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arXiv:1410.7931

Observation of optical filtering effects with four-wave mixing in a cold atomic ensemble

Dong-Sheng Ding, Y. Jiang, Zhang, Wei, Zhi‐Yuan Zhou, Bao‐Sen Shi, Guang‐Can Guo

Published Oct 29, 2014• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We observe an optical filtering effect in four-wave mixing (FWM) process based on a cold atomic gas. The side peaks appear at the edges of pulse of generated optical field, and they propagate through the atomic media without absorption. The theoretical analysis shows that these side peaks corresponded to the high frequency part of pulse of generated signal, which means the atoms cannot response to the rapid change of the electromagnetic field in time. On the contrary, the low frequency components of generated signal are absorbed during the transmission through the atoms. In addition, we experimentally demonstrate that the backward side peak could be stored by using Raman transition in atomic ensemble and retrieved later.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1410.7931

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We observe an optical filtering effect in four-wave mixing (FWM) process based on a cold atomic gas. The side peaks appear at the edges of pulse of generated optical field, and they propagate through the atomic media without absorption. The theoretical analysis shows that these side peaks corresponded to the high frequency part of pulse of generated signal, which means the atoms cannot response to the rapid change of the electromagnetic field in time. On the contrary, the low frequency components of generated signal are absorbed during the transmission through the atoms. In addition, we experimentally demonstrate that the backward side peak could be stored by using Raman transition in atomic ensemble and retrieved later.
We observed optical precursors in four-wave mixing based on a cold-atom gas. Optical precursors appear at the edges of pulses of the generated optical field, and propagate through the atomic medium without absorption. Theoretical analysis suggests that these precursors correspond to high-frequency components of the signal pulse, which means the atoms cannot respond quickly to rapid changes in the electromagnetic field. In contrast, the low-frequency signal components are absorbed by the atoms during transmission. We also showed experimentally that the backward precursor can be stored using a Raman transition of the atomic ensemble and retrieved later.
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We observed electromagnetically induced transparency-based four-wave mixing (FWM) in the pulsed regime at low light levels. The FWM conversion efficiency of 3.8(9)3.8(9)%3.8(9) was observed in a four-level system of cold 87Rb{}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb atoms using a driving laser pulse with a peak intensity of $\ensuremath{\approx}80$ $\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{W}/{\mathrm{cm}}^{2}$, corresponding to an energy of $\ensuremath{\approx}60$ photons per atomic cross section. Comparison between the experimental data and the theoretical predictions proposed by Harris and Hau [Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 4611 (1999)] showed good agreement. Additionally, a high conversion efficiency of 46(2)46(2)%46(2) was demonstrated when applying this scheme using a driving laser intensity of $\ensuremath{\approx}1.8$ mW/cm2\mathrm{mW}/{\mathrm{cm}}^{2}mW/cm2. According to our theoretical predictions, this FWM scheme can achieve a conversion efficiency of nearly 100100%100 when using a dense medium with an optical depth of 500.
The light wave propagating in a dispersive medium can be formularized as electromagnetic (EM) fields or quantized as a pair of Hermitian operators. The fascinating optical phenomena display classical and nonclassical properties, depending on whether they can be described by the classical EM field theory. A cold atomic ensemble with neligible inhomogenous Doppler broadening is ideal to explore the interaction between light and matter. A typical problem in classical pulse propagation is optical transients, which induced by rapid response of dispersive medium to the sudden change of the driving radiation fields. With cold atoms confined in the two-dimensional magneto-optical trap, whose optical depth is controllable in our system, optical precursor and free-induction decay both classified as optical transients are observed in a single experiment with different conditions. Moreover, the information velocity limit is verified in superluminal medium, with the observation and analysis of precursors. Characterized with narrow linewidth and long coherence time, paired photons generated from cold atomic ensemble in four-wave mixing process possess irreplaceable advantage in quantum optics area. Temporal modulation of narrow-band paired photons can be achieved by directly modulating the generated photons or by modulating the classical control fields. After successfully reshaping the temporal waveform of the paired photons, heralded single photon source is well prepared for studying the propagation of nonclassical single photon in dispersive medium. The speed limit imposed by Einstein Causality principle is firstly experimentally verified on single photon level.
Generation of frequency-correlated narrowband biphotons from the four-wave mixing process is theoretically analyzed through manipulating optical properties of light propagation inside a cold atomic ensemble. In contrast with the spontaneous parametric down-conversion case, we find a much looser condition, which allows producing such frequency-correlated paired photons. We propose a two-photon temporal conditional correlation measurement to detect these photons. In addition, our results provide other evidence for observing backward pulse propagation from the viewpoint of two-photon correlation measurement.
We study the modification of a traditional electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) stored-light technique that includes both EIT and four-wave mixing (FWM) in an ensemble of hot Rb atoms. The standard treatment of light storage involves the coherent and reversible mapping of one photonic mode onto a collective spin coherence. It has been shown that unwanted, competing processes such as four-wave mixing are enhanced by EIT and can significantly modify the signal optical pulse propagation. We present theoretical and experimental evidence to indicate that, while a Stokes field is indeed detected upon retrieval of the signal field, any information originally encoded in a seeded Stokes field is not independently preserved during the storage process. We present a simple model that describes the propagation dynamics of the fields and the impact of FWM on the spin wave.