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Physical Review Letters

Slow and Fast Light in Liquid Crystal Light Valves

S. Residori, U. Bortolozzo, Jean‐Pierre Huignard

Published May 20, 2008• 76 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We show that fast and slow light results from multiple scatterings in a liquid crystal light valve, where nondegenerate two-wave mixing occurs in the Raman-Nath regime of optical diffraction. The large nonlinear response and dispersive characteristics of the liquid crystals allow us to obtain group velocities as slow as less than 0.2 mm/s, which is attractive for the realization of ultrahigh precision interferometers and metrology measurements.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.100.203603

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We show that fast and slow light results from multiple scatterings in a liquid crystal light valve, where nondegenerate two-wave mixing occurs in the Raman-Nath regime of optical diffraction. The large nonlinear response and dispersive characteristics of the liquid crystals allow us to obtain group velocities as slow as less than 0.2 mm/s, which is attractive for the realization of ultrahigh precision interferometers and metrology measurements.
Two-wave mixing experiments performed in a liquid crystal light-valve leads to optical amplification in the Raman-Nath regime of diffraction. By exploiting the dispersion properties associated with the two-wave mixing gain, we demonstrate slow and fast light effects, with the output signal pulse either delayed or anticipated with respect to the input light field. Group velocity as slow as a 0.2 mm/s are obtained, and a large tunability of the group delay is achieved thanks to the ability of controlling the liquid crystal nonlinear response through the main experimental parameters. A theoretical model based on the Kerr-like response of the liquid crystal light-valve accounts for the experimental results and allows us to calculate the group delays for the different output orders. We show that the large group delay obtained in the slow light regime can be exploited to enhance the spectral sensitivity of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer and, on the other side, the narrow frequency bandwidth of the two-wave mixing gain can be used to realize an adaptive holographic system that achieves picometer detection.
By performing two-wave mixing experiments in a liquid-crystal light valve, optical pulses are slowed down to group velocities as slow as a few tenths of mm/s, corresponding to a very large group index. We present experiments and model of the slow-light process occurring in the liquid-crystal light valve, showing that this is characterized by multiple-beam diffraction in the Raman-Nath regime. Depending on the initial frequency detuning between pump and signal, the different output order beams are distinguished by different group delays. The group delay can be tuned by changing the main parameters of the experiment: the detuning between the pump and the input wave packet, the strength of the nonlinearity, and the intensity of the pump beam.
We present the nonlinear optical properties of liquid crystal light-valves and wave-mixing experiments from which slow-light effects are obtained. Group velocities as low as fractions of mm/s are achieved, the corresponding group index becoming very large. We show how this property that can be exploited to realize interferometric systems, for instance, an enhanced sensitivity Mach-Zehnder interferometer containing the light-valve as a slowlight medium is shown. Then, we present a common-path polarization interferometer based on the anisotropic character of the slow-light process occurring in the light-valve. Finally, we present a nonlinear optical cavity where a Doppler shift is introduced by the controlled displacement of one of the mirrors. Self-pulsing is obtained in the cavity due to the strongly dispersive response of the light-valve.