Ultraslow Optical Solitons and Their Storage and Retrieval in an Ultracold Ladder-Type Atomic System

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to generate stable, ultraslow optical solitons in ultracold atomic gases, enabling their storage and retrieval, which could advance quantum information processing.

Contribution

It presents a novel scheme for creating and manipulating ultraslow optical solitons in ultracold ladder-type atomic systems using electromagnetically induced transparency.

Findings

Ultraslow optical solitons can be generated with low power in the system.

These solitons can be stored and retrieved by switching the control field.

The solitons are robust due to the balance of dispersion and nonlinearity.

Abstract

We propose a scheme to obtain stable nonlinear optical pulses and realize their storage and retrieval in an ultracold ladder-type three-level atomic gas via electromagnetically induced transparency. Based on Maxwell-Bloch equations we derive a nonlinear equation governing the evolution of probe field envelope, and show that optical solitons with ultraslow propagating velocity and extremely low generation power can be created in the system. Furthermore, we demonstrate that such ultraslow optical solitons can be stored and retrieved by switching off and on a control field. Due to the balance between dispersion and nonlinearity, the ultraslow optical solitons are robust during propagation, and hence their storage and retrieval are more desirable than that of linear optical pulses. This raises the possibility of realizing the storage and retrieval of light and quantum information by using solitonic pulses.