Slow light via four-wave mixing in a hot rubidium vapour

Ryan M. Camacho, Praveen K. Vudyasetu, John C. Howell

Rachel F. Offer

Yami Fang, Zhongzhong Qin, Hailong Wang +5 more

Dong-Sheng Ding, Zhi‐Yuan Zhou, Bao‐Sen Shi

In this work, we report on an off-resonant four-wave mixing experiment via a ladder-type configuration in a hot rubidium atomic vapour. We find for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, that the generated light is delayed compared with the reference. At the same time, the seeded signal beam is also delayed, though the delay time is not as so large as the one that the generated light has. Both delayed times can be adjusted experimentally by controlling the two-photon detuning. The experimental results are in good agreement with our theoretical predictions. Our results may be important for storing telecom-band photons.

P. Mathey, Grégory Gadret, Konstantin Shcherbin

Rachel F. Offer, Johnathan W. C. Conway, Erling Riis +2 more

Atomic vapours are a versatile tool for studying a wide range of nonlinear phenomena. In particular, quasi-resonant atomic systems allow processes such as electromagnetically induced transparency, fast and slow light, lasing without inversion and four wave mixing (FWM) to be studied at low light intensities. The resonant enhancement of FWM in a rubidium vapour is such that it can be used for efficient frequency up-conversion of near-infrared light (780 and 776 nm) to blue light (420 nm) [1-4].