Abstract

We show that, for a near-resonant propagating beam, a large cloud of cold ${}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ atoms acts as a saturable Kerr medium and produces self-trapping of light. By side fluorescence imaging, we monitor the transverse size of the beam and, depending on the sign of the laser detuning with respect to the atomic transition, we observe self-focusing or self-defocusing, with the waist remaining stationary for an appropriate choice of parameters. We analyze our observations by using numerical simulations based on a simple two-level atom model.

© 2011 Optical Society of America

Sensitive measurement of radiation trapping in cold-atom clouds by intensity correlation detection

Ronald Stites, Matthew Beeler, Laura Feeney, Soo Kim, and Samir Bali
Opt. Lett. 29(23) 2713-2715 (2004)

Compression of a cold atomic cloud by on-resonance laser light

Lev Khaykovich and Nir Davidson
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 16(5) 702-709 (1999)

Using a pair of rectangular coils in the MOT for the production of cold atom clouds with large optical density

Yen-Wei Lin, Hung-Chih Chou, Prashant P. Dwivedi, Ying-Cheng Chen, and Ite A. Yu
Opt. Express 16(6) 3753-3761 (2008)

Multicore fiber for cold-atomic cloud monitoring

Jean-François Clément, Denis Bacquet, Alexandre Kudlinski, Géraud Bouwmans, Olivier Soppera, Jean Claude Garreau, and Pascal Szriftgiser
Opt. Express 19(23) 22936-22941 (2011)

Dense atom clouds in a holographic atom trap

R. Newell, J. Sebby, and T. G. Walker
Opt. Lett. 28(14) 1266-1268 (2003)