Coherent phase control of orbital-angular-momentum light-induced torque in a double-tripod atom-light coupling scheme

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a phase-sensitive method to generate and control optical torque in a five-level atomic system using orbital angular momentum-carrying light, enabling precise manipulation of atomic motion.

Contribution

It introduces a novel phase-controllable mechanism for optical torque in a double-tripod atomic scheme, with analytical solutions showing high phase sensitivity and reconfigurable atomic flow.

Findings

Torque is highly sensitive to phase variations.

System can switch between coupled Λ and double-Λ configurations.

Achieves precise phase control of atomic current flow.

Abstract

We investigate a phase-controllable mechanism for generating optical torque in a five-level double-tripod (DT) atom-light coupling scheme interacting with four strong coherent control fields as well as two weak optical vortex probe beams carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM). The spatial phase gradients of the OAM-carrying probes induce a quantized torque that is transferred to the atoms, rotating them and generating a directed atomic flow within an annular geometry. Analytical solutions of the optical Bloch equations under steady-state conditions show that the induced torque and resulting rotational motion exhibit high sensitivity to phase variations. We show that the DT system coherently reconfigures into either coupled {\Lambda} or double-{\Lambda} schemes depending on the relative phases, with each configuration exhibiting distinct quantized torque characteristics. This enables precise phase control of the atomic current flow, with potential applications in quantum control, precision measurement, and quantum information processing.