Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Javaloyes, J
• Perrin, M
• Politi, A

Titel

Collective atomic recoil laser as a synchronization transition

Ist Teil von

• Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics, 2008-07, Vol.78 (1 Pt 1), p.011108-011108, Article 011108

Ort / Verlag

United States: American Physical Society

Erscheinungsjahr

2008

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

American Physical Society [PROLA]

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• We consider here a model previously introduced to describe the collective behavior of an ensemble of cold atoms interacting with a coherent electromagnetic field. The atomic motion along the self-generated spatially periodic force field can be interpreted as the rotation of a phase oscillator. This suggests a relationship with synchronization transitions occurring in globally coupled rotators. In fact, we show that whenever the field dynamics can be adiabatically eliminated, the model reduces to a self-consistent equation for the probability distribution of the atomic "phases." In this limit, there exists a formal equivalence with the Kuramoto model, though with important differences in the self-consistency conditions. Depending on the field-cavity detuning, we show that the onset of synchronized behavior may occur through either a first- or second-order phase transition. Furthermore, we find a secondary threshold, above which a periodic self-pulsing regime sets in, that is immediately followed by the unlocking of the forward-field frequency. At yet higher, but still experimentally meaningful, input intensities, irregular, chaotic oscillations may eventually appear. Finally, we derive a simpler model, involving only five scalar variables, which is able to reproduce the entire phenomenology exhibited by the original model.