First experiment of waveguide QED with Mössbauer nuclei in the x-ray regime

Fantastic news! Our thin-film nanostructures with Mössbauer nuclei have been for the first time illuminated with x-rays in waveguide geometry! A team  of experimentalists based at  DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, Hamburg) and at the University of Göttingen have shown that x-rays resonantly scattered by the Mössbauer nuclei could be detected even after mm of propagation through the sample. This is two orders of magnitude larger than the attenuation length in bulk samples, demonstrating resonant x-ray waveguide propagation. This waveguide regime for thin-film nanostructures with embedded 57-Fe layers has been the subject of Petar's thesis, and our theoretical predictions nicely fit the experimental results.  We congratulate all co-authors for this important milestone. This work has been part of our QuCoLiMa project (Quantum Cooperativity of Light and Matter, TRR 306) and paves the way for further control of single x-ray photons.

Further insights from first author Leon Lohse (DESY and University of Göttingen), who carried out the experiment together with colleagues from Göttingen, Hamburg and Jena, can be found here.