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Physical Review Letters

Time-Bandwidth Problem in Room Temperature Slow Light

Zhijie Deng, De-Kui Qing, Philip Hemmer, C. H. Raymond Ooi, Muhammad Suhail Zubairy, Marlan O. Scully

Published Jan 20, 2006• 41 citations
Publisher

Abstract

For many applications of slow or stopped light, the delay-time-bandwidth product is a fundamental issue. So far, however, slow-light demonstrations do not show a large delay-time-bandwidth product, especially in room temperature solids. Here we demonstrate that the use of artificial inhomogeneous broadening has the potential to solve this problem. A proof-of-principle experiment is done using slow light produced by two-beam coupling in a photorefractive crystal Ce:BaTiO3 where Bragg selection is used to provide the artificial inhomogeneity. Examples of how to generalize this concept for use with other room temperature slow-light solids are also given.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.96.023602

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For many applications of slow or stopped light, the delay-time-bandwidth product is a fundamental issue. So far, however, slow-light demonstrations do not show a large delay-time-bandwidth product, especially in room temperature solids. Here we demonstrate that the use of artificial inhomogeneous broadening has the potential to solve this problem. A proof-of-principle experiment is done using slow light produced by two-beam coupling in a photorefractive crystal Ce:BaTiO3 where Bragg selection is used to provide the artificial inhomogeneity. Examples of how to generalize this concept for use with other room temperature slow-light solids are also given.
For many applications of slow or stopped light, the delay-time-bandwidth product is a fundamental issue. However, existing slow light demonstrations do not give a satisfactory delay-time bandwidth product, especially in room temperature solids. Here we demonstrate that the use of artificial inhomogeneous broadening has the potential to solve this problem by simultaneously slow down all the frequency components of the input pulse. The proof of principle experiment was done using three-wave mixing in a photorefractive crystal Ce:BaTiO3 where Bragg selection is used to provide the inhomogeneity.
Recently artificial inhomogeneous broadening was proposed to expand the bandwidth of slow light. The point is to independently slow down all harmonic components of the input pulse via inhomogeneous broadening. An input pulse or sequence of pulses can be split into independent spectral channels by a dispersive element such as a prism or grating. These sub-pulses are then slowed by bandwidth-matched slow-light array elements, and then recombined with another dispersive element to produce the output pulse. The proof of principle experiment was done with a photorefractive crystal Ce:BaTiO3 where the crystal function as both dispersive elements and slow lights devices.
Lately, active research has been conducted in slowing down light pulses to the order of tens of meters per second or below. An interesting application would be an optical buffer for all optical routers, where solid state devices operating under room temperature are desired. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of such a device with a Ce:BaTiO3 crystal. Group velocity as slow as 2 mm/s is obtained in the two-wave coupling experiment. By modulating the angular-multiplexed pump beams in the experiment, we also demonstrate the modulation of the output waveform, which could be used to address the problem of pulse broadening that so far limits the application of room temperature slow light.
Slow and superluminal group velocities can be observed in any material that has large normal or anomalous dispersion. While this fact has been known for more than a century, recent experiments have shown that the dispersion can be very large without dramatically deforming a pulse. As a result, the significance and nature of pulse velocity is being reevaluated. In this review, we discuss some of the current techniques used for generating ultra-slow, superluminal, and even stopped light. While ultra-slow and superluminal group velocities have been observed in complicated systems, from an applications point of view it is highly desirable to do have this done in a solid that can operate at room temperature. We describe how coherent population oscillations can produce ultra-slow and superluminal light under these conditions.