Stationary pulses of light in an atomic medium

Yen-Wei Lin, Wen-Te Liao, Thorsten Peters +5 more

Kristian Rymann Hansen, Klaus Mølmer

We present a theoretical treatment of electromagnetically induced transparency and light storage using standing-wave coupling fields in a medium comprised of stationary atoms, such as an ultracold atomic gas or a solid state medium. We show that it is possible to create stationary pulses of light which have a qualitatively different behavior than in the case of a thermal gas medium, offering greater potential for quantum-information-processing applications.

B. V. Ermakov, Yu A Il'inskiĭ

Kristian Rymann Hansen, Klaus Mølmer

We present a theoretical treatment of electromagnetically induced transparency and light storage using standing wave coupling fields in a medium comprised of stationary atoms, such as an ultra cold atomic gas or a solid state medium. We show that it is possible to create stationary pulses of light which have a qualitatively different behavior than in the case of a thermal gas medium, offering greater potential for quantum information processing applications.

Samina Masood, Iram Saleem

Thorsten Peters, Shih-Wei Su, Yi‐Hsin Chen +3 more

We systematically study stationary light pulses formed in cold atomic media based on the effect of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) with counterpropagating laser fields. In contrast to hot media, the formation of stationary light in cold media is not straightforward. Detrimental coherences of high spatial frequencies can be excited which are naturally suppressed in hot media. We demonstrate numerically that these excitations prevent the formation of stationary light in cold media. We further present numerical and experimental results which show that these excitations can be dynamically suppressed in a medium of nonstationary atoms by reducing the width of the EIT transparency window below the typical Doppler shifts present in the medium. This provides an increased interaction time of the light pulses with the medium and enhances the efficiency of nonlinear optical interactions.