Adiabatic propagation of quantized light pulses in an atomic medium with the tripod level configuration
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Adiabatic Propagation of Quantized Light Pulses in an Atomic Medium with the Tripod Level Configuration¶ I. E. Mazets Ioffe Physicotechnical Institute, St. Petersburg, 194021 Russia e-mail: [email protected] Received March 24, 2006
Abstract—We consider adiabatic propagation of a pair of quantized light pulses in a coherently prepared atomic medium with the tripod level configuration. We find that under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency, two distinct polariton modes are simultaneously formed in the medium. These polaritons, represented by certain coherent superpositions of the quantized fields, have different group velocities; the fast one propagates at essentially the speed of light, while the group velocity of the slow polariton can be dynamically reduced to zero. The state mapping between the electromagnetic field and atomic ensemble is also demonstrated. PACS numbers: 42.50.Gy DOI: 10.1134/S1063776106090056
Shape-preserving adiabatic propagation of electromagnetic pulses, often termed adiabatons, in threelevel atomic media has been studied over the last decade [1–3]. The underlying effect is the coherent population trapping phenomenon [4] that is the accumulation of atoms in a coherent superposition of states, which is immune to excitation by the given frequencysplit laser radiation. Its extension to atomic or molecular systems containing more than just three levels, such as four-level atoms with the tripod level configuration, is becoming an active topic of current research [5]. The related effect of electromagnetically induced transparency (the manifestation of coherent population trapping in optically dense media) [6] is the basis for several recent groundbreaking achievements, such as reduction of the group velocity of weak light pulses to remarkably low values [7] or even down to a complete stop [8, 9], single-photon pulse generation [10], and reversible quantum memories [11], which may eventually be employed to realize deterministic quantum computation with single-photon qubits [12]. In recent paper [13], we studied the adiabatic pulse propagation in a medium of atoms with the tripod level scheme (hereinafter called a tripod medium). We there considered strong coherent pulses of large amplitudes, describable by the semiclassical approach. Weak quantum pulse propagation in such a system was studied in [14], where the possibility of achieving a quantum phase gate between a pair of single-photon pulses was demonstrated. Parametric generation of light in a medium of tripod atoms prepared in a certain coherent ¶
The text was submitted by the author in English.
superposition of ground states was recently discussed in [15]. The main result of the semiclassical analysis in [13] is that a classical three-component light pulse propagating in a tripod medium under adiabatic conditions asymptotically (at large propagation times or distances) evolves into a pair of nonlinear, shape-preserving pulses propagating at different group velocities. The fast pulse propag
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