A fast-light medium placed inside a resonant interferometer can be used to enhance its sensitivity significantly. At the same time, the linewidth of the cavity resonance can be highly augmented without sacrificing the cavity build-up.
This paper presents the first demonstration of a white-light-cavity in a free-space cavity. Design of a whitelight- cavity has been proposed using negative dispersion in an intra-cavity medium to make the cavity resonate over a large range of frequencies and still maintain a high cavity build-up. The negative dispersion of the intra-cavity medium is caused by bi-frequency Raman gain in an atomic vapor cell. A significantly broad cavity response over a bandwidth greater than 20 MHz has been observed.
By balancing the steep linear and nonlinear dispersions of an intracavity electromagnetically induced transparency medium, the cavity transmission spectra can be significantly modified and controlled. As the cavity input intensity increases, the cavity linewidth changes from far below to above the empty cavity linewidth, corresponding to the photon propagation in the cavity from "subluminal" to "superluminal", respectively. A "white-light cavity" condition has been achieved under certain experimental conditions.
The development of atom interferometry in the last few decades has led to high precision measurements of inertial effects and tests of fundamental physics. New methods for higher sensitivity atom interferometers (AIs) are being explored, particularly the interrogation of atoms with optical cavities [1]. Its benefits would be higher optical power allowing large momentum transfer beam splitters, and possibly cleaner and controlled phase profiles. However high sensitivity AIs require long interrogation times, which combined with cold atom expansion, bring the challenges of large waists in cavities.
Techniques to control dispersion in a medium have attracted much attention due\nto potential applications to devices such as ring laser gyroscopes, interferometric\ngravitational wave detectors, data buffers, phased array radars and quantum information\nprocessors. Of particular interest is an optical resonator containing a medium with an\nanomalous dispersion corresponding to fast-light, which behaves as a White Light\nCavity (WLC). A WLC can be tailored to improve the sensitivity of sensing devices as\nwell as to realize an optical data buffering system that overcomes the delay-bandwidth\nproduct of a conventional cavity.\nThis dissertation describes techniques to tailor the dispersion for fast-light in\nintracavity media. We present first a demonstration of fast-light in a photorefractive\ncrystal. When placed inside a cavity, such a medium could be used to enhance the\nbandwidth of a gravitational wave detector. We then describe how a superluminal laser\ncan be realized by adding anomalously dispersive medium inside a ring laser. We\nidentify theoretical conditions under which the sensitivity of the resonance frequency to a change in the cavity length is enhanced by as much as seven orders of magnitude. This\npaves the way for realizing a fast-light enhanced ring laser gyroscope, for example. This\nis followed by the development of a novel data buffering system which employs two\nWLC systems in series. In this system, a data pulse can be delayed an arbitrary amount\nof time, without significant distortion. The delay time is independent of the data\nbandwidth, and is limited only by the attenuation experienced by the data pulse as it\nbounces between two high-reflectivity mirrors. Such a device would represent a\nsignificant breakthrough in overcoming the delay-time bandwidth product limitation\ninherent in conventional data buffers.\nWe then describe our experimental effort to create a fiber-based WLC by using\nstimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS). Experimental results, in agreement with our\ntheoretical model presented here, show that the WLC effect is small under the conditions\nsupported by current fiber optic technology. We conclude that future efforts to induce a\nlarge WLC effect would require fibers with high Brillouin coefficient and low\ntransmission loss, as well as optical elements with very low insertion loss and high\npower damage thresholds.