Quantum Reflections of Nonlocal Optical Solitons in a Cold Rydberg Atomic Gas

TL;DR

This paper proposes a scheme for quantum reflection of nonlocal optical solitons in a cold Rydberg atomic gas, revealing controllable reflection, trapping, and transmission behaviors useful for nonlinear optics and device design.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to realize and manipulate quantum reflection of nonlocal optical solitons in Rydberg gases using electromagnetically induced transparency.

Findings

Demonstration of low-power nonlocal optical solitons supported by Rydberg interactions.

Observation of sharp transitions between reflection, trapping, and transmission.

Active control of soliton behavior via incident velocity, intensity, and nonlocality.

Abstract

Quantum reflection refers to a non-vanishing reflection probability in the absence of a classically turning point. Much attention has been paid to such reflections due to their fundamental, intriguing physics and potential practical applications. Here we propose a scheme to realize a quantum reflection of nonlocal nonlinear optical beams in a cold Rydberg atomic gas via electromagnetically induced transparency working in a dispersion regime. Based on the long-range interaction between Rydberg atoms, we found that the system supports low-power nonlocal optical solitons. Such nonlocal solitons can display a sharp transition between reflection, trapping, and transmission when scattered by a linear attractive potential, created by gate photons stored in another Rydberg state. Different from conventional physical systems explored up to now, the quantum reflection of the nonlocal optical solitons in the Rydberg atomic gas exhibits interesting anomalous behaviors, which can be actively manipulated by tuning the incident velocity and intensity of the probe field, as well as the nonlocality of the Kerr nonlinearity inherent in the Rydberg atomic gas. The results reported here are not only useful for developing Rydberg nonlinear optics but also helpful for characterizing the physical property of the Rydberg gas and for designing novel nonlinear optical devices.