RMKI Seminar

Prof. Dr. Michael Fleichhauer (Universitat Kaiserslautern):
"Heavy photons: from Dirac physics and anomalous localization to strong interactions"

RMKI Seminar Room, 14.00 at 14 July 2011 (Thursday)

Abstract:

Slow-light polaritons are quasi-particles generated in the interaction of light with multi-level atoms driven by an external laser close to a Raman resonance. Their dispersion relation can be controlled to a large extend, representing massive Schroedinger particles on the one hand or multi-component objects with a Dirac-like spectrum on the other. In the latter case "relativistic" length and energy scales can be widely tuned, making relativistic effects accessible in the lab.
Making use of the tunability of the mass the delocalization transition of the random-mass Dirac model with off-diagonal disorder can be experimentally observed.
In the second part of the talk the prospects to create strong interactions between dark-state polaritons using Rydberg atoms will be discussed. The dipole-dipole coupling between atoms in a Rydberg state leads to a strong and long-range interaction between polaritons, as well as to a blockade phenomenon. This interacion can give rize to interesting many-body phenomena, such as two-particle correlations which are much stronger than possible for pointlike interacting particles, crystallization of photons or quantum Hall states.