Light propagation beyond the mean-field theory of standard optics

With ready access to massive computer clusters we may now study light propagation in a dense cold atomic gas by means of basically exact numerical simulations. We report on a direct comparison between traditional optics, that is, electrodynamics of a polarizable medium, and numerical simulations in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Optics express 2016-01, Vol.24 (2), p.993-1001
Main Authors: Javanainen, Juha, Ruostekoski, Janne
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:With ready access to massive computer clusters we may now study light propagation in a dense cold atomic gas by means of basically exact numerical simulations. We report on a direct comparison between traditional optics, that is, electrodynamics of a polarizable medium, and numerical simulations in an elementary problem of light propagating through a slab of matter. The standard optics fails already at quite low atom densities, and the failure becomes dramatic when the average interatomic separation is reduced to around k(-1), where k is the wave number of resonant light. The difference between the two solutions originates from correlations between the atoms induced by light-mediated dipole-dipole interactions.
ISSN:1094-4087
1094-4087
DOI:10.1364/OE.24.000993