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Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences Physics

Microcavities and Photonic Time Crystals Formed by the Colliding of Half-Cycle Light Pulses in a Resonant Medium

Rostislav M. Arkhipov, Mikhail V. Arkhipov, A. V. Pakhomov, Olga Diachkova, Nikolay N. Rosanov

Published Jan 1, 2025• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract The authors discuss their latest research in the generation and ultrafast control of light-induced dynamic microcavities and photonic time crystals arising from the collision of half-cycle pulses in a medium. The possibility of guiding microcavities during the collision of self-induced transparency half-cycle pulses of the same polarity is demonstrated.

DOI
10.1134/s1062873824709152

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Abstract The authors discuss their latest research in the generation and ultrafast control of light-induced dynamic microcavities and photonic time crystals arising from the collision of half-cycle pulses in a medium. The possibility of guiding microcavities during the collision of self-induced transparency half-cycle pulses of the same polarity is demonstrated.
An optical Bragg-like microcavity can be formed when extremely short light pulses interacting coherently with the medium collide in the resonant medium. Here we present an analytical approach, based on the approximate solution of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation, that reveals both the cavity formation and its control by the half-cycle pulses colliding in the medium. This approach allows the calculation of cavity properties in the weak-field regime without the need for complex numerical simulations. Beyond the approximate analytical solutions, our analytical results are confirmed by numerical simulations of the Maxwell-Bloch equations. Grating formation is also studied in the strong-field regime, where collisions of self-induced transparency half-cycle pulses occur. The results presented here reveal, to our knowledge, a new type of spatio-temporal photonic crystal in the form of micro-cavities in a simple atomic medium. The results obtained demonstrate the feasibility of attosecond optical switching in a simple atomic medium with half-cycle pulses.
The coherent interaction of extremely short light pulses with a resonant medium can result in the formation of population difference gratings. Such gratings have been created by pulses that are π/2 or smaller. This paper demonstrates that a microcavity with Bragg-like mirrors can be formed by colliding two single-cycle attosecond self-induced transparency pulses in the center of a two-level medium. The parameters of this structure can be quickly adjusted by increasing the number of collisions, which showcases the ability to control the dynamic properties of the medium on a sub-cycle time scale by using attosecond pulses.
We predict a novel, to our knowledge, phenomenon—the formation of arrays of localized dynamic microcavities during asymmetric collision of single-cycle optical pulses in a two-level medium. We demonstrate that such pulses, behaving similarly to 2π self-induced transparency solitons, generate dynamic structures whose shape is determined by the time delay between the pulses. The obtained results open new avenues for sub-wavelength light field control and can be applied in the development of ultrafast optical devices, topological photonics, and petahertz electronics.
Rapidly changing the refractive index of a medium in space and time (space-time photonic crystal, STPC) has been a challenging task. Such a rapid change can be achieved by carrier-wave Rabi flopping. We show that it can be realized when a train of half-cycle light pulses collide in a simple three-level atomic medium. We found the formation of Bragg microcavities and demonstrated their ultrafast control in this case. The proposed approach is a convenient way to control medium properties on the sub-cycle time scale. It is a demonstration of the formation of STPCs and their ultrafast control in a simple atomic medium, which has been a difficult task until now.
Abstract The formation of dynamic microcavities (DMs) in the asymmetric collision of a single-cycle π‑pulse and a 2π-pulse of self-induced transparency in a two-level medium is investigated theoretically. The numerical solution of the Maxwell–Bloch equations demonstrates that the interaction of pulses leads to the emergence of two DMs, which are separated in space within the medium. Controlling the shape of the microcavities is possible by altering the number of collisions between pulses. These results pave the way for the development of ultrafast tunable optical devices.
This paper examines the behavior of dynamic microcavities (DMs) in multi-level resonant media when attosecond unipolar pulses of different shapes (Gaussian and rectangular) collide, acting as 2 π -like self-induced transparency pulses. For realistic quasi-unipolar pulses, the influence of the trailing edge of opposite polarity is investigated, and conditions under which the trailing edge’s effect can be ignored are found analytically and then confirmed by a direct numerical calculation. We demonstrate that the collision of sub-cycle pulses in a medium results in a rapid change of the refractive index both in time and space. Thus, the case considered here of a resonant medium under the action of a sequence of pulses is an example of a time-dependent medium. The findings demonstrate the feasibility of creating time-dependent media in an atomic medium with high polarization relaxation times T 2 , and subsequently controlling them with half-cycle pulses at an extremely short timescale of half of an electromagnetic field oscillation.