Micro-lensing-induced line shapes in a single-mode cold-atom-hollow-core-fiber interface.

We report on the observation of strong transmission line shape alterations in a cold-atom-hollow-core-fiber interface. We show that this can lead to a significant overestimation of the assigned resonant optical depth for high atom densities. By modeling light beam propagation in an inhomogeneous dispersive medium, we attribute the observations to micro lensing in the atomic ensemble in combination with the mode selection of the atom-fiber interface.