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Journal of the Korean Physical Society

Formation of a Stationary Light Pulse in a Doppler-Broadened EIT Medium

Y.-T. Chough

Published Nov 1, 2018• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

A number of experiments have been performed on light slowing and stopping in the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) media of hot atomic gases where the Doppler-shift may add detunings to the field frequencies in an inhomogeneous fashion. We provide here a theoretical analysis as to the effect of such a Doppler-broadened environment on the dynamics of the system in comparison to a cold atomic medium. We will show that one of the most critical factors in the formation of a stationary light pulse is the enhancement of the excited-state decay rate caused by the collisions between the atoms of the medium and the molecules of the buffer gas.

DOI
10.3938/jkps.73.1479

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A number of experiments have been performed on light slowing and stopping in the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) media of hot atomic gases where the Doppler-shift may add detunings to the field frequencies in an inhomogeneous fashion. We provide here a theoretical analysis as to the effect of such a Doppler-broadened environment on the dynamics of the system in comparison to a cold atomic medium. We will show that one of the most critical factors in the formation of a stationary light pulse is the enhancement of the excited-state decay rate caused by the collisions between the atoms of the medium and the molecules of the buffer gas.
We systematically study stationary light pulses formed in cold atomic media based on the effect of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) with counterpropagating laser fields. In contrast to hot media, the formation of stationary light in cold media is not straightforward. Detrimental coherences of high spatial frequencies can be excited which are naturally suppressed in hot media. We demonstrate numerically that these excitations prevent the formation of stationary light in cold media. We further present numerical and experimental results which show that these excitations can be dynamically suppressed in a medium of nonstationary atoms by reducing the width of the EIT transparency window below the typical Doppler shifts present in the medium. This provides an increased interaction time of the light pulses with the medium and enhances the efficiency of nonlinear optical interactions.
We prove that it is possible to freeze a light pulse (i.e., to bring it to a full stop) or even to make its group velocity negative in a coherently driven Doppler broadened atomic medium via electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). This remarkable phenomenon of the ultraslow EIT polariton is based on the spatial dispersion of the refraction index n(omega,k), i.e., its wave number dependence, which is due to atomic motion and provides a negative contribution to the group velocity. This is related to, but qualitatively different from, the recently observed light slowing caused by large temporal (frequency) dispersion.
The influence of Kerr nonlinearity and Doppler broadening on the slow light propagation of a dispersive atomic medium is revisited using a four-level ?-type (87Rb) atomic system under the condition of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). The medium exhibits an EIT process which is accompanied by normal dispersion, i.e.,?sub-luminal (slow light) pulse propagation. In the presence of Kerr nonlinearity and the Doppler broadening effect the dispersion property of the proposed atomic medium is modified, which leads to enhancement of the positive group index of the medium. The combined effect of Kerr nonlinearity and Doppler broadening on slow light propagation inside the medium is the major motivation for this work.
We discuss stationary light created by a pair of counterpropagating control fields in $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$-type atomic gases with electromagnetically induced transparency for the case of negligible Doppler broadening. In this case, the secular approximation used in the discussion of stationary light in hot vapors is no longer valid. We discuss the quality of the effective light-trapping system and show that in contrast to previous claims it is finite even for vanishing ground-state dephasing. The dynamics of the photon loss is in general nonexponential and can be faster or slower than in hot gases.
Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) is the fact that a strong field (called control) resonant with an atomic transition, can make the atomic medium transparent for another field (called signal) resonant with a transition sharing the same excited state. Introduced theoretically and first observed by Harris and co-workers, it has since then given rise to important applications. Significantly, EIT led to the demonstration of slow-light and opened the way to the development of a reversible quantum memory for light, which is a major challenge for quantum information networking.