Stationary light in atomic media

Abstract

When ensembles of atoms interact with coherent light fields a great many interesting and useful effects can be observed. In particular, the group velocity of the coherent fields can be modified dramatically. Electromagnetically induced transparency is perhaps the best known example, giving rise to very slow light. Careful tuning of the optical fields can also produce stored light where a light field is mapped completely into a coherence of the atomic ensemble. In contrast to stored light, in which the optical field is extinguished, stationary light is a bright field of light with a group velocity of zero. Stationary light has applications in situations where it is important to maintain an optical field, such as attempts to engineer large nonlinear interactions. In this paper we review the stationary light demonstrations published to date and provide a unified theoretical framework that describes the experimental observations. We also discuss possible applications of stationary light with a particular focus on all-optical phase gates for quantum information technology.

References in corpus (15)

• Photonic quantum technologies
• Optical Quantum Computing
• Stationary pulses of light in an atomic medium
• Quantum memory for squeezed light
• Photon storage in Lambda-type optically dense atomic media. II. Free-space model
• Stationary Light Pulses in Cold Atomic Media
• Stationary Light Pulses without Bragg Gratings
• Photon echoes generated by reversing magnetic field gradients in a rubidium vapour
• Photonic Band Gaps in One-Dimensionally Ordered Cold Atomic Vapors
• Dark-State Polaritons for multi-component and stationary light fields
• Induced cavities for photonic quantum gates
• Dynamical Observations of Self-Stabilising Stationary Light
• Coherent and Dynamic Beam Splitting based on Light Storage in Cold Atoms
• Dispersion relations for stationary light in one-dimensional atomic ensembles
• Slow light in flight imaging