Observations of photon echo enhancement in an ultraslow light regime

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a significant enhancement in photon echo efficiency by utilizing ultraslow light in a dilute solid medium, achieving three orders of magnitude improvement through increased photon-atom interaction and reduced reabsorption.

Contribution

It introduces a method to enhance photon echo efficiency using spectral hole-burning-induced ultraslow light, with detailed analysis of absorption and reabsorption effects.

Findings

Photon echo efficiency increased by three orders of magnitude.

Ultraslow light enhances photon-atom interaction significantly.

Reabsorption of echoes remains negligible due to population depletion.

Abstract

Using spectral hole-burning-based ultraslow group velocity in a dilute solid medium, we report enhanced photon echo efficiency three orders of magnitude higher than that in a nonslow light regime. The enhancement is due to exponentially increased absorption of an optical data pulse owing to the enhanced photon-atom interaction in an ultraslow light regime, whereas echo reabsorption is negligibly small due to group-velocity dependent population depletion.