Diffractionless image propagation and frequency conversion via four-wave mixing exploiting the thermal motion of atoms

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method using four-wave mixing in thermal atomic vapor to achieve diffractionless image propagation and frequency conversion, enhancing spatial resolution and mitigating absorption effects.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach exploiting atomic motion to cancel diffraction and improve image transmission in four-wave mixing processes.

Findings

Atomic motion cancels diffraction of probe and signal fields.

Incoherent probe enhances transverse momentum bandwidth.

Non-linear gain compensates linear absorption.

Abstract

A setup to frequency-convert an arbitrary image encoded in the spatial profile of a probe field onto a signal field using four-wave mixing in a thermal atom vapor is proposed. The atomic motion is exploited to cancel diffraction of both signal and probe fields simultaneously. We show that an incoherent probe field can be used to enhance the transverse momentum bandwidth which can be propagated without diffraction, such that smaller structures with higher spatial resolution can be transmitted. It furthermore compensate linear absorption with non-linear gain, to improve the four-wave mixing performance since the propagation dynamics of the various field intensities is favorably modified.