We study the interaction of a weak probe field, having two orthogonally polarized components, with an optically dense medium of four-level atoms in a tripod configuration. In the presence of a coherent driving laser, electromagnetically induced transparency is attained in the medium, dramatically enhancing its linear as well as nonlinear dispersion while simultaneously suppressing the probe field absorption. We present the semiclassical and fully quantum analysis of the system. We propose an experimentally feasible setup that can induce large Faraday rotation of the probe field polarization and therefore be used for ultra-sensitive optical magnetometry. We then study the Kerr nonlinear coupling between the two components of the probe, demonstrating a novel regime of symmetric, extremely efficient cross-phase modulation, capable of fully entangling two single-photon pulses. This scheme may thus pave the way to photon-based quantum information applications, such as deterministic all-optical quantum computation, dense coding and teleportation.
We analyze the nonlinear optical response of a four-level atomic system driven into a tripod configuration. The large cross-Kerr nonlinearities that occurr in such a system are shown to produce nonlinear phase shift of order $π$. Such a substantial shift may be observed in a cold atomic gas in a magneto-optical trap where it coupl be fasibly exploited towards the realization of a polarization quantum phase gate. The experimental feasibility of such a gate is here examined in detail.
We consider transfer of optical vortices between laser pulses carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) in a cloud of cold atoms characterized by the $Λ$ configuration of the atom-light coupling. The atoms are initially prepared in a coherent superposition of the lower levels, creating a so-called phaseonium medium. If a single vortex beam initially acts on one transition of the $Λ$ scheme, an extra laser beam is subsequently generated with the same vorticity as that of the incident vortex beam. The absorption of the incident probe beam takes place mostly at the beginning of the atomic medium wi…
We consider the propagation of a quantized polarized light in a magneto-optically manipulated atomic ensemble with a tripod configuration. Polariton formalism is applied when the medium is subjected to a washboard magnetic field under electromagnetically induced transparency. The dark-state polariton with multiple components is achieved. We analyze quantum dynamics of the dark-state polariton by some experiment data from rubidium D1-line. It is found that one component propagates freely, however the wavepacket trajectory of the other component performs Bloch oscillations.
We demonstrate the feasibility of levitating a small mirror using only radiation pressure. In our scheme, the mirror is supported by a tripod where each leg of the tripod is a Fabry-Perot cavity. The macroscopic state of the mirror is coherently coupled to the supporting cavity modes allowing coherent interrogation and manipulation of the mirror motion. The proposed scheme is an extreme example of the optical spring, where a mechanical oscillator is isolated from the environment and its mechanical frequency and macroscopic state can be manipulated solely through optical fields. We model the st…
We present a phase induced transparency based scheme to generate structured beam patterns in a closed four level atomic system. We employ phase structured probe beam and a transverse magnetic field (TMF) to create phase dependent medium susceptibility. We show that such phase dependent modulation of absorption holds the key to formation of a structured beam. We use a full density matrix formalism to explain the experiments of Radwell et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 114,123603 (2015)] at weak probe limits. Our numerical results on beam propagation confirms that the phase information present in the abs…
New phenomenon of temporal oscillations of nonlinear Faraday rotation in a driven four-level system is predicted. We show that in this system with one upper level, under the conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency created by a strong coupling field, the polarization rotation of weak probe light exhibits slowly damped oscillations with a frequency proportional to the strength of an applied magnetic field. This opens up an alternate way to sensitive magnetometric measurements. Applications in low-light nonlinear optics such as photon entanglement are feasible.
