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Physical Review E

Understanding subluminal and superluminal propagation through superposition of frequency components

Wei Guo

Published Jan 13, 2006• 13 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Propagation of a light pulse through a dielectric slab is discussed theoretically in this paper. It is exhibited via a multiple-scattering approach that the slab can modify the phase of the pulse's frequency components, so that, when the frequency components are superposed, they cause the peak in the output pulse to appear to travel either faster or slower than in vacuum, depending on whether the slab is absorbing or amplifying. The expressions of the corresponding advancement and delay of the peak are derived and argued to be limited in magnitude by the pulse's duration.

DOI
10.1103/physreve.73.016605

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Propagation of a light pulse through a dielectric slab is discussed theoretically in this paper. It is exhibited via a multiple-scattering approach that the slab can modify the phase of the pulse's frequency components, so that, when the frequency components are superposed, they cause the peak in the output pulse to appear to travel either faster or slower than in vacuum, depending on whether the slab is absorbing or amplifying. The expressions of the corresponding advancement and delay of the peak are derived and argued to be limited in magnitude by the pulse's duration.
Group delay for a reflected light pulse from a weakly absorbing dielectric slab is theoretically investigated, and large negative group delay is found for weak absorption near a resonance of the slab (Re(kd)=mpiRe(kd)=m\\piRe(kd)=mpi). The group delays for both the reflected and transmitted pulses will be saturated with the increase of the absorption.
Pulse propagation through 1-dimensional stratified media is studied. The general features of pulse propagation in relation to the delay or advancement of the pulse are discussed. It is shown that in a lossless system with spatial symmetry the reflected and the transmitted pulses have the same delay or advancement. The phase times and the explicit output pulse profiles for an input Gaussian pulse are calculated. While recalling recent results for a variety of systems (resonant absorbers or heterogeneous medium in a Fabry-Perot cavity, a slab of negative index medium, a left-handed/right-handed periodic structure, etc.), new results involving coupled waveguides and a high finesse cavity containing an electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) medium are presented. Calculations clearly show that for pulses with a carrier tuned at the resonance of the stratified media, one generally has subluminal propagation. Alternatively, in stop gaps or away from the resonances one ends up with superluminal transit. In the case of the EIT cavity it is shown that the large dispersion offered by the intracavity medium can lead to substantial superluminality (ng≃−106) with peak transmission as high as 20%. This is in sharp contrast to large signal attenuation for usual superluminal transit. Note also that EIT, to the best of the authors knowledge, has so far been used to achieve only slow light.
We calculate the effects of normal transmission through an amplifying dielectric slab on the properties of an incident pulse of light. The transmitted pulse shows shifts in peak position and additional lengthening or shortening with respect to the unamplified incident pulse. The magnitudes of these effects are generally larger than those of the corresponding changes that occur in transparent or attenuating slabs. They are interpreted in terms of the interference of multiply reflected contributions to the transmitted pulse. The theory is valid for pulses of nonclassical light, but the same reshaping occurs for appropriate pulses of classical light.
Spectral reshaping and nonuniform phase delay associated with an electromagnetic pulse propagating in a temporally dispersive medium may lead to interesting observations in which the group velocity becomes superluminal or even negative. In such cases, the finite bandwidth of the superluminal region implies the inevitable existence of a cutoff distance beyond which a superluminal pulse becomes subluminal. In this paper, we derive a closed-form analytic expression to estimate this cutoff distance in abnormal dispersive media with gain. Moreover, the method of steepest descent is used to track the time-frequency dynamics associated with the evolution of the center of mass of a superluminal pulse to the subluminal regime. This evolution takes place at longer propagation depths as a result of the subluminal components affecting the behavior of the pulse. Finally, the analysis presents the fundamental limitations of superluminal propagation in light of factors such as the medium depth, pulse width, and the medium dispersion strength.
The propagation of pulses through dispersive media was investigated by solving Maxwell's equations without any approximation. We show that the superluminal propagation of pulses through anomalous dispersive media is a result of the interference of different frequency components composed of the pulse. The coherence of the pulse plays an important role for the superluminal propagation. With the decrease of the coherence of the pulse, the propagation changes from superluminal to subluminal. We have shown that the anomalous dispersion (the real part of the susceptibility) not the amplification (the imaginary part of the susceptibility) plays the essential role in the superluminal propagation. Although the superluminality always exists as long as the spectrum of the coherent pulse is within the anomalously dispersive region, both the energy propagation velocity and the frontal velocity never exceed the light speed in the vacuum. The output pulse through the medium is not the original pulse; instead it carries the information of the original pulse and the information of the prepared medium.