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Journal of Applied Physics

The superluminal propagation in an organic nonlinear optical glass at room temperature

Qiuyun Ouyang, Yundong Zhang, He Tian, Dajun Liu, Ping Yuan, Yinglin Song

Published Nov 1, 2010• 4 citations

Abstract

We investigated the light propagation in an organic glass with phthalocyanine gallium (GaPc) dispersed in polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) fabricated by injection molding. The GaPc/PMMA organic glass is a reverse saturation absorption medium. We observed the superluminal propagation in this organic glass by using the technique of coherent population oscillations at room temperature. The largest time advancement is 2.21 ms and the corresponding group velocity is −0.90 m/s at the wavelength of 532 nm and with the input power of 89 mW. The density matrix theory with four-level model was used to analyze the experimental data. The theoretical simulations showed that the time advancement not only depends on the modulation frequency but also on the lifetime of the first triplet-state of the GaPc. We compared the time advancements between the GaPc/PMMA organic glass and the C60/toluene solution. Although the value of the former is smaller, it is more suitable for practical applications such as optical information processing than the latter.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3493116

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We investigated the light propagation in an organic glass with phthalocyanine gallium (GaPc) dispersed in polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) fabricated by injection molding. The GaPc/PMMA organic glass is a reverse saturation absorption medium. We observed the superluminal propagation in this organic glass by using the technique of coherent population oscillations at room temperature. The largest time advancement is 2.21 ms and the corresponding group velocity is −0.90 m/s at the wavelength of 532 nm and with the input power of 89 mW. The density matrix theory with four-level model was used to analyze the experimental data. The theoretical simulations showed that the time advancement not only depends on the modulation frequency but also on the lifetime of the first triplet-state of the GaPc. We compared the time advancements between the GaPc/PMMA organic glass and the C60/toluene solution. Although the value of the former is smaller, it is more suitable for practical applications such as optical information processing than the latter.

Light speed control had been an interesting issue in recent years. In this work, the authors experimentally observed the backward propagation of light pulse in Phthalocyanin Gallium polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) at room temperature, firstly. Taking use of the modulation technique, we got the time advancement of 260 μs when the sample length was 2 mm long and the modulation frequency was 50 Hz, the corresponding group velocity was -7.69m/s. The phenomenon of backward propagation was a direct result of negative group velocity. And the energy flow still traveled in the forward direction in the sample although the light propagated with a negative group velocity.

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We observed superluminal light in aqueous solution of the protein complex bacteriorhodopsin (bR) at 647.1 nm wavelength where it exhibits reverse saturable behavior, exploiting the technique of coherent population oscillations (CPO). With a modulation frequency of 10 Hz, the signal pulse through a 1 cm path cell is ahead by 3 msec relative to the reference pulse, corresponding to a group velocity of -3.3 m/sec. Following our early work on slow light in the same sample at the saturable wavelength 568.2 nm, we now explicitly observed the narrow spectral hole in the absorption band of the stable B state and further, demonstrated a close correlation between the profile of the hole and the corresponding pulse delay for various modulation frequencies. A similar behavior is observed for superluminal light versus antihole blown in the absorption band.