2000/01/17 by Olga Kocharovskaya, Kocharovskaya, Olga, Yuri Rostovtsev +3
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.quant-ph/0001058
arxiv created 2000/10/09 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
We prove that it is possible to freeze a light pulse (i.e., to bring it to a full stop) or even to make its group velocity negative in a coherently driven Doppler broadened atomic medium via electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). This remarkable phenomenon of the ultra-slow EIT polariton is based on the spatial dispersion of the refraction index n(\w,k), i.e., its wavenumber dependence, which is due to atomic motion and provides a negative contribution to the group velocity. This is related to, but qualitatively different from, the recently observed light slowing caused by large temporal (frequency) dispersion.