Journal of Modern Optics
NONLINEAR OPTICS OF ATOMS AND ELECTROMAGNETICALLY INDUCED TRANSPARENCY Dark resonance based optical switching
Byoung Seung HAM
Abstract
An optical switching method based on dark resonance is proposed for ultrafast/ultrawide fibre-optic communications. The proposed switching method is based on dark-resonance induced refractive index changes in a three-level system interacting with two-colour laser lights. Two different mechanisms in the proposed optical switching method are discussed for the use of electromagnetically induced transparency and two-photon coherence induction. They are also compared for suitable applications in fibre-optic communications. Finally, a hyper-THz optical modulator is proposed, limited by current technologies due to carrier lifetime or population relaxation decay time.