Transients of the electromagnetically-induced-transparency-enhanced refractive Kerr nonlinearity: Theory

Journal Article · Sat Jul 15 04:00:00 EDT 2006 · Physical Review. A

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVA.74.013812· OSTI ID:20852975

Pack, M V; Camacho, R M; Howell, J C ^[1]

---

1. Department of Physics, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627 (United States)

We present a theory describing the transients and rise times of the refractive Kerr nonlinearity which is enhanced using electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). We restrict our analysis to the case of a pulsed signal field with continuous-wave EIT fields, and all fields are well below saturation. These restrictions enable the reduction of an EIT Kerr, four-level, density-matrix equation to a two-level Bloch-vector equation which has a simple and physically intuitive algebraic solution. The physically intuitive picture of a two-level Bloch vector provides insights that are easily generalized to more complex and experimentally realistic models. We consider generalization to the cases of Doppler broadening, many-level EIT systems (we consider the D1 line of {sup 87}Rb), and optically thick media. For the case of optically thick media we find that the rise time of the refractive EIT Kerr effect is proportional to the optical thickness. The rise time of the refractive EIT Kerr effect sets important limitations for potential few-photon applications.

• OSTI ID: 20852975
• Journal Information: Physical Review. A, Journal Name: Physical Review. A Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 74; ISSN 1050-2947; ISSN PLRAAN
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS
DOPPLER BROADENING
ENERGY-LEVEL DENSITY
KERR EFFECT
MATHEMATICAL SOLUTIONS
NONLINEAR PROBLEMS
OPACITY
PHOTONS
POTENTIALS
RUBIDIUM
RUBIDIUM 87
TRANSIENTS
VECTORS