Many-body effects in a model of electromagnetically induced transparency

Abstract

We study the spectral properties of a many-body system under a regime of electromagnetically induced transparency. A semi-classical model is proposed to incorporate the effect of inter-band interactions on an otherwise single-body scheme. We use a Hamiltonian with non-Hermitian terms to account for the effect of particle decay from excited levels. We explore the system response as a result of varying the interaction parameter. Then we focus on the highly interacting case, also known as the blockade regime. In this latter case, we present a perturbative development that allows us to get the transmission profile for a wide range of values of the system parameters. We observe a reduction of transmission when interaction increases and show how this property is linked to the generation of a strongly correlated many-body state. We study the characteristics of such a state and explore the mechanisms giving rise to various interesting features. © 2011 IOP Publishing Ltd.