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Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Generating and manipulating beating signals by a microwave field in four-level cold atoms

Qian-Qian Bao, Liu Shuan Yang, Nuo Ba, Cui-Li Cui, Jin‐Hui Wu

Published May 10, 2013• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We propose an efficient scheme for the dynamic generation and manipulation of beating signals in a sample of cold atoms driven into the four-level quasi-Λ configuration. This scheme relies on a procedure of light storage and retrieval controlled by a classical coupling field with a microwave field introduced only in the retrieval stage. One quantum probe field, incident upon this atomic sample, is transformed into a collective excitation of atomic spin coherence and then into two optical components characterized by different time-dependent phases. Consequently the retrieved quantum probe field exhibits a series of maxima and minima (beating signals) in intensity due to the alternative constructive and destructive interference. This interesting phenomenon, in fact, involves the coherent conversion between single-mode and two-mode dark-state polaritons and could be explored to measure the microwave intensity with high-precision beating signals.

DOI
10.1364/josab.30.001532

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We propose an efficient scheme for the robust and controlled generation of beating signals in a sample of stationary atoms driven into the tripod configuration. This scheme relies on an asymmetric procedure of light storage and retrieval where the two classical coupling fields have equal detunings in the storage stage but opposite detunings in the retrieval stage. A quantum probe field, incident upon such an atomic sample, is first transformed into two spin coherence wave-packets and then retrieved with two optical components characterized by different time-dependent phases. Therefore the retrieved quantum probe field exhibits a series of maxima and minima (beating signals) in intensity due to the alternative constructive and destructive interference. This interesting phenomenon involves in fact the coherent manipulation of two dark-state polaritons and may be explored to achieve the fast quantum limited measurement.
We study a five-level double-tripod system of cold atoms for efficiently manipulating the dynamic propagation and evolution of a quantum probe field by modulating four classical control fields. Our numerical results show that it is viable to transform the quantum probe field into a pair of two-color stationary light pulses mutually coupled through two wave packets of atomic spin coherence. The pair of stationary light pulses can be released either from the sample entrance and exit synchronously or just from the sample exit with a controlled time delay. In addition, the two-color stationary light pulses are immune to the fast decay originating from the higher-order Fourier components of atomic spin and optical coherence, and may exhibit the quantum limited beating signals with their characteristic frequency determined by detunings of the four classical control fields. These results could be explored to design novel photonic devices, such as optical routing, beam splitter, and beat generator, for manipulating a quantum light field.
We propose a double-M\mathsf{M}M system of cold atoms for realizing the reversible storage and manipulation of signal fields encoded in degrees of freedom (DOFs) of polarization and orbital angular momentum (OAM). By employing two pairs of counterpropagating controlling fields, we show that the system exhibits dark state polaritons relating to the polarization and propagation direction of the light fields. Through the active operation of the controlling fields in time, stationary light pulses with polarizations and OAM information can be generated due to the tight coupling and balanced competition between the retrieved signal fields, and can be manipulated coherently and all-optically. Another advantage of our proposed scheme is that the two polarization components of the signal field can be decoupled and thus be independently retrieved from the atomic ensemble, and then the scheme can be employed to realize polarization-dependent beam splitting. Such a multiple DOF-dependent scheme could pave the way toward quantum nonlinear optics without a cavity, and could greatly enhance the tunability and capacity for both classical and quantum information processing.
We experimentally study the controllable generation of a beating signal using stored light pulses based on electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in a solid medium. The beating signal relies on an asymmetric procedure of light storage and retrieval. After storing the probe pulse into the spin coherence under the EIT condition, two-color control fields with opposite detunings instead of the initial control field are used to scatter the stored spin coherence. The controllable beating signal is generated due to alternative constructive and destructive interferences in the retrieved signal intensities. The beating of the two-color control fields is mapped into the beating of weak probe fields by using atomic spin coherence. This beating signal will be important in precise atomic spectroscopy and fast quantum limited measurements.
We propose an efficient scheme for optimizing the optical memory of a sequence of signal light pulses in a system of ultracold atoms in Λ configuration.The memory procedure consists of write-in,storage,and retrieval phases.By applying a weak microwave field in the storage stage,additional phase-dependent terms are included,and the contrast of the output signal pulses can be dynamically controlled(enhanced or suppressed) through manipulating the relative phase φ between optical and microwave fields.Our numerical analysis shows that the contrast is enhanced to the most extent when φ = 1.5π.In addition,the contrast is in proportion to the Rabi frequency of the microwave field with a certain relative phase.
We propose an efficient scheme for optimizing the optical memory of a sequence of signal light pulses in a system of ultracold atoms in Λ configuration. The memory procedure consists of write-in, storage, and retrieval phases. By applying a weak microwave field in the storage stage, additional phase-dependent terms are included, and the contrast of the output signal pulses can be dynamically controlled (enhanced or suppressed) through manipulating the relative phase φ between optical and microwave fields. Our numerical analysis shows that the contrast is enhanced to the most extent when φ = 1.5π. In addition, the contrast is in proportion to the Rabi frequency of the microwave field with a certain relative phase.