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Experimental observation of the reduction of light group velocity by spectral burning hole in a ruby crystal

Yundong Zhang, Ping Yuan, Bao-Hua Fan, Zuguang Ma

Published Jul 8, 2004• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Slow light propagation is observed in solid state material at room temperature. Here we report the investigation of the slowdown of light propagation resulting from steep change of refractive index by spectral hole technique in a ruby crystal at room temperature. Measured delay is about 3.452/spl plusmn/0.005 ms, corresponding to a group velocity as slow as 28.969/spl plusmn/0.042 m/s in a nonsinusoid modulated waveform.

DOI
10.1109/cleopr.2003.1274649

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Slow light propagation is observed in solid state material at room temperature. Here we report the investigation of the slowdown of light propagation resulting from steep change of refractive index by spectral hole technique in a ruby crystal at room temperature. Measured delay is about 3.452/spl plusmn/0.005 ms, corresponding to a group velocity as slow as 28.969/spl plusmn/0.042 m/s in a nonsinusoid modulated waveform.
We report the investigation of the reduction of the group velocity propagation resulting from the steep change of the refractive index by the coherent population oscillation in a ruby crystal at room temperature. Slow light propagation is observed in a solid-state material at room temperature. The measured delay is about 2.314±0.005 ms, corresponding to a group velocity as slow as 43.215±0.094 m/s in a non-sinusoid modulated waveform. The influences of pulse duration on the delay and the reduction of light propagation are given.
We have observed slow light propagation with a group velocity as slow as 27.52±0.05m/s in a ruby crystal at room temperature. The Gaussian-like pulse signal, which was gained by modulating beam at 514.5nm, was injected into a ruby crystal. The spectral hole effect, attributed to high laser power density, leads to the induced refractive index steep rising. According as this rising, the group velocity of pulse propagation in the ruby becomes very slowly. The experiment result shows that the velocity of pulse propagation depends on the modulation frequency, laser power, the position of crystal and the profile of signal waveform. At the same condition the Gaussian-like pulse obtains much slower velocity than sinusoidal signal.
We have observed slow light propagation with a group velocity as low as 57.5+/-0.5 m/s at room temperature in a ruby crystal. A quantum coherence effect, coherent population oscillations, produces a very narrow spectral "hole" in the homogeneously broadened absorption profile of ruby. The resulting rapid spectral variation of the refractive index leads to a large value of the group index. We observe slow light propagation both for Gaussian-shaped light pulses and for amplitude modulated optical beams in a system that is much simpler than those previously used for generating slow light.
We have observed a hole in the absorption profile of the homogeneously broadened absorption band of an Alexandrite crystal. With the spectral hole-burning technique that resulting from the periodic modulation of the ground state population at the beat frequency between the pump and the probe fields, we observed the slowdown the light propagation with the group velocity as slow as 12.5 m/s at room temperature. And the group velocity in the Alexandrite crystal depends on the amplitude modulation frequency, the power of laser beam and the orientation of the crystal lattice. The lower frequency or higher power leads to slower group velocity of light.
Studies about light propagation have been undertaken for more than a century. It is now well established that any material that has normal or anomalous dispersion generates slow or fast light. In this paper, we demonstrate an experimental technique to rapidly switch between slow and fast light in ruby. The experiment utilizes transient holeburning to create drastic variation in refractive index of ruby to produce slow as well as fast light. Transient hole-burning involves the depletion of the ground state leading to a highly populated excited state by single frequency laser excitation. This leads to a hole in the absorption spectrum when readout by a laser. We observed a delay of 29 ns and advancement of -11 ns in an external magnetic field of B║c = 12 mT corresponding to a group velocity of c/961 and negative group velocity of –c/365 respectively.