Experimental Demonstration of Stationary Dark-State Polaritons Dressed by Dipole-Dipole Interaction

TL;DR

This paper experimentally demonstrates stationary dark-state polaritons dressed by Rydberg-state dipole-dipole interactions, showing their potential for Bose-Einstein condensation with longer lifetimes and higher transition temperatures.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental evidence of stationary DSPs influenced by dipole-dipole interactions, aligning with theoretical predictions and advancing BEC research.

Findings

Measured DDI-induced phase shifts consistent with theory

Demonstrated elastic collision effects on DSP phase

Showed potential for BEC with longer lifetime

Abstract

Dark-state polaritons (DSPs) based on the effect of electromagnetically induced transparency are bosonic quasiparticles, representing the superpositions of photons and atomic ground-state coherences. It has been proposed that stationary DSPs are governed by the equation of motion closely similar to the Schr\"{o}dinger equation and can be employed to achieve Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) with transition temperature orders of magnitude higher than that of the atomic BEC. The stationary-DSP BEC is a three-dimensional system and has a far longer lifetime than the exciton-polariton BEC. In this work, we experimentally demonstrated the stationary DSP dressed by the Rydberg-state dipole-dipole interaction (DDI). The DDI-induced phase shift of the stationary DSP was systematically studied. Notably, the experimental data are consistent with the theoretical predictions. The phase shift can be viewed as a consequence of elastic collisions. In terms of thermalization to achieve BEC, the $\mu$m$^2$-size interaction cross-section of the DDI can produce a sufficient elastic collision rate for the stationary DSPs. This work makes a substantial advancement toward the realization of the stationary-DSP BEC.