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AIP conference proceedings

Spatial and temporal behaviors of laser beam propagating in atomic vapor

Keiji Nomaru, Y.-W. Chen, Yasukazu Izawa, S. Nakai, Chihiro Yamanaka

Published Jan 1, 1996• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Spatial and temporal behaviors of laser beam propagating in a atomic vapor have been investigated experimentally. The pulse reshapings of frequency‐chirped laser pulses in the near‐resonant atomic vapor have been demonstrated by making use of atomic samarium vapor. Self‐induced transparency and self‐focusing have also been observed by streak camera. Theses results will be compared with numerical or analytical results in this paper.

DOI
10.1063/1.50363

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Spatial and temporal behaviors of laser beam propagating in a atomic vapor have been investigated experimentally. The pulse reshapings of frequency‐chirped laser pulses in the near‐resonant atomic vapor have been demonstrated by making use of atomic samarium vapor. Self‐induced transparency and self‐focusing have also been observed by streak camera. Theses results will be compared with numerical or analytical results in this paper.
Self-induced transparency has been observed for the degenerate, $F=3\ensuremath{\rightarrow}4$, hyperfine component of the 1.315-\ensuremath{\mu}m magnetic dipole transition of atomic iodine, at high optical power levels, up to 50 MW ${\mathrm{cm}}^{\ensuremath{-}2}$. For pulse areas approaching $2\ensuremath{\pi}$, the dynamics of the strong coherent resonant self-focusing which accompanies self-induced transparency have been studied with a streak camera to provide time-dependent analysis of the spatial beam profile.
In this paper, we address the propagation of a near resonant laser inside an atomic vapor in the case when, due to the Kerr effect, the laser beam would either self-focus or self-defocus. We show, both theoretically and experimentally, how to get rid of such an alteration in the transverse beam profile without changing any of the characteristics of the laser light under consideration (wavelength, intensity, etc.), nor of the atomic vapor. Moreover, our proposed method offers a lot of control on the beam profile, whose transverse size after propagation may be chosen at will by making use of a second, copropagating laser, whose required wavelength and intensity may be derived analytically.
There are several nonlinear optical processes that can lead to instabilities in a laser beam as it propagates through a nonlinear optical medium. Self focusing effects, for instance, can lead to the growth of new spatial frequency components in a laser beam. A laser beam can also be unstable to the growth of new spectral components. Stimulated Raman scattering is a well-known example of a process that can lead to this sort of instability. In this paper, we present the results of a series of experiments on the somewhat different instabilities that occur for the case of the propagation of a laser beam through an atomic vapor. We find that these instabilities become particularly pronounced when the frequency of the incident laser is near to that of a one- or two-photon resonance of the atom. In either case, we find that the laser beam is unstable to the growth of new frequency components, and that in general these new frequencies are not emitted collinearly with the incident laser. These instabilities are important because they place a limit on the laser intensity that can be used to drive nonlinear optical processes.
An intense laser pulse that is nearly resonant with an atomic transition and that can initially be described as smooth and nearly adiabatic can acquire significant temporal and spatial modulation as the result of propagation through an atomic vapor. Computer calculations demonstrate that the temporal modulation is a result of enhancement, under propagation, of the initially small nonadiabatic portion of the transient nonlinear atomic response. The transient nonlinear atomic response varies with the field strength so that the transverse variation in field strength results in a spatial modulation, known as conical emission.
Computational results show that the conical emission and Rabi sidebands observed when a nearly resonant laser pulse propagates through an atomic vapor are the result of the breakup of the pulse into solitary waves. For an incident pulse with a transverse as well as a temporal profile, the crests and troughs of the 2-D solitary waves are curved in a time-radius plane. The temporal modulation associated with pulse breakup appears as Rabi sidebands in the spectrum, while the curvature of the solitary waves in the time-radius plane results in a transverse spatial modulation, resulting in conical emission in the far field. These results were obtained by performing detailed numerical calculations of the time-dependent paraxial propagation of a cylindrically symmetric laser pulse through a vapor of two-level atoms. Our results can be interpreted readily in terms of optical nutation on the Bloch sphere and in terms of noncollinear phase matching through the curvature of the solitary waves rather than through additional parametrically generated waves. The cone opening angle depends on the initial transverse profile of the pulse and the process of beam breakup as well as self-focusing.