Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 203, 127-136 (2012)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2012-01538-x

Regular Article

Controlled generation of momentum states in a high-finesse ring cavity

Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Milano, via Celoria 16, 20133 Milano, Italy

^a e-mail: nicola.piovella@unimi.it

Received: 13 January 2012
Revised: 21 February 2012
Published online: 11 April 2012

Abstract

A Bose-Einstein condensate in a high-finesse ring cavity scatters the photons of a pump beam into counterpropagating cavity modes, populating a bi-dimensional momentum lattice. A high-finesse ring cavity with a sub-recoil linewidth allows to control the quantized atomic motion, selecting particular discrete momentum states and generating atom-photon entanglement. The semiclassical and quantum model for the 2D collective atomic recoil lasing (CARL) are derived and the superradiant and good-cavity regimes discussed. For pump incidence perpendicular to the cavity axis, the momentum lattice is symmetrically populated. Conversely, for oblique pump incidence the motion along the two recoil directions is unbalanced and different momentum states can be populated on demand by tuning the pump frequency.