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Physical Review A

Enhanced reflection via phase compensation from anomalous dispersion in atomic vapor

Jun-Xiang Zhang, Hai Tao Zhou, Dawei Wang, Shi-Yao Zhu

Published May 27, 2011• 45 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The phase compensation mechanism induced by anomalous dispersion in the reflection process of four-wave mixing (or reflection from a grating) in a three-level system is investigated, where the four wave vectors do not match in vacuum. An efficiency of the reflected signal of as high as 43% from a hot atomic cell of Cs is observed. The maximum reflection occurs when the frequency of the probe beam (and consequently the frequency of the reflected signal) is slightly red detuned from the transition frequency, which is attributed to the phase compensation from the steep anomalous dispersion accompanied with a strong probe absorption. The dependences of the efficiency on the angle between the coupling and probe lights, on the intensity of the coupling, field and on atomic density are studied. A theoretical model is presented and it is in good agreement with the experimental results.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.83.053841

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The phase compensation mechanism induced by anomalous dispersion in the reflection process of four-wave mixing (or reflection from a grating) in a three-level system is investigated, where the four wave vectors do not match in vacuum. An efficiency of the reflected signal of as high as 43% from a hot atomic cell of Cs is observed. The maximum reflection occurs when the frequency of the probe beam (and consequently the frequency of the reflected signal) is slightly red detuned from the transition frequency, which is attributed to the phase compensation from the steep anomalous dispersion accompanied with a strong probe absorption. The dependences of the efficiency on the angle between the coupling and probe lights, on the intensity of the coupling, field and on atomic density are studied. A theoretical model is presented and it is in good agreement with the experimental results.
The reflection spectrum of a probe light in a -type three-level atomic system coupled by an off-resonant standing-wave is investigated experimentally and theoretically. We show that the maximum value of reflection coefficient occurs when both of the coupling and probe lights are tuned off resonances from the atomic transitions. The nature of enhanced reflection is attributed to the phase compensation caused by the anomalous dispersion, which leads to a significant reduction of nonlinear phase mismatch in atomic four-wave mixing. At certain detuning of coupling and probe frequencies near two-photon resonance, there exits a best compensation, so the reflection efficiency reaches its maximum. The dependences of efficiency on the intensity of coupling fields and the density of atoms are also studied.
We experimentally demonstrate the high-efficiency reflection of a probe field in \ensuremath{\Lambda}-type three-level atoms of cesium vapor driven by two counterpropagating coupling fields. More than 60% of reflection efficiency is observed at the phase-matching angle. The underlying mechanism theoretically is investigated as the four-wave mixing is enhanced by the electromagnetically-induced transparency. Both of the two Doppler-free two-photon resonances (one for the probe and co-propagating fields, the other for the reflected and the counterpropagation fields) play an important role in satisfying the phase matching in the reflection direction. The phase compensation due to the anomalous dispersion and the decrease of effective absorption length in the atomic system allow the efficient reflection to be observed in a wide range of incident angles of the probe field and detunings of the coupling field.
Nondegenerate forward four-wave mixing in hot atomic vapors has been shown to produce strong quantum correlations between twin beams of light [McCormick et al., Opt. Lett. 32, 178 (2007)], in a configuration which minimizes losses by absorption. In this paper, we look at the role of the phase-matching condition in the trade-off that occurs between the efficiency of the nonlinear process and the absorption of the twin beams. To this effect, we develop a semiclassical model by deriving the atomic susceptibilities in the relevant double-$\ensuremath{\Lambda}$ configuration and by solving the classical propagation of the twin-beam fields for parameters close to those found in typical experiments. These theoretical results are confirmed by a simple experimental study of the nonlinear gain experienced by the twin beams as a function of the phase mismatch. The model shows that the amount of phase mismatch is key to the realization of the physical conditions in which the absorption of the twin beams is minimized while the cross coupling between the twin beams is maintained at the level required for the generation of strong quantum correlations. The optimum is reached when the four-wave mixing process is not phase matched for fully resonant four-wave mixing.
We report the experimental manipulation of the group velocities of reflected and transmitted light pulses in a degenerate two-level atomic system driven by a standing wave, which is created by two counter-propagating light beams of equal frequencies but variable amplitudes. It is shown that the light pulse is reflected with superluminal group velocity while the transmitted pulse propagates from subluminal to superluminal velocities via changing the power of the backward coupling field. We find that the simultaneous superluminal light reflection and transmission can be reached when the power of the backward field becomes closer or equal to the forward power, in this case the periodical absorption modulation for photonic structure is established in atoms. The theoretical discussion shows that the anomalous dispersion associated with a resonant absorption dip within the gain peak due to four-wave mixing leads to the superluminal reflection, while the varying dispersion from normal to anomalous at transparency, transparency within absorption, and electromagnetically induced absorption windows leads to the subluminal to superluminal transmission.
The quantum coherence of Electromagnetically Induced Transparency (EIT), and Electromagnetically Induced Absorption (EIA) attracted a lot attention in nonlinear process, generation of squeezing, and long-distance communication. EIT and EIA are two opposite coherence effects, EIT can result in efficient nonlinear effects due to the transparency, and EIA may prohibit atoms from generation of nonlinearity due to its absorption, however, the nonlinear in EIA system with standing wave coupling can still be observed, and was interpreted as Electromagnetically Induced Absorption Grating (EIG). We experimentally investigated the coherence in hot atoms, and observed high efficiency of emission in EIA system in both of the cases that Bragg condition is satisfied or can’t be fulfilled. Based on our calculation, the reflection is explained as the result of Four-Wave Mixing, and is enhanced by the quantum coherence and the compensation of phase mismatch from anomalous dispersion of EIA.