We present experimental evidence supporting the postulation that the secondary effects of light-assisted collisions are the main reason that the superradiant light scattering efficiency in condensates is asymmetric with respect to the sign of the pum
p-laser detuning. Contrary to the recent experimental study, however, we observe severe and comparable heating with all three pump-laser polarizations. We also perform two-color, double-pulse measurements to directly study the degradation of condensate coherence and the resulting impact on the superradiant scattering efficiency.
We present the first experimental evidence supporting the postulation that an optical-dipole potential in a condensate undergoing superradiant scattering modifies the structure factor of the system and significantly impacts the scattering. Several co
nsequences of this new detuning-dependent mechanism are discussed and verified experimentally. Our experiments indicate that whenever the generation and propagation growth of a new field are significant, the dynamic response of the condensate can have a profound impact on the scattering process.
The Comment by Wolfgang Ketterle (Ref.[1]) purports to present a viable model of superradiance in condensates. However, Ref.[1] is not able to explain the red/blue pump detuning asymmetry that was first observed recently by us (Ref.[2]). It is clear
from our original paper (Ref.[3]) that the rate-equation-based theories of Ref.[1] are incomplete since they only model the final growth stage of the process when a red-detuned pump is used. Our theoretical framework (Ref.[3]), on the other hand, also treats the initial growth stage of superradiance and is therefore also capable of explaining the genesis of the red/blue detuning asymmetry (Ref.[2]). This is the key message of our response, which we frame in terms of reference to the specific points raised in Ref. [1].
We study a highly efficient, matter-wave amplification mechanism in a longitudinally-excited, Bose-Einstein condensate and reveal a very large enhancement due to nonlinear gain from a sixmatter- optical, wave-mixing process involving four photons. Un
der suitable conditions this opticallydegenerate, four-photon process can be stronger than the usual two-photon inelastic light scattering mechanism, leading to nonlinear growth of the observed matter-wave scattering independent of any enhancement from bosonic stimulation. Our theoretical framework can be extended to encompass even higher-order, nonlinear superradiant processes that result in higher-order momentum transfer.
An analytical perturbation theory of short-pulse, matter-wave superradiant scatterings is presented. We show that Bragg resonant enhancement is incapacitated and both positive and negative order scatterings contribute equally. We further show that pr
opagation gain is small and scattering events primarily occur at the end of the condensate where the generated field has maximum strength, thereby explaining the apparent ``asymmetry in the scattered components with respect to the condensate center. In addition, the generated field travels near the speed of light in a vacuum, resulting in significant spontaneous emission when the one-photon detuning is not sufficiently large. Finally, we show that when the excitation rate increases, the generated-field front-edge-steepening and peak forward-shifting effects are due to depletion of the ground state matter wave.
We demonstrate clear collective atomic recoil motion in a dilute, momentum-squeezed, ultra-cold degenerate fermion gas by circumventing the effects of Pauli blocking. Although gain from bosonic stimulation is necessarily absent because the quantum ga
s obeys Fermi-Dirac statistics, collective atomic recoil motion from the underlying wave-mixing process is clearly visible. With a single pump pulse of the proper polarization, we observe two mutually-perpendicular wave-mixing processes occurring simultaneously. Our experiments also indicate that the red-blue pump detuning asymmetry observed with Bose-Einstein condensates does not occur with fermions.
