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arXiv:quant-ph/0307224 · Physical Review Letters

Sub- and Superluminal Propagation of Intense Pulses in Media with Saturated and Reverse Absorption

G. S. Agarwal, Tarak Nath Dey

Published May 19, 2004• 49 citations
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Abstract

We develop models for the propagation of intense pulses in solid state media which can have either saturated absorption or reverse absorption. We model subluminal propagation in ruby and superluminal propagation in alexandrite as three and four level systems, respectively, coupled to Maxwell's equations. We present results well beyond the traditional pump-probe approach and explain the experiments of Bigelow et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 113903 (2003)]Science 301, 200 (2003)]] on solid state materials.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.92.203901

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We develop models for the propagation of intense pulses in solid state media which can have either saturated absorption or reverse absorption. We model subluminal propagation in ruby and superluminal propagation in alexandrite as three and four level systems, respectively, coupled to Maxwell's equations. We present results well beyond the traditional pump-probe approach and explain the experiments of Bigelow et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 113903 (2003)]Science 301, 200 (2003)]] on solid state materials.
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Running-wave solutions to three systems of partial differential equations describing wave propagation in atomic media in the kinetic limit have been obtained. Those systems include approximations to (i) standard two-level Maxwell–Bloch equations; (ii) equations describing processes with saturated absorption in three-level systems and (iii) equations describing processes with reversed saturation in four-level systems. It has been shown that in all three cases kink-like solitary waves can emerge if the dynamical equation for the intensity includes a linear contribution to the Lambert–Beer law. Those solitary waves can propagate with either sub- or superluminal velocity of the edge of the kink, and in a direction which can be either the same as or opposite to that of the carrier wave. In addition, simple qualitative information about the behaviour of waves near the wavefronts has been obtained.
A scheme is proposed for control of pulse propagation from subluminal to superluminal in a four-level Λ-type atomic system. With the relatively intense probe laser and the appropriate detuning of control field, the medium exhibits much lower absorption in the spectral ranges where the dispersion changes from normal to abnormal in the double electromagnetically induced transparency system than in the single electromagnetically induced transparency system. The transmission intensity can be enhanced by several times for the subluminal pulse propagation and by several orders of magnitude for the superluminal pulse propagation without the large distortion in the former compared with those in the latter. We attribute the dramatic absorption reduction to the enhanced nonlinear effects.
Reverse-saturable absorbers are of considerable interest for optical limiting. Using the electric dipole perturbation, we derived the rate equation for a five-level system describing reverse-saturable absorbers. Traditional theories for the propagating laser beam in these materials are expressed in terms of the optical intensity. However, with the introduction of high-power short-pulsed lasers, the propagation of light in these materials may be subject to nonlinear phenomena such as self-focusing and self-phase modulation. Furthermore, conventional theories treat the laser light as a continuous wave or as a very broad temporal pulse in which dispersive effects are neglected. In order to incorporate these other nonlinear or dispersive effects, and therefore determine their influence in reverse-saturable absorbers, we derived an equation for the propagation of the electromagnetic field, rather than the intensity, coupled to the rate equations for a five-level system. We also coupled our theory to experimentally measurable parameters for these materials and detailed the various physical approximations used to obtain the rate equations.
We investigate the causal propagation of the pulse through dispersive media by very precise numerical solution of the coupled Maxwell–Bloch equations without any approximations about the strength of the input field. We study full nonlinear behaviour of the pulse propagation through solid state media like ruby and alexandrite. We have demonstrated that the information carried by the discontinuity, i.e. front of the pulse, moves inside the media with velocity c even though the peak of the pulse can travel either with sub-luminal or with super-luminal velocity. Our numerical demonstration is subject to the condition that the background refractive index of the medium is unity. We extend the argument of Levi-Civita to prove that the discontinuity would travel with velocity c even in a nonlinear medium.
Quantitative analysis of slow light experiments utilising coherent population oscillation (CPO) in a range of saturably absorbing media, including ruby and alexandrite, Er 3+ :Y 2 SiO 5 , bacteriorhodopsin, semiconductor quantum devices and erbium-doped optical fibres, shows that the observations may be more simply interpreted as saturable absorption phenomena. A basic two-level model of a saturable absorber displays all the effects normally associated with slow light, namely phase shift and modulation gain of the transmitted signal, hole burning in the modulation frequency spectrum and power broadening of the spectral hole, each arising from the finite response time of the non-linear absorption. Only where hole-burning in the optical spectrum is observed (using independent pump and probe beams), or pulse delays exceeding the limits set by saturable absorption are obtained, can reasonable confidence be placed in the observation of slow light in such experiments. Superluminal (“fast light”) phenomena in media with reverse saturable absorption (RSA) may be similarly explained.