Slow and Fast Light and Storage of Photons

Yu-Kun Pei, Miao Yin

Abstract We theoretically discuss the influence of a squeezed drive on the fast and slow light effect at different temperatures by focusing on two main factors: the nonlinear gain coefficient of optical parametric amplification and the phase of the pumping field. We show that the nonlinear gain coefficient and the phase of the pump field will affect the coupling strength between photon and magnon, which provides a way to achieve more obvious fast and slow light effects and good potential to realize the fast-slow light conversion. Moreover, by comparing two different temperatures, we find that the low temperature environment is more conducive to the production of fast light and slow light. With the addition of the squeezing drive field, the group delay of the system will get a larger value and the symmetry of the system will be destroyed, leading to asymmetric absorption. Our results provide more freedom for the realization and conversion of fast and slow light and is expected to find applications in optical communication and optical storage.

James K. Thompson, Adam T. Black, Vladan Vuletić

Ronald Lee Walsworth

A. M. Akulshin, A. Lezama, Andrei I. Sidorov +3 more

We have found that storage and retrieval of optical pulses in fast-light and slow-light atomic media with ground-state Zeeman coherence are surprisingly similar despite different optical properties.

Lene Vestergaard Hau

A. Lezama, A. M. Akulshin, Andrei I. Sidorov +1 more

We report experimental evidence that light storage, understood as the controlled release of a light pulse by an atomic sample dependent on the past presence of a writing pulse, is not restricted to small-group-velocity media but can also occur in a negative-group-velocity medium. We present a numerical modeling in close agreement with our observations and a simple physical picture applicable to light storage experiments in both ``slow'' and ``fast'' light media.