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Photons carry one unit of angular momentum associated with their spin~cite{Beth1936}. Structured vortex beams carry additional orbital angular momentum which can also be transferred to matter~cite{Allen1992}. This extra twist has been used for example to drive motion of microscopic particles in optical tweezers as well as to create vortices in degenerate quantum gases~cite{He1995,Andersen2006}. Here we demonstrate the transfer of optical orbital angular momentum from the transverse spatial structure of the beam to the internal (electronic) degrees of freedom of an atom. Probing a quadrupole transition of a single trapped $^{40}$Ca$^+$ ion localized at the center of the vortex, we observe strongly modified selection rules, accounting for both the photon spin and the vorticity of the field. In particular, we show that an atom can absorb two quanta of angular momentum from a single photon even when rotational symmetry is conserved. In contrast to previous findings~cite{Araoka2005,Loeffler2011a,Mathevet2013}, our experiment allows for conditions where the vorticity of the laser beam determines the optical excitation, contributing to the long-standing discussion on whether the orbital angular momentum of photons can be transferred to atomic internal degrees of freedom~cite{VanEnk1994,Babiker2002,Jauregui2004, Schmiegelow2012, Mondal2014, Scholz-Marggraf2014} and paves the way for its use to tailor light-matter interactions.
A natural approach to measure the time of arrival of an atom at a spatial region is to illuminate this region with a laser and detect the first fluorescence photons produced by the excitation of the atom and subsequent decay. We investigate the actua
The underlying physics of neutrino oscillation in vacuum can be demonstrated by an optical analogical experiment. Two different neutrino flavors are represented by two polarization states of a laser beam, whereas the different phase propagation in va
We propose a new type of superradiant laser based on a hot atomic beam traversing an optical cavity. We show that the theoretical minimum linewidth and maximum power are competitive with the best ultracoherent clock lasers. Also, our system operates
We report significant improvements in the retrieval efficiency of a single excitation stored in an atomic ensemble and in the subsequent generation of strongly correlated pairs of photons. A 50% probability to transform the stored excitation into one
We theoretically analyze the collective dynamics of a thermal beam of atomic dipoles that couple to a single mode when traversing an optical cavity. For this setup we derive a semiclassical model and determine the onset of superradiant emission and i