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arXiv:quant-ph/0107053 · Physical Review A

Systematic formulation of slow polaritons in atomic gases

Gediminas Juzeliūnas, H. J. Carmichael

Published Jan 4, 2002• 54 citations
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Abstract

We formulate a theory of slow polaritons in atomic gases and apply it to the slowing down, storing, and redirecting of laser pulses in an electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) medium. The normal modes of the coupled matter and radiation are determined through a full diagonalization of the dissipationless Hamiltonian. Away from the EIT resonance, where the polaritons acquire an excited-state contribution, lifetimes are introduced as a secondary step. With detuning included various four-wave mixing possibilities are analyzed. We investigate specifically the possibility of reverting a stopped polariton by reversing the control beam.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.65.021601

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We formulate a theory of slow polaritons in atomic gases and apply it to the slowing down, storing, and redirecting of laser pulses in an electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) medium. The normal modes of the coupled matter and radiation are determined through a full diagonalization of the dissipationless Hamiltonian. Away from the EIT resonance, where the polaritons acquire an excited-state contribution, lifetimes are introduced as a secondary step. With detuning included various four-wave mixing possibilities are analyzed. We investigate specifically the possibility of reverting a stopped polariton by reversing the control beam.
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.
We identify form-stable coupled excitations of light and matter ("dark-state polaritons") associated with the propagation of quantum fields in electromagnetically induced transparency. The properties of dark-state polaritons such as the group velocity are determined by the mixing angle between light and matter components and can be controlled by an external coherent field as the pulse propagates. In particular, light pulses can be decelerated and "trapped" in which case their shape and quantum state are mapped onto metastable collective states of matter. Possible applications of this reversible coherent-control technique are discussed.
Polaritons are the collective excitations of many atoms dressed by resonant photons, which can be used to explain the slow light propagation with the mechanism of electromagnetically induced transparency. As quasiparticles, these collective excitations possess the typical feature of the matter particles, which can be reflected and deflected by the inhomogeneous medium in its spatial motion with some velocity. In this paper we develop a quantum theory to systematically describe the spatial motion of polaritons in inhomogeneous magnetic and optical fields. This theoretical approach treats these quasiparticles through an effective Schr\"odinger equation with anisotropic dispersion that the longitudinal motion is similar to an ultrarelativistic motion of a ``slow light velocity'' while the transverse motion is of nonrelativity with certain effective mass. We find that, after passing through the EIT medium, the light ray bends due to the spatial-dependent profile of external field. This phenomenon explicitly demonstrates the exotic corpuscular and anisotropic property of polaritons.
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.
For the known, experimentally realized conditions, the detailed analysis of the field-induced transparency and formation of exceptionally low group velocity of probe light is performed. The secondary fields being due to the atomic polarization induced by the two propagating light pulses - coupling (or dressing) and probe ones, resonant to the adjoining transitions in a three-level scheme, are explicitly taken into account. Partly linear (relative to the probe pulse field) and completely non-linear regimes are considered. Particularly, the outputting coupled wave is shown to be slightly amplified, when the probe light pulse “disappears” inside the medium.