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Physical Review A

Controllable enhanced dragging of light in ultradispersive media

Sankar Davuluri, Yuri V. Rostovtsev

Published Jul 5, 2012• 38 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We have theoretically demonstrated an enhanced Fizeau effect due to dragging the light that occurs when the group velocity of light is ultraslow. The proposed experiment can be done in a cell of atomic Rb vapor under conditions such that the group velocity of light is of the order of a few hundred meters per second. We show theoretically that higher-order dispersion can influence the Fizeau effect and can be observed experimentally. It has been shown that the change of phase is sensitive to the motion of the cell with the speed of the order of ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}3}$ cm/s and for possible displacements as small as 10 \AA{}. The enhanced dragging effect can be applied for position control, detection of slow mechanical motion, and efficient modulators of light.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.86.013806

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We have theoretically demonstrated an enhanced Fizeau effect due to dragging the light that occurs when the group velocity of light is ultraslow. The proposed experiment can be done in a cell of atomic Rb vapor under conditions such that the group velocity of light is of the order of a few hundred meters per second. We show theoretically that higher-order dispersion can influence the Fizeau effect and can be observed experimentally. It has been shown that the change of phase is sensitive to the motion of the cell with the speed of the order of 10\ensuremath−3{10}^{\ensuremath{-}3}10\ensuremath−3 cm/s and for possible displacements as small as 10 \AA{}. The enhanced dragging effect can be applied for position control, detection of slow mechanical motion, and efficient modulators of light.
As one of the most influential experiments on the development of modern macroscopic theory from Newtonian mechanics to Einstein's special theory of relativity, the phenomenon of light dragging in a moving medium has been discussed and observed extensively in different types of systems. To have a significant dragging effect, the long duration of light travelling in the medium is preferred. Here we demonstrate a light-dragging experiment in an electromagnetically induced transparent cold atomic ensemble and enhance the dragging effect by at least three orders of magnitude compared with the previous experiments. With a large enhancement of the dragging effect, we realize an atom-based velocimeter that has a sensitivity two orders of magnitude higher than the velocity width of the atomic medium used. Such a demonstration could pave the way for motional sensing using the collective state of atoms in a room temperature vapour cell or solid state material.
The Fresnel-Fizeau effect of transverse drag, in which the trajectory of a light beam changes due to the transverse motion of the optical medium, is usually extremely small and hard to detect. We observe transverse drag in a moving hot-vapor cell, utilizing slow light due to electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). The drag effect is enhanced by a factor 3.6 × 10 5 , corresponding to the ratio between the light speed in vacuum and the group velocity under EIT conditions. We study the contribution of the thermal atomic motion, which is much faster than the mean medium velocity, and identify the regime where its effect on the transverse drag is negligible.
We consider a moving ultra-dispersive medium and demonstrate the enhanced Fizeau effect due to dragging the light. We have shown that the enhanced Fizeau effect on a single atom in a cavity can be observed. It has been shown that the change of phase is sensitive to the motion the speed of the order of 10 −15 cm/Hz 1/2 and for possible displacements as small as 10 −17 cm/Hz 1/2 . One of application can be the detection of weak forces exerted on a single atom. In particular, the Coriolis force as small as 10 −42 N/Hz 1/2 can be detected that would provide opportunity to detect rotation with sensitivity 10 −17 s −1 Hz −1/2 .
A light beam normally incident upon an uniformly moving dielectric medium is, in general, subject to bendings due to a transverse Fresnel-Fizeau light drag effect. In most familiar dielectrics, the magnitude of this bending effect is very small and hard to detect. Yet, the effect can be dramatically enhanced in strongly dispersive media where slow group velocities in the m/s range have been recently observed taking advantage of the electromagnetically induced transparency effect. In addition to the usual downstream drag that takes place for positive group velocities, we discuss a significant anomalous upstream drag which is expected to occur for negative group velocities. Furthermore, for sufficiently fast speeds of the medium, higher-order dispersion terms are found to play an important role and to be responsible for light propagation along curved paths or the restoration of the time and space coherence of an incident noisy beam. The physics underlying this class of slow-light effects is thoroughly discussed.
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.