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arXiv:0810.0903 · Physical Review Letters

Stationary Light Pulses in Cold Atomic Media and without Bragg Gratings

Yen-Wei Lin, Wen-Te Liao, Thorsten Peters, Hung-Chih Chou, Jian-Siung Wang, Hung-Wen Cho, Pei-Chen Kuan, Ite A. Yu

Published May 28, 2009• 127 citations
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Abstract

We study the creation of stationary light pulses (SLPs), i.e., light pulses without motion, based on the effect of electromagnetically induced transparency with two counterpropagating coupling fields in cold atoms. We show that the Raman excitations created by counterpropagating probe and coupling fields prohibit the formation of SLPs in media of cold and stationary atoms such as laser-cooled atom clouds, Bose condensates or color-center crystals. A method is experimentally demonstrated to suppress these Raman excitations and SLPs are realized in laser-cooled atoms. Furthermore, we report the first experimental observation of a bichromatic SLP at wavelengths for which no Bragg grating can be established. Our work advances the understanding of SLPs and opens a new avenue to SLP studies for few-photon nonlinear interactions.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.102.213601

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We study the creation of stationary light pulses (SLPs), i.e., light pulses without motion, based on the effect of electromagnetically induced transparency with two counterpropagating coupling fields in cold atoms. We show that the Raman excitations created by counterpropagating probe and coupling fields prohibit the formation of SLPs in media of cold and stationary atoms such as laser-cooled atom clouds, Bose condensates or color-center crystals. A method is experimentally demonstrated to suppress these Raman excitations and SLPs are realized in laser-cooled atoms. Furthermore, we report the first experimental observation of a bichromatic SLP at wavelengths for which no Bragg grating can be established. Our work advances the understanding of SLPs and opens a new avenue to SLP studies for few-photon nonlinear interactions.
We systematically study stationary light pulses formed in cold atomic media based on the effect of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) with counterpropagating laser fields. In contrast to hot media, the formation of stationary light in cold media is not straightforward. Detrimental coherences of high spatial frequencies can be excited which are naturally suppressed in hot media. We demonstrate numerically that these excitations prevent the formation of stationary light in cold media. We further present numerical and experimental results which show that these excitations can be dynamically suppressed in a medium of nonstationary atoms by reducing the width of the EIT transparency window below the typical Doppler shifts present in the medium. This provides an increased interaction time of the light pulses with the medium and enhances the efficiency of nonlinear optical interactions.
We have studied stationary and quasistationary signal light pulses in cold \ensuremath{\Lambda}-type atomic media driven by counterpropagating control laser fields at the condition of electromagnetically induced transparency. By deriving a dispersion relation we present spectral and temporal properties of the signal light pulse and a significant influence of atomic decoherence on the coupled stationary light pulses for spatial splitting. Finally we discuss quasistationary light pulse evolution characterized by frozen spatial spreading for a robust coherent control of slow light pulses.
The stationary light pulse (SLP) refers to a zero-group-velocity optical pulse in an atomic ensemble prepared by two counterpropagating driving fields. Despite the uniqueness of an optical pulse trapped within an atomic medium without a cavity, observations of SLP so far have been limited to trapping a single optical pulse due to the stringent SLP phase-matching condition, and this has severely hindered the development of SLP-based applications. In this Letter, we first show theoretically that the SLP process in fact supports two phase-matching conditions and we then utilize the result to experimentally demonstrate simultaneous SLP trapping of two optical pulses for the duration from 0.8 to 2.0 μs. The characteristic dissipation time, obtained by the release efficiency measurement from the SLP trapping state, is 1.22 μs, which corresponds to an effective Q factor of 2.9×10^{9}. Our Letter is expected to bring forth interesting SLP-based applications, such as, efficient photon-photon interaction, spatially multimode coherent quantum memory, creation of exotic photonic gas states, etc.
The stationary light pulse (SLP) refers to a zero-group-velocity optical pulse in an atomic ensemble prepared by two counter-propagating driving fields. Despite the uniqueness of an optical pulse trapped within an atomic medium without a cavity, observations of SLP so far have been limited to trapping a single optical pulse due to the stringent SLP phase-matching condition, and this has severely hindered the development of SLP-based applications. Here, we first show theoretically that the SLP process in fact supports two phase-matching conditions and we then utilize the result to experimentally demonstrate simultaneous SLP trapping of two optical pulses for the duration from0.8 μs0.8\ \mu \mathsf{s}0.8 μsto2.0 μs2.0\ \mu \mathsf{s}2.0 μs. The characteristic dissipation time, obtained by the release efficiency measurement, is1.22 μs1.22\ \mu \mathsf{s}1.22 μs, which corresponds to an effective Q-factor of2.9×1092.9\times 10^{9}2.9×109[1]. As our SLP system reports a large effective N-atom cooperativity of8×1068\times 10^{6}8×106, our work is expected to bring forth interesting SLP-based applications, such as, efficient photon-photon interaction, spatially multi-mode coherent quantum memory, creation of exotic photonic gas states, etc.
Efficient photon–photon interaction is one of the key elements for realizing quantum information processing. The interaction, however, must often be mediated through an atomic medium due to the bosonic nature of photons, and the interaction time, which is critically linked to the efficiency, depends on the properties of the atom–photon interaction. While the electromagnetically induced transparency effect does offer the possibility of photonic quantum memory, it does not enhance the interaction time as it fully maps the photonic state to an atomic state. The stationary light pulse (SLP) effect, on the contrary, traps the photonic state inside an atomic medium with zero group velocity, opening up the possibility of enhanced interaction time. In this work, we report the first experimental demonstration of trapping a free-propagating single-photon into a cold atomic ensemble via the quantum SLP (QSLP) process. We conclusively show that the quantum properties of the single-photon state are preserved well during the QSLP process. Our work paves the way for new approaches for efficient photon–photon interactions, exotic photonic states, and many-body simulations in photonic systems.
The successful formation of stationary light pulses in a cold atomic medium was demonstrated recently. However, unlike in hot media, a detuning between the counterpropagating fields had to be applied. Here we demonstrate that a significant nonuniform phase variation can be induced during a period of stationary light owing to off-resonantly driven transitions. The experimental results are in good agreement with theoretical predictions for media of low optical depth. For media of high optical depth the numerical simulations indicate that such phase variation becomes negligible. Thus stationary light based on this coupling scheme could be used for possible future applications in quantum information processing.