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Advances in Optical Sciences Congress

Controlling the sensitivity of an optical cavity with slow and fast light

David D. Smith, Krishna Myneni, Jamiu A. Odutola, J.-C. Diels

Published Jan 1, 2009• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

We measure mode pushing in a Fabry-Perot cavity by a dispersive medium and find that the scale factor increases more than the mode width. We discuss the conditions that result in such enhanced cavity sensitivities.
DOI
10.1364/sl.2009.smb2

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The pushing of the modes of a Fabry-Perot cavity by an intracavity rubidium cell is measured. The scale factor of the modes is increased by the anomalous dispersion and is inversely proportional to the sum of the effective group index and an additional cavity delay factor that arises from the variation of the Rb absorption over a free spectral range. This additional positive feedback further increases the effect of the anomalous dispersion and goes to zero at the lasing threshold. The mode width does not grow as fast as the scale factor as the intracavity absorption is increased resulting in enhanced measurement sensitivities. For absorptions larger than the scale factor pole, the atom-cavity response is multivalued and mode splitting occurs.
We have measured mode pushing by the dispersion of a rubidium vapor in a Fabry-Perot cavity and have shown that the scale factor and sensitivity of a passive cavity can be strongly enhanced by the presence of such an anomalous dispersion medium. The enhancement is the result of the atom-cavity coupling, which provides a positive feedback to the cavity response. The cavity sensitivity can also be controlled and tuned through a pole by a second, optical pumping, beam applied transverse to the cavity. Alternatively, the sensitivity can be controlled by the introduction of a second counter-propagating input beam that interferes with the first beam, coherently increasing the cavity absorptance. We show that the pole in the sensitivity occurs when the sum of the effective group index and an additional cavity delay factor that accounts for mode reshaping goes to zero, and is an example of an exceptional point, commonly associated with coupled non- Hermitian Hamiltonian systems. Additionally we show that a normal dispersion feature can decrease the cavity scale factor and can be generated through velocity selective optical pumping.
By balancing the steep linear and nonlinear dispersions of an intracavity electromagnetically induced transparency medium, the cavity transmission spectra can be significantly modified and controlled. As the cavity input intensity increases, the cavity linewidth changes from far below to above the empty cavity linewidth, corresponding to the photon propagation in the cavity from "subluminal" to "superluminal", respectively. A "white-light cavity" condition has been achieved under certain experimental conditions.
Recently, it has been shown that a slow-light augmented unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometer (SLAUMZI) can be used to enhance significantly the sensitivity of measuring the frequency shift of a laser, compared to the heterodyne technique. Here, we show that a similar enhancement can be realized using a slow-light augmented Fabry-Perot Cavity (SLAFPC), due to the fact that an FPC is inherently unbalanced, since different bounces of the field traverse different path lengths before interfering with the other bounces. We show how the degree of enhancement in sensitivity depends on the spectral width of the laser and the finesse of the FPC. For potentially realizable conditions, we show that a sensitivity enhancement factor ~2.8*10^6 can be achieved using a SLAFPC.