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Optics Letters

Giant Kerr nonlinearities obtained by electromagnetically induced transparency

Holger Schmidt, Ataç İmamoğlu

Published Dec 1, 1996• 1,176 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We analyze a cross-phase modulation (XPM) scheme that exhibits a giant, resonantly enhanced nonlinearity, along with vanishing linear susceptibilities. The proposed atomic system uses an electromagnetically induced transparency and is limited only by two-photon absorption. We predict dramatic improvement by several orders of magnitude for conditional phase shifts in XPM, and the system has possible applications in quantum nondemolition measurements and for quantum logic gates.

DOI
10.1364/ol.21.001936

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A time-dependent perturbation calculation for a four-level system is presented. A resonantly enhanced Kerr nonlinearity is produced with a combination of long, short, and delayed laser pulses in the presence of electromagnetically induced transparency. We show the enhanced Kerr nonlinearity and vanishingly small linear susceptibility due to the induced transparency, both are favorable for cross-phase modulation. In addition, we show that possible constructive and destructive interference between different excitation pathways could also lead to enhancement and suppression of the Kerr nonlinearity.
In third order nonlinear mediums, the intensity of one optical field can modify the phase of another optical field. This is known as cross-phase modulation (XPM) and is important for Quantum Information Processing (QIP) as phase shifts of single-photons that exceed π rad can be used to implement two-qubit quantum logic gates. For a conventional XPM scheme, the Kerr nonlinearity responsible for XPM is too small for appreciable phase shifts to be achieved with low intensity optical fields. However, Electromagnetically Induced Transparency (EIT) can increase this nonlinearity by several orders of magnitude. This thesis discusses the experimental construction of a laser-atomic system capable of EIT modulated XPM. This includes construction of a rubidium magneto-optical trap (RbMOT), characterization of this RbMOT, demonstration of EIT in the RbMOT, and a system capable of detecting optical phase shifts produced by EIT. The talk will conclude with an outlook on further implementations to the experiment that will increase this nonlinearity such that phase shifts at the single-photon level are possible. | 76 pages
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Recently a cross-phase modulation scheme that yields giant Kerr nonlinearities by use of an electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) was proposed [Schmidt and Imamoglu, Opt. Lett. 21, 1936 (1996)]. We analyze the high-speed properties of this scheme for short-pulse propagation. We discuss the relevant losses in this system and show that for short pulses one-photon losses are dominant. We demonstrate that over the entire bandwidth the attainable phase shift in an EIT scheme with a quasi-cw coupling field is orders of magnitude higher than in a conventional three-level scheme or in EIT schemes, in which matched pulses are used to create the transparency.
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