Storage and Retrieval of Thermal Light in Warm Atomic Vapor

Abstract

We report slowed propagation and storage and retrieval of thermal light in warm rubidium vapor using the effect of electromagnetically-induced transparency (EIT). We first demonstrate slowed-propagation of the probe thermal light beam through an EIT medium by measuring the second-order correlation function of the light field using the Hanbury-Brown$-$Twiss interferometer. We also report an experimental study on the effect of the EIT slow-light medium on the temporal coherence of thermal light. Finally, we demonstrate the storage and retrieval of thermal light beam in the EIT medium. The direct measurement of the photon number statistics of the retrieved light field shows that the photon number statistics is preserved during the storage and retrieval process.

4 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Quantum memory for squeezed light
• Arbitrary-order lensless ghost imaging with thermal light
• High-visibility multi-photon interference of Hanbury Brown - Twiss type for classical light
• Frequency filtered storage of parametric fluorescence with electromagnetically induced transparency

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Atomic vapor quantum memory for a photonic polarization qubit
• Observation of second-order temporal interference with thermal light: Interference beyond the coherence time
• Simultaneous Trapping of Two Optical Pulses in an Atomic Ensemble as Stationary Light Pulses
• Setting a disordered password on a photonic memory
• Robustness of intra-atomic frequency comb based quantum memory against fluctuating environment
• Fundamental trade-off between the speed of light and the Fano factor of photon current in three-level lambda systems