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Physical Review Letters

Coherent Control of the Polarization of an Optical Field

Stephan Wielandy, Alexander L. Gaeta

Published Oct 19, 1998• 95 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Through use of quantum coherence in an atomic system, we demonstrate that an optical field can be used to completely control the polarization state of another field. Theoretical and experimental results show that by applying a field with a frequency tuned near one transition, an initially isotropic atomic vapor can be made to behave as a linearly or circularly birefringent material for fields tuned near an adjoining transition.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.81.3359

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Through use of quantum coherence in an atomic system, we demonstrate that an optical field can be used to completely control the polarization state of another field. Theoretical and experimental results show that by applying a field with a frequency tuned near one transition, an initially isotropic atomic vapor can be made to behave as a linearly or circularly birefringent material for fields tuned near an adjoining transition.
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Summary form only given. Summary from only given. An isotropic medium, having atoms with m degenerate sublevels, when subjected to a magnetic field, can induce birefringence in the medium. As a result, the plane of polarization of a probe field rotates. This rotation is due to the fact that the magnetic field creates asymmetry between the susceptibilities /spl chi//spl plusmn/ of the medium corresponding to the /spl sigma//spl plusmn/ component of the probe field. We apply a coherent control field which modifies /spl chi//spl plusmn/. Therefore the rotation of probe polarization, due to magnetic field alone, can be controlled efficiently with the use of the control field. We demonstrate this enhancement of the magneto-optical rotation (MOR) of a linearly polarized light.
Abstract The multiplicity of atomic states (and the transitions between them) offer an innate, coherent platform through which microwave and optical fields effectively interact. In an atomic vapor near room temperature, we combine optical and microwave fields to generate a macroscopic internal angular momentum among the atoms—an atomic polarization—at an arbitrary angle with respect to the optical (laser) beam. This geometric freedom enables microwave control over photonic degrees of freedom, which we use in two demonstrations: using microwave-assisted optical pumping, we can rotate linear polarization through several degrees, and we can control the absorption for specific transitions and polarizations, which has applications for microwave-to-optical transduction.
We propose and experimentally demonstrate a mechanism to achieve coherent control of the polarization rotation of an optical field in a multilevel electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) system in rubidium atoms. By choosing a properly polarized coupling field and transition energy levels, the symmetry of the atomic medium to the propagation of two orthogonal polarization components of a weak linearly polarized probe field can be broken, which leads to a coherently controlled rotation of the probe field polarization. This mechanism of coherently controlled optical polarization rotation makes use of asymmetry in EIT subsystems for the two circular polarization components of the probe beam with a contribution from different transition strengths (due to different Clebsh-Gordan coefficients) in this multilevel atomic system.
Summary form only given. Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) refers to a phenomenon, whereby the optically resonant transition is rendered nearly transparent by applying a strong coupling laser field. The mechanism of EIT is usually explained in terms of quantum coherence or quantum interference. This EIT has attracted increasing interest because absorption associated with nonlinear optical processes can be removed. In the typical three-level /spl lambda/-system, which includes the ground state and the metastable state, when the atomic population is prepared in the superposition of the states by the coupling fields, the optical response of the media to the probe field is significantly modified. Since this is a coherent control of an electric field by another field via the atomic coherence, several schemes to control light coherently have been suggested. We propose an optical coherent control scheme of the polarization of optical pulses using the EIT quantum coherence, and numerically study its applicability to fast optical switching.
A sequence of two femtosecond coherent pulses--a strong pi-polarized pulse and a weak sigma-polarized pulse--excite the S1/2-P1/2 transition of atomic rubidium in an optically dense vapor. The sigma pulse induces transitions between the adiabatic states with a coupling strength that is different for identically and oppositely light-shifted coupled states, and that can be modified by tuning the relative phase between the pulses. An efficient control of the medium gain for the sigma pulse is experimentally demonstrated. It is shown to be the result of interference between the absorption and the stimulated emission paths for sigma photons.