Inhomogeneous mass trap for dark-state polaritons in atomic media

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 19 Mar 2026] Inhomogeneous mass trap for dark-state polaritons in atomic media Ding-An Chen, Kai-You Huang, Chun-Yen Hsu, Meng-Cheng Xie, Ite A. Yu, Wen-Te Liao The generation of a trapping potential for dark-state polaritons in a two-dimensional electromagnetically induced transparency system is theoretically studied. We show that such a trap can arise from a spatially inhomogeneous effective mass of the dark-state polariton. Because this mass inhomogeneity can be engineered by tuning the parameters of the control fields, the motion, spatial profile, and coherent behavior of bound dark-state polaritons can be tailored accordingly. Our results enable spatial controls of optical information and provide a possible route toward realizing Bose-Einstein condensation of dark-state polaritons in a trapping potential. Comments: 4 figures Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2603.18451 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2603.18451v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.18451 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Wen-Te Liao [view email] [v1] Thu, 19 Mar 2026 03:27:41 UTC (597 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: quant-ph < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-03 Change to browse by: physics physics.atom-ph References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)