Shape-preserving diffusion of a high-order mode

Abstract

The close relation between the processes of paraxial diffraction and coherent diffusion is reflected in the similarity between their shape-preserving solutions, notably the Gaussian modes. Differences between these solutions enter only for high-order modes. Here we experimentally study the behavior of shape-preserving high-order modes of coherent diffusion, known as 'elegant' modes, and contrast them with the non-shape-preserving evolution of the corresponding 'standard' modes of optical diffraction. Diffusion of the light field is obtained by mapping it onto the atomic coherence field of a diffusing vapor in a storage-of-light setup. The growth of the elegant mode fits well the theoretical expectations.

References in corpus (3)

• Storing images in warm atomic vapor
• Theory of Thermal Motion in Electromagnetically Induced Transparency: Diffusion, Doppler, Dicke and Ramsey
• Topological stability of stored optical vortices

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Coherent Diffusion of Polaritons in Atomic Media
• How to measure diffusional decoherence in multimode rubidium vapor memories?
• Transverse azimuthal dephasing of vortex spin wave in a hot atomic gas
• Direct observation of atomic diffusion in warm rubidium ensembles
• Structured beams invariant to coherent diffusion