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PUBLICATIONS

Pauli blocking of atom-light scattering

Published

Author(s)

Christian Sanner, Lindsay Sonderhouse, Ross Hutson, Lingfeng Yan, William Milner, Jun Ye

Abstract

Transition rates between coupled states in a quantum system depend on the density of available final states. The radiative decay of an excited atomic state has been suppressed by reducing the density of electromagnetic vacuum modes near the atomic transition. Likewise, reducing the density of available momentum modes of the atomic motion when it is embedded inside a Fermi sea will suppress spontaneous emission and photon scattering rates. Here we report the experimental demonstration of suppressed light scattering in a quantum degenerate Fermi gas. We systematically measured the dependence of the suppression factor on the temperature and Fermi energy of a strontium quantum gas and achieved suppression of scattering rates by up to a factor of 2 compared with a thermal gas.
Citation
Science Magazine
Volume
374
Issue
6570
Pub Type
Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abh3483
Local Download

Keywords

Fermi gas, Pauli blocking, spontaneous decay
Physics

Citation

Sanner, C. , Sonderhouse, L. , Hutson, R. , Yan, L. , Milner, W. and Ye, J. (2021), Pauli blocking of atom-light scattering, Science Magazine, [online], https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abh3483, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=932021 (Accessed October 8, 2025)

Issues

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Created November 18, 2021, Updated November 29, 2022
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