Journal of Physics Conference Series
Light controlling light in a coupled cavity-atom system
Bichen Zou, Zheng Tan, Yifu Zhu
Abstract
We present a theoretical model of light controlling light in a multi-atom cavity QED system consisting of three-level atoms confined in a cavity and interacting with a control laser from free space. A signal laser is coupled into the cavity and provides two output light channels: the transmitted signal light through the cavity and the reflected signal light from the cavity. We show that with the cavity electromagnetically induced transparency manifested by the free-space control light, the amplitude and the phase of the intra-cavity signal light can be manipulated by the free-space control laser. We analyze the cavity transmitted signal light and the cavity reflected signal light, and show that the two output channels of the signal light are complementary and the cavity-atom system is a versatile system for studies of all-optical switching and cross-phase modulation at low control intensities.