Kim Bongjune, Chen Ko-Tang, Chen Kuei-You, Chiu Yu-Shan, Hsu Chia-Yu, Chen Yi-Hsin, Yu Ite A
Department of Physics, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan.
Department of Physics, National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung 80424, Taiwan.
Phys Rev Lett. 2023 Sep 29;131(13):133001. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.133001.
Dark-state polaritons (DSPs) based on the effect of electromagnetically induced transparency are bosonic quasiparticles, representing the superpositions of photons and atomic ground-state coherences. It has been proposed that stationary DSPs are governed by the equation of motion closely similar to the Schrödinger equation and can be employed to achieve Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) with transition temperature orders of magnitude higher than that of the atomic BEC. The stationary-DSP BEC is a three-dimensional system and has a far longer lifetime than the exciton-polariton BEC. In this Letter, we experimentally demonstrated the stationary DSP dressed by the Rydberg-state dipole-dipole interaction (DDI). The DDI-induced phase shift of the stationary DSP was systematically studied. Notably, the experimental data are consistent with the theoretical predictions. The phase shift can be viewed as a consequence of elastic collisions. In terms of thermalization to achieve BEC, the μm^{2}-size interaction cross section of the DDI can produce a sufficient elastic collision rate for the stationary DSPs. This Letter makes a substantial advancement toward the realization of the stationary-DSP BEC.
