Materials with tunable negative index of refraction and reduced absorption

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We propose to explore new ways to construct materials with negative index of refraction in the optical regime with minimum absorption. The technique used is to explore electromagnetically induced chirality taking advantage of the coupling of the electric and magnetic field components using laser light. It was shown that in chiral media, where polarization and magnetization depend on both the electric and magnetic component of the probe field, negative refraction is potentially much easier to obtain than in non-chiral media where both the electric permittivity ε and the magnetic permeability μ need to be negative. In particular, we propose to explore the potential of coherence and interference effects in ensembles of resonant dipole oscillators such as atoms or quantum dots for negative refraction; to investigate the potential of chiral negative index materials for applications such as a perfect lens; to explore the possibilities to apply ideas of coherent control to solid-state meta-materials. Furthermore, we will study the noise properties of absorption compensation in negative index materials by doping it with a gain medium.