Collective suppression of optical hyperfine pumping in dense clouds of atoms in microtraps

Machluf, Shimon and Naber, Julian B and Soudijn, Maarten L and Ruostekoski, Janne and Spreeuw, Robert C J (2019) Collective suppression of optical hyperfine pumping in dense clouds of atoms in microtraps. Physical review a, 100 (5): 051801(R). ISSN 1050-2947

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Abstract

We observe a density-dependent collective suppression of optical pumping between the hyperfine ground states in an array of submicrometer-sized clouds of dense and cold rubidium atoms. The suppressed Raman transition rate can be explained by strong resonant dipole-dipole interactions that are enhanced by increasing atom density, and are already significant at densities of ﰀ0.1k3, where k denotes the resonance wave number. The observations are consistent with stochastic electrodynamics simulations that incorporate the effects of population transfer via internal atomic levels embedded in a coupled-dipole model.