A saturable absorber, coherent population oscillations, and slow light
Abstract
The paper presents a critical analysis of publications on one of the methods of creating so-called slow light (light with an anomalously low group velocity) arising due to a high steepness of the refractive index dispersion curve. The method employs, for this purpose, the effect of coherent population oscillations accompanied by burning of a narrow spectral hole in the homogeneously broadened absorption spectrum. The interpretation of the experimental data in the studies under consideration is based on the analysis of the response of a nonlinear medium to a low-frequency intensity modulation of the propagating light beam. We show that all the observations of these papers can be easily interpreted in the framework of the simplest model of a saturable absorber and have nothing to do with the hole burning effect or group velocity reduction.
- Publication:
-
Optics and Spectroscopy
- Pub Date:
- March 2006
- DOI:
- 10.1134/S0030400X06030192
- arXiv:
- arXiv:physics/0509181
- Bibcode:
- 2006OptSp.100..419Z
- Keywords:
-
- 42.65;
- Optics;
- Atomic Physics
- E-Print:
- 9 pages, 4 figures