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arXiv:quant-ph/0310012 · Physical Review A

Slow light in Doppler-broadened two-level systems

G. S. Agarwal, Tarak Nath Dey

Published Dec 16, 2003• 72 citations
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Abstract

We show that the propagation of light in a Doppler-broadened medium can be slowed down considerably even though such medium exhibits very flat dispersion. The slowing down is achieved by the application of a saturating counter propagating beam that produces a hole in the inhomogeneous line shape. In atomic vapors, we calculate group indices of the order of ${10}^{3}.$ The calculations include all coherence effects.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.68.063816

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We show that the propagation of light in a Doppler-broadened medium can be slowed down considerably even though such medium exhibits very flat dispersion. The slowing down is achieved by the application of a saturating counter propagating beam that produces a hole in the inhomogeneous line shape. In atomic vapors, we calculate group indices of the order of 103.{10}^{3}.103. The calculations include all coherence effects.
We show theoretically that the propagation of light can be slowed down considerably using the method of coherent hole-burning in a Doppler broadened three-level lambda-type atomic medium without the Doppler-free configurations. The reduction of group velocity of light pulse is achieved by the application of a saturating beam and a strong coupling beam which produce a narrow spectral hole-burning at resonance. We can obtain a larger group index than that using the method of saturation absorption spectroscopy in Doppler-broadened two-level atomic systems.
We show that the simultaneous application of a copropagating saturating pump and a counterpropagating coherent beam can be used to burn a narrow spectral hole within the absorption line of the optical transition in a Doppler-broadened medium. The large index of refraction of this hole slows down a light pulse by a factor of about 104{10}^{4}104. In addition, we propose a method to create two-color slow light pulses with simultaneous gain by employing a bichromatic field to saturate the medium.
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.
The paper presents a critical analysis of publications on one of the methods of creating so-called slow light (light with an anomalously low group velocity) arising due to a high steepness of the refractive index dispersion curve. The method employs, for this purpose, the effect of coherent population oscillations accompanied by burning of a narrow spectral hole in the homogeneously broadened absorption spectrum. The interpretation of the experimental data in the studies under consideration is based on the analysis of the response of a nonlinear medium to a low-frequency intensity modulation of the propagating light beam. We show that all the observations of these papers can be easily interpreted in the framework of the simplest model of a saturable absorber and have nothing to do with the hole burning effect or group velocity reduction.
We consider the propagation of a Gaussian probe pulse in an absorptive, optically dense, two-level medium if a deep, persistent hole is created in advance by another pump field in the inhomogeneously broadened absorption spectrum of this medium. Both fields are well separated in time and the lifetime of the hole is assumed to be long with respect to the delay time between the pump and probe pulses. We show that the group velocity of the Gaussian probe pulse reduces several orders in magnitude, similarly to the reduction of the group velocity for the probe field in electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) phenomena. In contrast to EIT, the width of the transparency window can be made very wide because of the saturation broadening of the hole.
In a Doppler broadened three-level Λ-type atomic system, we investigate the absorption spectrum of a weak probe laser in the presence of a saturating laser and a coupling laser. We find that, in order to observe coherent hole-burnings effectively, the two lower levels should be so well spaced that atomic collisions can be neglected, and the saturating (coupling) laser should counter-propagate (co-propagate) with the probe laser. We also give a qualitative analysis to understand the physical origin of coherent hole-burnings.