Light storage in an optically thick atomic ensemble under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency and four-wave mixing

Nathaniel B. Phillips, Alexey V. Gorshkov, and Irina Novikova
Phys. Rev. A 83, 063823 – Published 20 June 2011

Abstract

We study the modification of a traditional electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) stored-light technique that includes both EIT and four-wave mixing (FWM) in an ensemble of hot Rb atoms. The standard treatment of light storage involves the coherent and reversible mapping of one photonic mode onto a collective spin coherence. It has been shown that unwanted, competing processes such as four-wave mixing are enhanced by EIT and can significantly modify the signal optical pulse propagation. We present theoretical and experimental evidence to indicate that, while a Stokes field is indeed detected upon retrieval of the signal field, any information originally encoded in a seeded Stokes field is not independently preserved during the storage process. We present a simple model that describes the propagation dynamics of the fields and the impact of FWM on the spin wave.

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  • Received 10 March 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.83.063823

©2011 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Nathaniel B. Phillips1, Alexey V. Gorshkov2, and Irina Novikova1

  • 1Department of Physics, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg,Virginia 23185, USA
  • 2Institute for Quantum Information, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA

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Issue

Vol. 83, Iss. 6 — June 2011

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