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1 Photon lifetime in a cavity containing a slow-light medium

C. Proux, Rupamanjari Ghosh, Sylvain Schwartz, Fabienne Goldfarb, Fabien Bretenaker

Published Jan 1, 2013• 28 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

We investigate experimentally the lifetime of the photons in a cavity containing a medium exhibiting strong positive dispersion. This intracavity positive dispersion is provided by a metastable helium gas at room temperature in the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) regime, in which light propagates at a group velocity of the order of 10000 m/s. The results definitely prove that the lifetime of the cavity photons is governed by the group velocity of light in the cavity, and not its phase velocity.

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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.

Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE•Jan 22, 2009•0 citations
We investigate experimentally the lifetime of the photons in a cavity containing a medium exhibiting strong positive dispersion. This intracavity positive dispersion is provided by a metastable helium gas at room temperature in the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) regime, in which light propagates at a group velocity of the order of 10000 m/s. The results definitely prove that the lifetime of the cavity photons is governed by the group velocity of light in the cavity, and not its phase velocity.
We investigate experimentally the lifetime of the photons in a cavity containing a medium exhibiting strong positive dispersion. This intracavity positive dispersion is provided by a metastable helium gas at room temperature in the electromagnetically induced transparency regime, in which light propagates at a group velocity of the order of 10⁴ m·s⁻¹. The results definitely prove that the lifetime of the cavity photons is governed by the group velocity of light in the cavity and not its phase velocity.
The propagation of light pulses through negative group velocity media is known to give rise to a number of paradoxical situations that seem to violate causality. The solution of these paradoxes has triggered the investigation of a number of interesting and unexpected features of light propagation. Here, we report a combined theoretical and experimental study of the ring-down oscillations in optical cavities filled with a medium with a sufficiently negative frequency dispersion to give a negative round-trip group delay time. We theoretically anticipate that causality imposes the existence of additional resonance peaks in the cavity transmission, resulting in a non-exponential decay of the cavity field and in a breakdown of the cavity decay rate concept. Our predictions are validated by simulations and by an experiment using a room-temperature gas of metastable helium atoms in the detuned electromagnetically induced transparency regime as the cavity medium.
We report an experimental observation of slow light propagation in cold Rb atoms exhibiting cavity electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). The steep slope of the atomic dispersion manifested by EIT reduces the light group velocity. The cavity filtering and feedback further contribute to the slowdown and delay of the light pulse propagation. A combination of the cavity and the EIT atomic system significantly improves the performance of the slow light propagation. A propagation time delay of approximately 200 ns was observed in the cavity and Rb EIT system, which is approximately 70 times greater than the time delay calculated for the light pulse propagation through the same Rb EIT system without the cavity.
The group velocity at which light pulses propagate through a dispersive material system is very different from the vacuum speed of light c, One refers to light as being "slow" for v g << c (Boyd & Gauthier, 2009) or "fast" for v g > c or v g <0 (Stenner et al, 2003 ).For v g <0, the pulse envelope appears to travel backward in the material (Gehring et al, 2006), and hence it is sometimes referred to as "backward light."The subject of slow light has caused keen interest in the past decade or more, and it is possible to control the group velocity of light pulses in the dispersive materials.Interest in slow and fast light dates back to the early days of the 20th century.Sommerfeld and Brillouin (Sommerfeld & Brillouin, 1960) were intrigued by the fact that theory predicts that v g can exceed c, which leads to apparent inconsistencies with Einstein's special theory of relativity.Experimental investigations of extreme propagation velocities were performed soon after the invention of the laser (Faxvog and et al, 1970).In 1999, Harris's group research work greatly stimulated researchers' interests, which showed that light could be slowed down to 17m/s.The result was obtained in ultra cold atom clouds with the use of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), which induces transparency in a material while allowing it to retain strong linear and nonlinear optical properties (Hau et al, 1999).Slow light can also be obtained through the use of the optical response of hot atomic vapors (Philips et al, 2001).These early research works require hard conditions and the slow light cannot operate in room temperature.Recently, researchers found ways to realize slow light operating in room temperature and solid-state materials, which are more suited for many practical applications, namely slow light via stimulated Brillouin scattering(SBS), slow light via coherent population oscillations (CPO), tunable time delays based on group velocity dispersion or conversion/ dispersion(C/D), slow light in fiber Bragg gratings and so on.In this chapter, we describe some of the physical mechanisms that can be used to induce slow and fast light effects in room-temperature solids (Bigelow et al, 2003) and some of the exotic propagation effects that can thereby be observed.We also survey some applications of slow and fast light within the fields of quantum electronics and photonics. Fundamentals of slow and fast lightSlow and fast light refer to the group velocity of a light wave.The group velocity is the velocity most closely related to the velocity at which the peak of a light pulse moves through an optical dispersive material (Milonni, 2005), and is given by the standard result www.intechopen.comRecent Progress in Optical Fiber Research 82where n is the refractive (phase) index and ω is the angular frequency of the carrier wave of the light field.One refers to light as being slow light for v g << c, fast light for for v g > c, and backwards light for v g <0 or v g is negative.Extreme values of the group velocity invariably rely on the dominance of the second contribution to the group index of Equation ( 1).This contribution of course results from the frequency dependence of the refractive index, and for this reason extreme values of the group velocity are usually associated with the resonant or near-resonant response of material systems.According to this theory, slow light is expected in the wings of an absorption line and fast light is expected near line center, and the spatial dispersion, that is, the non-locality in space of the medium response, is another mechanism that can lead to slow light, as has been predicted (Kocharovskaya et al,2001) and observed (Strekalov et al, 2001).We catalogue the main methods to realize slow light in room temperature solid, namely slow light via stimulated Brillouin scattering(SBS), slow light via coherent population oscillations (CPO), tunable time delays based on group velocity dispersion or conversion/ dispersion(C/D), slow light in fiber Bragg gratings and so on.We will describe CPO and SBS slow light in more details.
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.