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Science

Rotary Photon Drag Enhanced by a Slow-Light Medium

Sonja Franke‐Arnold, Graham M. Gibson, Robert W. Boyd, Miles J. Padgett

Published Jun 30, 2011• 137 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Transmission through a spinning window slightly rotates the polarization of the light, typically by a microradian. It has been predicted that the same mechanism should also rotate an image. Because this rotary photon drag has a contribution that is inversely proportional to the group velocity, the image rotation is expected to increase in a slow-light medium. Using a ruby window under conditions for coherent population oscillations, we induced an effective group index of about 1 million. The resulting rotation angle was large enough to be observed by the eye. This result shows that rotary photon drag applies to images as well as polarization. The possibility of switching between different rotation states may offer new opportunities for controlled image coding.

DOI
10.1126/science.1203984

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Transmission through a spinning window slightly rotates the polarization of the light, typically by a microradian. It has been predicted that the same mechanism should also rotate an image. Because this rotary photon drag has a contribution that is inversely proportional to the group velocity, the image rotation is expected to increase in a slow-light medium. Using a ruby window under conditions for coherent population oscillations, we induced an effective group index of about 1 million. The resulting rotation angle was large enough to be observed by the eye. This result shows that rotary photon drag applies to images as well as polarization. The possibility of switching between different rotation states may offer new opportunities for controlled image coding.
Abstract The birefringence of rotary photon drags is investigated through induced chiral atomic medium. The birefringence of refractive and group indices, divergent angle and rotary photon drags were controlled and modified with detuning, phases and strength of Rabi frequencies of the driving fields. The value of divergent angle oscillated between ±0.01 radian with phases of control fields φ 3,4 and is minimum at φ 3 = π , while maximum at φ 4 = π . The right and left circularly polarized beams are drag clockwise due clockwise spinning of the medium in the normal dispersive region, while the right and left circularly polarized beams are drag clockwise due anticlockwise spinning of the medium in anomalous dispersive region. The maximum rotary photon drags of birefringent beams of light is calculated to ±5 milli radian. The results show advancement in molecular structure, dual image coding and image designing technology.
Self-pumped slow light, typically observed within laser gain media, is created by an intense pump field. By observing the rotation of a structured laser beam upon transmission through a spinning ruby window, we show that the slowing effect applies equally to both the dark and bright regions of the incident beam. This result is incompatible with slow-light models based on simple pulse-reshaping arising from optical bleaching. Instead, the slow-light effect arises from the long upper-state lifetime of the ruby and a saturation of the absorption, from which the Kramers–Kronig relation gives a highly dispersive phase index and a correspondingly high group index.
Abstract Subluminal and superluminal propagation of light, and normal and anomalous rotary photon drag are reported in this manuscript using control fields of the Milnor polynomial. A crater-type absorption spectrum is reported, having a central peak at the origin with a variation of positions. The normal and anomalous dispersion are associated with the low and high absorption regions. The group index varies in the range of − 1 × 10 7 ⩽ n g ⩽ 1 × 10 7 . This corresponds to a group velocity of v g = c / n g varying in the range of − 30 m s − 1 ⩽ v g ⩽ 30 m s − 1 . The maximum positive and negative delay times are measured to ± 0.002 s . It is reported that slow light propagation generates normal photon drag and fast light propagation generates anomalous rotary photon drag in a spinning medium. The rotary photon drag varies in the range of − 0.005 rad ⩽ θ d ⩽ 0.005 rad , where both normal and anomalous drag is also observed. The modified results will be useful in optical and biomedical sensors, and imaging and telecommunication technologies.
The change in the speed of light as it propagates through a moving material has been a subject of study for almost two centuries. This phenomenon, known as the Fresnel light-drag effect, is quite small and usually requires a large interaction path length and/or a large velocity of the moving medium to be observed. Here, we show experimentally that the observed drag effect can be enhanced by over 2 orders of magnitude when the light beam propagates through a moving slow-light medium. Our results are in good agreement with the theoretical prediction, which indicates that, in the limit of large group indices, the strength of the light-drag effect is proportional to the group index of the moving medium.