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

All-optical coherent stopping, storage, and time-reversal of light

Mehmet Fatih Yanik, Shanhui Fan

Published Oct 25, 2004• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We show that the use of tunable photonic structures opens up unprecedented possibilities in information processing. In particular, we introduce an all-optical adiabatic bandwidth compression and frequency conversion process that overcomes the classical bandwidth-delay constraint in optics. This process requires only very small index modulations (δn/n<10-4) performed at moderate speeds, and yet can alter the spectrum of a photon almost at will. As examples of this process, we show how light pulses can be stopped and stored all-optically in multitude of systems without using any resonant or coherent electronic interactions. We also show how light pulses can be time-reversed using only linear optical elements and modulators. Such systems open up new opportunities in both fundamental sciences and technological applications.

DOI
10.1117/12.582843

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We show that the use of tunable photonic structures opens up unprecedented possibilities in information processing. In particular, we introduce an all-optical adiabatic bandwidth compression and frequency conversion process that overcomes the classical bandwidth-delay constraint in optics. This process requires only very small index modulations (δn/n<10-4) performed at moderate speeds, and yet can alter the spectrum of a photon almost at will. As examples of this process, we show how light pulses can be stopped and stored all-optically in multitude of systems without using any resonant or coherent electronic interactions. We also show how light pulses can be time-reversed using only linear optical elements and modulators. Such systems open up new opportunities in both fundamental sciences and technological applications.
We show that light pulses can be stopped and stored coherently, with an all-optical adiabatic and reversible pulse bandwidth compression process. Such a process overcomes the fundamental bandwidth-delay constraint in optics and can generate arbitrarily small group velocities for any light pulse with a given bandwidth, without any coherent or resonant light-matter interactions. We exhibit this process in optical resonators, where the bandwidth compression is accomplished only by small refractive-index modulations performed at moderate speeds.
We show that light pulses can be stopped and stored all-optically, with a process that involves an adiabatic and reversible pulse bandwidth compression occurring entirely in the optical domain. Such a process overcomes the fundamental bandwidth-delay constraint in optics, and can generate arbitrarily small group velocities for any light pulse with a given bandwidth, without the use of any coherent or resonant light-matter interactions. We exhibit this process in optical resonator systems, where the pulse bandwidth compression is accomplished only by small refractive index modulations performed at moderate speeds. The optically achievable ultra low speeds can also generate extremely large non-linearities using non-resonant interactions, and thus enable decoherence-free single photon quantum gates.
We present a general analysis for the criteria to stop and store light coherently. We show that a light pulse can be stopped in any physical system, provided that (i) the system bandwidth can be compressed to zero; (ii) the system has sufficient degrees of freedom to accommodate the pulse, and the bandwidth compression occurs while the pulse is in the system; and (iii) the bandwidth compression is done reversibly in an adiabatic fashion that preserves the phase space and the information in the original photon pulse during the entire duration of the stopping process. Based upon this general criterion, we present a brief discussion of stopping-light schemes using atomic resonances, and a detailed analysis of the all-optical scheme that we recently proposed. We show that the all-optical scheme can achieve arbitrarily small group velocities for large bandwidth pulses, and opens up new opportunities in both fundamental sciences and technological applications.
We introduce a new physical process that can perform a complete time-reversal operation on any electromagnetic pulse. The process uses only small refractive index modulations of linear optical elements. No nonlinear multiphoton effects such as four-wave mixing are required. The introduced process can be implemented on chip with standard semiconductor materials. Furthermore, the same process can be used to compress or expand the spectrum of electromagnetic waves while completely preserving the coherent information. We exhibit the time-reversal process by first-principles simulations of microcavity complexes in photonic crystals.