Steep optical wave group velocity reduction and storage of light without electromagnetically induced transparency

We report a slow light-enhanced photon echo method, whose retrieval efficiency is two orders of magnitude higher than that of conventional photon echoes. The enhanced photon echo efficiency is due to lengthened interaction time given by ultraslow group velocity.

In this letter we report the first experimental observation of temporal delay control of large-spectral-bandwidth multimode laser pulses by means of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). We achieved controllable retardation with limited temporal distortion of optical pulses with an input spectral bandwidth of 3.3 GHz. The experimental results compare favorably with theoretical predictions.

In this article, we experimentally demonstrate a new way of controlling the group velocity of an optical pulse by using a combination of spectral hole burning, slow light effect and linear Stark effect in a rare-earth-ion-doped crystal. The group velocity can be changed continuously by a factor of 20 without significant pulse distortion or absorption of the pulse energy. With a similar technique, an optical pulse can also be compressed in time. Theoretical simulations were de...

We show that light pulses can be stopped and stored all-optically, with a process that involves an adiabatic and reversible pulse bandwidth compression occurring entirely in the optical domain. Such a process overcomes the fundamental bandwidth-delay constraint in optics, and can generate arbitrarily small group velocities for light pulses with a given bandwidth, without the use of any coherent or resonant light-matter interactions. We exhibit this process in optical resonato...

We propose a scenario of quantum memory for light based on Raman scattering. The storage medium is a vapor and the different spectral components of the incoming signal are stored in different atomic velocity classes. One uses appropriate pulses to reverse the resulting Doppler phase shift and to regenerate the signal, without distortion, in the backward direction. The different stages of the protocol are detailed and the recovery efficiency is calculated in the semi-classical...

We present undergraduate-friendly instructions on how to produce light pulses propagating through warm Rubidium vapor with speeds less than 400 m/s, i.e., nearly a million times slower than c. We elucidate the role played by electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in producing slow light pulses, and discuss how to achieve the required experimental conditions. The optical set up is presented, and details provided for preparation of pump, probe, and reference pulses of t...

We propose a novel configuration that utilizes electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) to tailor a fiber mode propagating inside a thin optical fiber and coherently control its dispersion properties to drastically reduce the group velocity of the fiber mode. The key to this proposal is: the evanescent-like field of the thin fiber strongly couples with the surrounding active medium, so that the EIT condition is met by the medium. We show how the properties of the fiber ...

We propose a scheme to realize the storage and retrieval of light pulses in a fast-light medium via a mechanism of active Raman gain (ARG). The system under consideration is a four-level atomic gas interacting with three (pump, signal and control) laser fields. We show that a stable propagation of signal light pulses with superluminal velocity (i.e. fast-light pulses) is possible in such system through the ARG contributed by the pump field and the quantum interference effect ...

We study the behavior of the group velocity of light under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in a Doppler broadened medium. Specifically, we show how the group delay (or group velocity) of probe and generated Stokes fields depends on the one-photon detuning of drive and probe fields. We find that for atoms in a buffer gas the group velocity decreases with positive one-photon detuning of the drive fields, and increases when the fields are red detuned...

We show both analytically and numerically that photons from a probe pulse are not stored in several recent experiments. Rather, they are absorbed to produce a two-photon excitation. More importantly, when an identical coupling pulse is re-injected into the medium, we show that the regenerated optical field has a pulse width that is very different from the original probe field. It is therefore, not a faithful copy of the original probe pulse.