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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Slow and fast light in a phase sensitive system

Shuo Shen, Xiwei Xu, Yanhong Xiao

Published Feb 21, 2014• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Using atomic motion to coherently spread light information stored in atoms provides a novel means to manipulate atom-light interactions. We demonstrate light splitting with moving atoms in a paraffin coated vapor cell, by using phase sensitive degenerate four wave mixing, or self-rotation. This scheme amplifies the beam splitter signal, and in the meantime maintains the phase coherence between the beam splitter channels. Light storage efficiency in the beam-splitting channel can be also enhanced. Such an amplified beam splitter should have applications in optical memory, optical routers and atomic coherence control.

DOI
10.1117/12.2047579

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Using atomic motion to coherently spread light information stored in atoms provides a novel means to manipulate atom-light interactions. We demonstrate light splitting with moving atoms in a paraffin coated vapor cell, by using phase sensitive degenerate four wave mixing, or self-rotation. This scheme amplifies the beam splitter signal, and in the meantime maintains the phase coherence between the beam splitter channels. Light storage efficiency in the beam-splitting channel can be also enhanced. Such an amplified beam splitter should have applications in optical memory, optical routers and atomic coherence control.
Using atomic motion to coherently spread light information stored in atoms provides a means to manipulate atom-light interactions. We demonstrate light splitting with moving atoms in a paraffin-coated vapor cell by using phase-sensitive degenerate four-wave mixing, or self-rotation. This scheme amplifies the slow light beam splitter signal, and, in the meantime, maintains the phase coherence between the beam-splitter channels. Light storage efficiency in the beam-splitting channel can also be enhanced. Furthermore, we demonstrate an optical memory exceeding 1 s, taking advantage of the gain from self-rotation and an atomic coherence composed of a fast-decaying part and a slow-decaying part. These results should find applications in optical memory, optical routers, and atomic coherence control.
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We report our experimental observations of spatial shift and splitting of four-wave mixing (FWM) signal beams induced by additional dressing laser beams. These effects are caused by the enhanced cross-Kerr nonlinearity due to atomic coherence in a two-level atomic system. The spatial separation and number of the split FWM beams can both be controlled by the intensity of the dressing beam, the Kerr nonlinearity, and atomic density. Theoretical results agree quite well with the observations. Studies of such controlled beam splitting can be very useful in understanding spatial soliton formation and interactions, and in applications for spatial signal processing.