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arXiv:1107.5432 · Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Controllable ultrabroadband slow light in a warm rubidium vapor

Rui Zhang, Joel A. Greenberg, Martin C. Fischer, Daniel J. Gauthier

Published Oct 4, 2011• 6 citations

Abstract

We study ultrabroadband slow light in a warm rubidium vapor cell. By working between the D1 and D2 transitions, we find a several-nanometer window centered at 788.4 nm in which the group index is highly uniform and the absorption is small (<1%). We demonstrate that we can control the group delay by varying the temperature of the cell, and we observe a tunable fractional delay of 18 for pulses as short as 250 fs (6.9 nm bandwidth) with a fractional broadening of only 0.65 and a power leakage of 55%. We find that a simple theoretical model is in excellent agreement with the experimental results. Using this model, we discuss the impact of the pulse’s spectral characteristics on the distortion it incurs during propagation through the vapor.

DOI: 10.1364/josab.28.002578

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We study ultrabroadband slow light in a warm rubidium vapor cell. By working between the D1 and D2 transitions, we find a several-nanometer window centered at 788.4 nm in which the group index is highly uniform and the absorption is small (<1%). We demonstrate that we can control the group delay by varying the temperature of the cell, and we observe a tunable fractional delay of 18 for pulses as short as 250 fs (6.9 nm bandwidth) with a fractional broadening of only 0.65 and a power leakage of 55%. We find that a simple theoretical model is in excellent agreement with the experimental results. Using this model, we discuss the impact of the pulse’s spectral characteristics on the distortion it incurs during propagation through the vapor.

We study slow-light propagation dynamics in warm Rb vapor. We present data showing significant pulse reshaping when the bandwidth of the pulses is increased and present a model that qualitatively explains the observed behavior. Our data and modeling emphasize how the Doppler broadening in a warm vapor strongly affects the propagation of high-frequency components and leads to unintuitive features on the transmitted pulse shapes. This has important consequences for applications involving the delay of large-bandwidth pulses.

The potential to precisely control both the linear and nonlinear index of refraction through optical manipulation of the atomic states has recently pushed warm alkali vapors to the forefront of research in the field of quantum sensors, quantum memories, and quantum fluids of light. Rubidium (Rb) vapor in centimeter-scale glass cells or millimeter-scale MEMS cells has proven to be a very promising platform for these applications, yet only a handful of research works have been dedicated to the investigation of the (non)linear refractive index of Rb vapor. We present results of theoretical calculations of the (non)linear refractive index of warm Rb vapor, based on the optical Bloch equations for 6-level Rb atoms interacting with a probe laser. They are compared to the experimental results obtained using an interferometric technique, showing excellent quantitative agreement. A Kerr nonlinear refractive index

n_2

of up to

10^{-4}

cm

^2

/W is obtained. Python scripts for all theoretical calculations presented in this work are provided, including the refractive index calculation, that can readily be used in practical implementations for simulating the (non)linear refractive index of Rb vapor including the effects of Doppler broadening, transit time broadening, pressure broadening, saturation, optical pumping, and spin-exchange collisions.