Dynamics of saturated Bragg diffraction in a stored light grating in cold atoms

TL;DR

This paper investigates how a stored light grating in cold cesium atoms behaves under different intensities, analyzing the dynamics and saturation effects through experiments and a theoretical model.

Contribution

It provides a detailed experimental and theoretical analysis of the saturation dynamics of stored light gratings in cold atoms, which was not extensively studied before.

Findings

Diffracted efficiency depends on writing and reading laser intensities.

Theoretical model accurately predicts the temporal shape of the retrieved signal.

Saturation effects influence the efficiency and dynamics of the stored light grating.

Abstract

We report on a detailed investigation of the dynamics and the saturation of a light grating stored in a sample of cold cesium atoms. We employ Bragg diffraction to retrieve the stored optical information impressed into the atomic coherence by the incident light fields. The diffracted efficiency is studied as a function of the intensities of both writing and reading laser beams. A theoretical model is developed to predict the temporal pulse shape of the retrieved signal and compares reasonably well with the observed results.