[16a-421-1~11] 3.16 Optics and Photonics English Session

▲ [16a-421-6] Interaction between cold atoms and selectively excited higher order modes of an ultrathin optical fiber

〇(D)Thomas Nieddu¹, Jinjin Du¹, Sile Nic Chormaic¹ (1.OIST)

Keywords:Optical nanofiber, Nonlinear optics, Laser trapping

We present recent progress in the design of an atom-photon interface using the higher order modes (HOMs) of an ultrathin optical fiber. We demonstrate selective excitation of each true-mode of a fiber engineered to guide up to the LP₁₁ group. After installing it in an ultrahigh vacuum chamber, we measure experimentally the interaction of each true mode with an ensemble of cold atoms surrounding the fiber. This marks the first step towards fiber trapping atoms with HOMs and fiber-mediated orbital angular momentum (OAM) storage in cold atoms. In this endeavour, we plan to study nonlinear optical effects such as electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) or four-wave mixing (FWM) with these modes. Ultimately, this project could lead to the design of a highly directional quantum memory.