'Light Storage' and other peculiarities of fast-light atomic medium

CAOUS, Swinburne University of Technology

Monday 17^th October 2005, 11.00AM, Seminar Room AR103, Graduate Research Centre.

All-optical information processing requires the use of photons as carriers of quantum information. Recently broad attention has been focussed on �light storage� (LS), which is the preservation of the information carried by light for controlled later release. Such a possibility was suggested [1] and realized [2] in an atomic medium under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). Storage of light in such a medium was explained based on a model of a mixed light-matter excitation (dark state polariton), which propagates with very small group velocity ("slow-light" medium).

Our experimental observations of LS in rubidium vapour were achieved under conditions where EIT does not exist and the slow-light dark-state polariton model does not apply. Numerical modelling based on the optical Bloch equations reproduces the essential features of the experimental observations.

These results will contribute to a deeper understanding of light storage and retrieval using long-lived ground state atomic coherences. Furthermore, this could result in a reconsideration of the concept of the dark-state polariton and the development of new schemes and methods for more efficient control of light pulses in atomic media.

[1] M. Fleischhauer and M.D. Lukin, Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 5094 (2000).
[2] D. F. Phillips, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 783 (2001).

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