select specific momentum states and influence superradiant scattering processes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method of controlling collective scattering by utilizing a resonant cavity mode to determine scattering directions and select momentum states.

Findings

Cavity modes dictate scattering directions, independent of condensate shape.

The cavity's resolution can filter specific quantized momentum states.

Recoil-shifted frequency depends on initial condensate momentum.

Abstract

We study collective scattering with Bose-Einstein condensates interacting with a high-finesse ring cavity. The condensate scatters the light of a transverse pump beam superradiantly into modes which, in contrast to previous experiments, are not determined by the geometrical shape of the condensate, but specified by a resonant cavity mode. Moreover, since the recoil-shifted frequency of the scattered light depends on the initial momentum of the scattered fraction of the condensate, we show that it is possible to employ the good resolution of the cavity as a filter selecting particular quantized momentum states.