Realizing single light bullets and vortices that are stable in high dimensions is a long-standing goal in the study of nonlinear optical physics. On the other hand, the storage and retrieval of such stable high dimensional optical pulses may offer a variety of applications. Here we present a scheme to generate such optical pulses in a cold Rydberg atomic gas. By virtue of electromagnetically induced transparency, strong, long-range atom-atom interaction in Rydberg states is mapped to light fields, resulting in a giant, fast-responding nonlocal Kerr nonlinearity and the formation of light bullets and vortices carrying orbital angular momenta, which have extremely low generation power, very slow propagation velocity, and can stably propagate, with the stability provided by the combination of local and the nonlocal Kerr nonlinearities. We demonstrate that the light bullets and vortices obtained can be stored and retrieved in the system with high efficiency and fidelity. Our study provides a new route for manipulating high-dimensional nonlinear optical processes via the controlled optical nonlinearities in cold Rydberg gases.
Realizing single light bullets and vortices that are stable in high dimensions is a long-standing goal in the study of nonlinear optical physics. On the other hand, the storage and retrieval of such stable high dimensional optical pulses may offer a variety of applications. Here we present a scheme to generate such optical pulses in a cold Rydberg atomic gas. By virtue of electromagnetically induced transparency, strong, long-range atom-atom interaction in Rydberg states is mapped to light fields, resulting in a giant, fast-responding nonlocal Kerr nonlinearity and the formation of light bullets and vortices carrying orbital angular momenta, which have extremely low generation power, very slow propagation velocity, and can stably propagate, with the stability provided by the combination of local and the nonlocal Kerr nonlinearities. We demonstrate that the light bullets and vortices obtained can be stored and retrieved in the system with high efficiency and fidelity. Our study provides a new route for manipulating high-dimensional nonlinear optical processes via the controlled optical nonlinearities in cold Rydberg gases.
High-fidelity and controllable optical cloning of high-dimensional (high-D) optical beams is very important for the development of novel techniques for optical imaging, lithography, and communications, etc. Here we propose a scheme to realize the cloning of high-D optical beams with a Rydberg atomic gas via electromagnetically induced transparency. We show that strong atom-atom interaction can map to two probe laser fields, which may acquire giant nonlocal Kerr nonlinearities supporting the formation of stable high-D optical solitons and vortices at very low light power. We also show that such optical solitons and vortices prepared in one probe field can be cloned onto another one with high fidelity, and the cloning may be actively manipulated through the tuning of the nonlocality degree of the Kerr nonlinearities. Moreover, we demonstrate that based on such a cloning scheme multitimes and multicomponents cloning of high-D optical beams are also possible, which allows us to acquire multiple copies of high-D optical beams. The results on the optical cloning reported here are not only of fundamental interest for nonlocal nonlinear optics but also promising for practical applications in optical information processing and transmission.
Light bullets (LBs) are localized nonlinear waves propagating in high spatial dimensions.Finding stable LBs and realizing their control are desirable due to the interesting physics and potential applications.Here, we show that nonlocal LBs generated in a cold Rydberg atomic gas via the balance among the dispersion, diffraction, and giant nonlocal Kerr nonlinearity contributed by long-range Rydberg-Rydberg interaction can be actively manipulated by using a weak gradient magnetic field.Nonlocal LBs are generated by a balance among dispersion, diffraction, and large nonlocal Kerr nonlinearities contributed by long-range Rydberg-Rydberg interactions.Here, we find that active manipulation can be achieved by weak gradient magnetic fields in cold Rydberg atomic gases.Especially, the LBs may undergo significant Stern-Gerlach deflections, and their motion trajectories can be controlled by adjusting the magnetic-field gradient.The results reported here are helpful not only for understanding unique properties of LBs in nonlocal optical media but also for finding ways for precision measurements of magnetic fields.
X waves are a special type of wave packet that can maintain their transverse profile of X shape during propagation, and they are of much interest for the study of fundamental physics and practical applications. Here we present a scheme to generate nonlinear X waves and realize their active control by using a cold gas of Rydberg atoms via electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). We show that, due to the EIT effect contributed by a control laser field and the strong, nonlocal Kerr nonlinearity contributed by Rydberg-Rydberg interaction between atoms, the system supports high-dimensional, nonlocal, and nonlinear optical X waves, which have low propagation loss, ultraslow propagation velocity, and ultralow generation power. We also show that the stability domain of such X waves can be greatly enlarged by increasing the nonlocality degree of the Kerr nonlinearity, and their motion trajectory can be manipulated by using an external magnetic field. Our study opens a route for generating and controlling nonlocal ultraslow nonlinear optical X waves, which may have promising applications in optical information processing and transmission.
Abstract Rydberg atoms, characterized by their giant polarizability and strong long-range interactions, provide an ideal platform for exploring optical nonlinearities. By coupling light to ensembles of Rydberg atoms, one can map the strong and nonlocal interactions between Rydberg atoms and light fields. A particularly important scheme for realizing such nonlinearity is electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). This article presents a review of the research progress in nonlinear optics based on Rydberg-EIT systems, particularly nonlinear light propagation in Rydberg atomic gases. We first introduce the fundamental properties of Rydberg atoms and the physical mechanism of EIT-enhanced nonlinearity, emphasizing how the Rydberg blockade effect endows the system with a giant nonlocal Kerr nonlinearity. Subsequently, we discuss some typical nonlinear optical phenomena in such a system with focusing and defocusing nonlocal nonlinearities. In the focusing regime, we discuss spatial solitons, vortex solitons, soliton cloning, soliton molecules, optical bullets, and self-induced transparency solitons. Other topics are also discussed. In the defocusing regime, we analyze pattern formation and shock wave dynamics. Finally, we provide an outlook on the future development of this field toward quantum control, hybrid-system integration, and novel functional devices.
A scheme is proposed to generate stable light bullets (LBs) in a cold Rydberg atomic system with a parity-time (PT) symmetric potential, by utilizing electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). Using an incoherent population pumping between two low-lying levels and spatial modulations of control and auxiliary laser fields, we obtain a two-dimensional (2D) periodic optical potential with PT symmetry. Based on PT symmetry potential and the long-range Rydberg-Rydberg atomic interaction, the system may support slow LBs with low light intensity. Further, it is found that the local and non-local nonlinear coefficients and PT-symmetric potential can be tuned and used to manipulate the behavior of LBs.
Rydberg electromagnetically-induced transparency has been widely studied as a medium supporting light propagation under the action of nonlocal nonlinearities. Recently, optical potentials based on moiré lattices (MLs) were introduced for exploring unconventional physical states. Here, we predict a possibility of creating fully three-dimensional (3D) light bullets (LBs) in cold Rydberg gases under the action of ML potentials. The nonlinearity includes local self-defocusing and long-range focusing terms, the latter one induced by the Rydberg-Rydberg interaction. We produce zero-vorticity LB families of the fundamental, dipole, and quadrupole types, as well as vortex LBs. They all are gap solitons populating finite bandgaps of the underlying ML spectrum. Stable subfamilies are identified utilizing the combination of the anti-Vakhitov-Kolokolov criterion, computation of eigenvalues for small perturbations, and direct simulations.