Simultaneous Trapping of Two Optical Pulses in an Atomic Ensemble as Stationary Light Pulses

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the first simultaneous trapping of two optical pulses as stationary light in an atomic ensemble, expanding the potential for advanced quantum optics applications.

Contribution

The study reveals theoretically supported dual phase-matching conditions for stationary light pulses and experimentally achieves simultaneous trapping of two pulses, a significant advancement over previous single-pulse limitations.

Findings

Successful simultaneous trapping of two optical pulses for up to 2 microseconds.

Measured dissipation time of 1.22 microseconds indicating high Q-factor.

Potential applications include photon-photon interactions and quantum memory.

Abstract

The stationary light pulse (SLP) refers to a zero-group-velocity optical pulse in an atomic ensemble prepared by two counter-propagating driving fields. Despite the uniqueness of an optical pulse trapped within an atomic medium without a cavity, observations of SLP so far have been limited to trapping a single optical pulse due to the stringent SLP phase-matching condition, and this has severely hindered the development of SLP-based applications. In this paper, we first show theoretically that the SLP process in fact supports two phase-matching conditions and we then utilize the result to experimentally demonstrate simultaneous SLP trapping of two optical pulses for the duration from 0.8 $\mu$s to 2.0 $\mu$s. The characteristic dissipation time, obtained by the release efficiency measurement from the SLP trapping state, is 1.22 $\mu$s, which corresponds to an effective Q-factor of $2.9\times 10^9$. Our work is expected to bring forth interesting SLP-based applications, such as, efficient photon-photon interaction, spatially multi-mode coherent quantum memory, creation of exotic photonic gas states, etc.