Transverse Fresnel-Fizeau drag effects in strongly dispersive media

Journal Article · Mon Dec 01 04:00:00 EST 2003 · Physical Review. A

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.68.063819· OSTI ID:20640547

Carusotto, I ^[1]; Artoni, M ^[2]; La Rocca, G C; Bassani, F ^[3]

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1. Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Ecole Normale Superieure, 24 rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris Cedex 05 (France)
2. INFM, Department of Chemistry and Physics of Materials, Via Valotti 9, 25133 Brescia (Italy)
3. Scuola Normale Superiore and INFM, Piazza dei Cavalieri 7, I-56126 Pisa (Italy)

A light beam normally incident upon an uniformly moving dielectric medium is, in general, subject to bendings due to a transverse Fresnel-Fizeau light drag effect. In most familiar dielectrics, the magnitude of this bending effect is very small and hard to detect. Yet, the effect can be dramatically enhanced in strongly dispersive media where slow group velocities in the m/s range have been recently observed taking advantage of the electromagnetically induced transparency effect. In addition to the usual downstream drag that takes place for positive group velocities, we discuss a significant anomalous upstream drag which is expected to occur for negative group velocities. Furthermore, for sufficiently fast speeds of the medium, higher-order dispersion terms are found to play an important role and to be responsible for light propagation along curved paths or the restoration of the time and space coherence of an incident noisy beam. The physics underlying this class of slow-light effects is thoroughly discussed.

• OSTI ID: 20640547
• Journal Information: Physical Review. A, Journal Name: Physical Review. A Journal Issue: 6 Vol. 68; ISSN 1050-2947; ISSN PLRAAN
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS
DIELECTRIC MATERIALS
LIGHT SCATTERING
LIGHT TRANSMISSION
OPACITY
OPTICAL DISPERSION
OPTICS
QUANTUM MECHANICS
VELOCITY
VISIBLE RADIATION