Stationary Light Pulses in Cold Atomic Media and without Bragg Gratings

Abstract

The underlying mechanism of the stationary light pulse (SLP) was identified as a band gap being created by a Bragg grating formed by two counter-propagating coupling fields of similar wavelength. Here we present a more general view of the formation of SLPs, namely several balanced four-wave mixing processes sharing the same ground-state coherence. Utilizing this new concept we report the first experimental observation of a bichromatic SLP at wavelengths for which no Bragg grating can be established. We also demonstrate the production of a SLP directly from a propagating light pulse without prior storage. Being easily controlled externally makes SLPs a very versatile tool for low-light-level nonlinear optics and quantum information manipulation.

Experimental demonstration of spinor slow light

“…O ver the last decade there have been significant advances in studying the slow [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] , stored [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] and stationary [22][23][24][25] light stimulated by applications to low-light-level nonlinear optics [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] and quantum information manipulation [36][37][38][39][40][41][42] . The slow and stationary light, forming due to the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) effect [43][44][45] , greatly enhance the light-matter interaction and enable nonlinear optical processes to achieve significant efficiency even at singlephoton level [26][27][28]…”

Quasi-periodic Wannier–Stark ladders from driven atomic Bloch oscillations

“…This is done by using realistic experimental parameters for well-resolved and long-lived atomic Bloch oscillations routinely achieved in time-modulated lattices [42,43]. The atom's wavepacket dynamics is studied within a compact framework provided by the quasi-momentum representation.…”

“…Although these phenomena could be observed in systems where Bloch oscillations have been realized, such as optically excited semiconductor superlattices [10][11][12]44] (see the review by Lyssenko & Leo [45]) and coupled optical waveguides [46,47], quantum gases in optical lattices realize practicable artificial solids with a higher degree of control and manipulation. They have, in fact, become a powerful experimental platform to explore matter waves' many-body interactions [1,2], matter waves' singular dynamics including electric quantum walks [48,49], super [6] and anomalous [50] Bloch oscillations as well as light-matter waves' interactions in stationary [43,[51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58] and moving [59][60][61][62] ordered atomic structures trapped in an optical lattice. Within this context, it is worth mentioning the recent work [63] on cold rubidium atoms trapped in an optical lattice and subject to external lasers that impart a circular motion to them, analogous to the motion of electrons in a strong magnetic field, with which self-similar fractal structures of the spectra (Hofstadter bands) are expected to be seen.…”

Slow, Stored and Stationary Light

“…Another form of stationary light, called bichromatic stationary light was observed in 2009 by the group of Ite Yu at the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan [20] using a double Λ coupling scheme, as shown in . Fig.…”

“…This is called stationary light. It is formed when two counter-propagating pulses of light are driving the same spin excitations of a properly prepared atomic medium [17][18][19][20][21]. This corresponds to having two types of racing cars, one going from the left to the right, and another one from the right to the left.…”