One consequence of the special theory of relativity is that no signal can cause an effect outside the source light cone, the space-time surface on which light rays emanate from the source. Violation of this principle of relativistic causality leads to paradoxes, such as that of an effect preceding its cause. Recent experiments on optical pulse propagation in so-called 'fast-light' media--which are characterized by a wave group velocity upsilon(g) exceeding the vacuum speed of light c or taking on negative values--have led to renewed debate about the definition of the information velocity upsilon(i). One view is that upsilon(i) = upsilon(g) (ref. 4), which would violate causality, while another is that upsilon(i) = c in all situations, which would preserve causality. Here we find that the time to detect information propagating through a fast-light medium is slightly longer than the time required to detect the same information travelling through a vacuum, even though upsilon(g) in the medium vastly exceeds c. Our observations are therefore consistent with relativistic causality and help to resolve the controversies surrounding superluminal pulse propagation.

A multichannel free-space optical (FSO) communication system based on orbital angular momentum (OAM)-carrying beams is studied. We numerically analyze the effects of atmospheric turbulence on the system and find that turbulence induces attenuation and crosstalk among channels. Based on a model in which the constituent channels are binary symmetric and crosstalk is a Gaussian noise source, we find optimal sets of OAM states at each turbulence condition studied and determine the aggregate capacity of the multichannel system at those conditions. OAM-multiplexed FSO systems that operate in the weak turbulence regime are found to offer good performance. We verify that the aggregate capacity decreases as the turbulence increases. A per-channel bit-error rate evaluation is presented to show the uneven effects of crosstalk on the constituent channels.

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We experimentally investigate the performance of an orbital angular momentum (OAM) multiplexed free space optical (FSO) communication link through emulated atmospheric turbulence. The turbulence effects on the crosstalk and system power penalty of the FSO link are characterized. The experimental results show that the power of the transmitted OAM mode will tend to spread uniformly onto the neighboring mode in medium-to-strong turbulence, resulting in severe crosstalk at the receiver. The power penalty is found to exceed 10 dB in a weak-to-medium turbulence condition due to the turbulence-induced crosstalk and power fluctuation of the received signal.

Abstract:We describe a methodology to maximize slow-light pulse delay subject to a constraint on the allowable pulse distortion. We show that optimizing over a larger number of physical variables can increase the distortion-constrained delay. We demonstrate these concepts by comparing the optimum slow-light pulse delay achievable using a single Lorentzian gain line with that achievable using a pair of closely-spaced gain lines. We predict that distortion management using a gain doublet can provide approximately a factor of 2 increase in slow-light pulse delay as compared with the optimum single-line delay. Experimental results employing Brillouin gain in optical fiber confirm our theoretical predictions. Gaeta, "Tunable all-optical delays via Brillouin slow light in an optical fiber," Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 153902 (2005). 11. K. Y. Song, M. G. Herráez, and L. Thévenaz, "Observation of pulse delaying and advancement in optical fibers using stimulated Brillouin scattering," Opt. Express 13, 82-88 (2005) http://www.opticsexpress.org/abstract.cfm?URI=OPEX-13-1-82.#9100 -$15.00 USD

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We describe a methodology for designing the optimal gain profiles for gain-based, tunable, broadband, slow-light pulse delay devices based on stimulated Brillouin scattering. Optimal gain profiles are obtained under system constraints such as distortion, total pump power, and maximum gain. The delay performance of three candidate systems: Gaussian noise pump broadened (GNPB), optimal gain-only, and optimal gain+absorption are studied using Gaussian and super-Gaussian pulses. For the same pulse bandwidth, we find that the optimal gain+absorption medium improves the delay performance by 2.1 times the GNPB medium delay and 1.3 times the optimal gain-only medium delay for Gaussian pulses. For the super-Gaussian pulses the optimal gain-only medium provides a fractional pulse delay 1.8 times the GNPB medium delay.

By means of numerical simulations we analyze the statistical properties of the power fluctuations induced by the incoherent superposition of multiple transmitted laser beams in a terrestrial free-space optical communication link. The measured signals arising from different transmitted optical beams are found to be statistically correlated. This channel correlation increases with receiver aperture and propagation distance. We find a simple scaling rule for the spatial correlation coefficient in terms of the propagation distance and we are able to predict the scintillation reduction in previously reported experiments with good accuracy. We propose an approximation to the probability density function of the received power of a spatially correlated multiple-beam system in terms of the parameters of the single-channel gamma-gamma function. A bit-error-rate evaluation is also presented to demonstrate the improvement of a multibeam system over its single-beam counterpart.