Collective light shifts of many longitudinal cavity modes induced by coupling to a cold-atom ensemble

Abstract

We experimentally study the interaction between a cold-atom cloud and many longitudinal modes of a high-quality Fabry-Perot cavity, by measuring signatures of collective light shifts in the cavity transmission spectrum of an optical frequency comb probe. Using a resonator coupled to more than 10^5 intracavity atoms, we detect significant shifts of ∼100 cavity modes simultaneously, which is a direct manifestation of physics beyond the hitherto explored regime of cavity-cold atom interaction with only single or few longitudinal modes at a time. For the cavity mode closest to the atomic resonance, we demonstrate a bistability in the transmission spectrum, arising due to a combined coupling of the cloud to an external pump laser and a cavity mode probed by the optical frequency comb. These results provide a first step toward deeper exploration of multifrequency cavity quantum electrodynamics, where ultrashort pulsed sources could be used for optical manipulation, cooling, and entanglement of cold atoms in a resonator.