Atomic waveguide QED with atomic dimers

TL;DR

This paper explores waveguide QED phenomena using a one-dimensional atomic array and atomic dimers, revealing collective effects and non-Markovian dynamics that differ from traditional setups.

Contribution

It introduces a novel atomic array system with dimer-based emitters to emulate waveguide QED, highlighting non-Markovian effects and long-range interactions.

Findings

Observation of collective emission phenomena.

Identification of non-Markovian corrections.

Demonstration of long-range dimer interactions.

Abstract

Quantum emitters coupled to a waveguide is a paradigm of quantum optics, whose essential properties are described by waveguide quantum electrodynamics (QED). We study the possibility of observing the typical features of the conventional waveguide QED scenario in a system where the role of the waveguide is played by a one-dimensional subwavelength atomic array. For the role of emitters, we propose to use anti-symmetric states of atomic dimers - a pair of closely spaced atoms - as effective two-level systems, which significantly reduces the effect of free-space spontaneous emission. We solve the dynamics of the system both when the dimer frequency lies inside and when it lies outside the band of modes of the array. Along with well-known phenomena of collective emission into the guided modes and waveguide mediated long-range dimer-dimer interactions, we uncover significant non-Markovian corrections which arise from both the finiteness of the array and through retardation effects.