Linear and nonlinear optical torque in multi-level atomic systems driven by counter-rotating orbital angular momentum fields
Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astronomy, Vilnius University(维尔纽斯大学理论物理与天文研究所);Laser Research Center, Vilnius University(维尔纽斯大学激光研究中心);Département Physique, Faculté des Sciences, Aix-Marseille Université(艾克斯-马赛大学理学院物理系);Baltic Institute of Advanced Technology(波罗的海先进技术研究所)
Simultaneous strong coherent pumping of the two transitions of a V-level atom with very differentdecay rates has been predicted to create almost perfect inversion on the narrower transition. Usingthe example of the blue and red transitions in Strontium we show that for suitable operatingconditions the corresponding resonant gain can be used to continuously operate a laser on thenarrow transition. In particular, for a strong detuning of the pump field with respect to the narrowtransition, coherent laser emission occurs close to the bare atomic transition frequency exhibitingonly a negligible co…
We consider the interaction of two weak probe fields of light with an atomic ensemble coherently driven by two pairs of standing wave laser fields in a tripod-type linkage scheme. The system is shown to exhibit a Dirac-like spectrum for light-matter quasi-particles with multiple dark-states, termed spinor slow-light polaritons (SSP). They posses an "effective speed of light" given by the group-velocity of slow-light, and can be made massive by inducing a small two-photon detuning. Control of the two-photon detuning can be used to locally vary the mass including a sign flip. This allows e.g. th…
We investigate quantum nonlinear effects at a level of individual quanta in a double tripod atom-light coupling scheme involving two atomic Rydberg states. In such a scheme the slow light coherently coupled to strongly interacting Rydberg states represents a two-component or spinor light. The scheme provides additional possibilities for the control and manipulation of light quanta. A distinctive feature of the proposed setup is that it combines the spin-orbit coupling for the spinor slow light with an interaction between the photons, enabling generation of the second probe beam even when two-p…
A quantum internet, where widely separated quantum devices are coherently connected, is a fundamental vision for local and global quantum information networks and processing. Superconducting quantum devices can now perform sophisticated quantum engineering locally on chip and a detailed method to achieve coherent optical quantum interconnection between distant superconducting devices is a vital, but highly challenging, goal. We describe a concrete opto-magneto-mechanical system that can interconvert microwave-to-optical quantum information with high fidelity. In one such node we utilise the ma…
We consider two-component "spinor" slow light in an ensemble of atoms coherently driven by two pairs of counterpropagating control laser fields in a double tripod-type linkage scheme. We derive an equation of motion for the spinor slow light (SSL) representing an effective Dirac equation for a massive particle with the mass determined by the two-photon detuning. By changing the detuning the atomic medium acts as a photonic crystal with a controllable band gap. If the frequency of the incident probe light lies within the band gap, the light tunnels through the sample. For frequencies outside th…
Surfaces enable useful functionalities for quantum systems, e.g. as interfaces to sensing targets, but often result in surface-induced decoherence where unpaired electron spins are common culprits. Here we show that the coherence time of a near-surface qubit is increased by coherent radio-frequency driving of surface electron spins, where we use a diamond nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center as a model qubit. This technique is complementary to other methods of suppressing decoherence, and importantly, requires no additional materials processing or control of the qubit. Further, by combining driving wi…
This research focuses on a coherently driven four-level atomic medium with the aim of inducing a negative index of refraction while taking into consideration local field corrections as well as magnetoelectric cross coupling, i.e. chirality, within the material's response functions. Two control fields are used to render the medium transparent for a probe field which simultaenously couples to an electric and a magnetic dipole transition, thus allowing one to test the permittivity and permeability of the material at the same time. Numerical simulations show that a negative index of refraction wit…
We discuss the feasibility of negative refraction with reduced absorption in coherently driven atomic media. Coherent coupling of an electric and a magnetic dipole transition by laser fields induces magneto-electric cross-coupling and negative refraction at dipole densities which are considerably smaller than necessary to achieve a negative permeability. At the same time the absorption gets minimized due to destructive quantum interference and the ratio of negative refraction index to absorption becomes orders of magnitude larger than in systems without coherent cross-coupling. The proposed sc…
With the help of Stokes operator S2 squeezed state (also called polarization squeezed state (PSS)) of 795-nm light, rubidium-87 (87Rb) atomic magnetometer based on Faraday rotation has been implemented and characterized.The PSS of Stokes operator S2 of 795-nm light has been prepared by means of coherently combining the polarization coherent state (PCS) of a linearly p-polarized bright 795-nm light beam and a linearly s-polarized squeezed vacuum state (SVS) generated by a 397.5-nm ultraviolet laser pumped sub-threshold optical parametric oscillator (OPO) with a PPKTP bulk crystal inside the OPO…