Feasibility study of pulse compression by two-photon self-induced transparency

Naohiro Tanno

Hidetoshi Nakano, Yuzo Ishida

Self-induced transparency (SIT) is a kind of coherent transient phenomena in two-level atomic system. The optical pulse with an area that is an integer multiple of 2π, which causes SIT in an absorber, is stable and a kind of soliton. Thus SIT is expected to be useful in pulse compression and pulse shaping. In this paper, we discuss some problems in experiments of SIT and surveys the experimental results of SIT. It is also described the recent experimental results of coherent nonlinear pulse propagation in BiI3 crystal using tunable sub-picosecond pulses.

Eiichi Hanamura

Nikolay N. Rosanov, Victor E. Semenov, N. V. Vysotina

The propagation of self-induced transparency video pulses is studied in a waveguide containing two-level atoms of two types, which can either amplify or absorb pulses. It is shown that the amplified pulse can be compressed down to the duration comparable with the inverse frequency of the atomic transition (a few femtoseconds) along with the increase in the peak amplitude. The mechanisms restricting the compression of amplified self-induced transparency pulses are analysed (the introduction of the third atomic level and the use of the Bragg grating of the waveguide refractive index).

Suhui Yang, Dong Wang, Xu-Zhen Guo +2 more

Rostislav M. Arkhipov, Mikhail V. Arkhipov, Ayhan Demircan +3 more

We propose here a new approach for compression and frequency up-conversion of short optical pulses in the regime of extreme nonlinear optics in optically dense absorbing media, providing an alternative route to attosecond-scale pulses at high frequencies. This method is based on dynamics of self-induced transparency (SIT) pulses of nearly single cycle duration, leading to single-cycle-scale Rabi oscillations in the medium. The sub-cycle components of an incident pulse behave as separate SIT-pulses, approaching each other and self-compressing, resulting in the threefold compression in time and frequency up-conversion by the same factor. As we show, the scheme can be cascaded, staying at the subsequent stage with nearly the same compression and up-conversion ratio. In this way, as our simulations show, after only few micrometers of propagation, a 700 nm wavelength single cycle pulse can be compressed to a pulse of 200 attoseconds duration located in XUV frequency range.