Observation of Acoustically Induced Transparency for γ-Ray Photons

Phys Rev Lett. 2020 Apr 24;124(16):163602. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.163602.

Abstract

We report an observation of a 148-fold suppression of resonant absorption of 14.4 keV photons from exp(-5.2) to exp(-0.2) with preservation of their spectral and temporal characteristics in an ensemble of the resonant two-level ^{57}Fe nuclei at room temperature. The transparency was induced via collective acoustic oscillations of nuclei. The proposed technique allows extending the concept of induced optical transparency to a hard x-ray or γ-ray range and paves the way for acoustically controllable interface between x-ray or γ-ray photons and nuclear ensembles, advancing the field of x-ray or γ-ray quantum optics.