Elimination of the Diffraction of Arbitrary Images Imprinted on Slow Light

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to eliminate optical diffraction in slow light within a thermal atomic medium by manipulating susceptibility in momentum space, enabling nondiffraction for arbitrary images.

Contribution

The novel approach manipulates susceptibility in momentum space to achieve nondiffraction, differing from traditional real-space guidance methods.

Findings

Nondiffraction achieved for arbitrary paraxial images.

Doppler trapping occurs due to unequal transverse momentum dragging.

Method effective with negative two-photon detuning.

Abstract

We present a scheme for eliminating the optical diffraction of slow-light in a thermal atomic medium of electromagnetically induced transparency. Nondiffraction is achieved for an arbitrary paraxial image by manipulating the susceptibility in momentum space, in contrast to the common approach, which employs guidance of specific modes by manipulating the susceptibility in real space. For negative two-photon detuning, the moving atoms drag the transverse momentum components unequally, resulting in a Doppler trapping of light by atoms in two dimensions.