Noise spectroscopy with large clouds of cold atoms

Samir Vartabi Kashanian (1, 2) , Aurélien Eloy (1) , William Guerin (1) , Michel Lintz (2) , Mathilde Hugbart (1) , Robin Kaiser (1)

1 INLN - Institut Non Linéaire de Nice Sophia-Antipolis
2 ARTEMIS - Astrophysique Relativiste Théories Expériences Métrologie Instrumentation Signaux

Noise measurement is a powerful tool to investigate many phenomena from laser characterization to quantum behavior of light. In this paper, we report on intensity noise measurements obtained when a laser beam is transmitted through a large cloud of cold atoms. While this measurement could possibly investigate complex processes such as the influence of atomic motion, one is first limited by the conversion of the intrinsic laser frequency noise to intensity noise via the atomic resonance. We show that a simple model, based on a mean-field approach, which corresponds to describing the atomic cloud by a dielectric susceptibility, is sufficient to understand the main features of this conversion observed in the experimental intensity noise spectrum.

Domaines: Physique Atomique [physics.atom-ph]; Optique [physics.optics]

Samir Vartabi Kashanian, Aurélien Eloy, William Guerin, Michel Lintz, Mathilde Hugbart, et al.. Noise spectroscopy with large clouds of cold atoms. 2016. ⟨hal-01336616v1⟩