Stationary pulses of light in an atomic medium
Stationary pulses of light in an atomic medium
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DOI：
10.1038/nature02176
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发表时间：
2003-12-11
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
Lukin, MD
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Bajcsy, M;Zibrov, AS;Lukin, MD
可以促进光传播的相干控制的物理过程正在积极探索中(1-5)。除了他们的基本兴趣之外，这些努力还受到实际可能性的刺激，例如开发用于光子态的量子存储器(6-8)。光子脉冲的受控局部化和存储还可以允许通过增强的非线性光学过程来操纵光的新方法(9)。最近，电磁感应透明(10)被用来降低传播光脉冲(11，12)的群速度，并将传播光脉冲可逆地映射到原子介质(13-16)中的静止自旋激发。在这里，我们描述并实验演示了一种技术，在这种技术中，在Rb原子的介质中传播的光被转换为具有局域的、稳定的电磁能量的激发，并且可以在可控的间隔后保持和释放。我们的方法创建了具有固定包络的光脉冲，这些光包络绑定到原子自旋相干性，为微光下的光子态操纵和非线性光学过程提供了新的可能性。
Physical processes that could facilitate coherent control of light propagation are under active exploration(1-5). In addition to their fundamental interest, these efforts are stimulated by practical possibilities, such as the development of a quantum memory for photonic states(6 - 8). Controlled localization and storage of photonic pulses may also allow novel approaches to manipulating of light via enhanced nonlinear optical processes(9). Recently, electromagnetically induced transparency(10) was used to reduce the group velocity of propagating light pulses(11,12) and to reversibly map propagating light pulses into stationary spin excitations in atomic media(13 - 16). Here we describe and experimentally demonstrate a technique in which light propagating in a medium of Rb atoms is converted into an excitation with localized, stationary electromagnetic energy, which can be held and released after a controllable interval. Our method creates pulses of light with stationary envelopes bound to an atomic spin coherence, offering new possibilities for photon state manipulation and nonlinear optical processes at low light levels.