Interference enhancement of resonant magneto-optical effects

The influence of spectral interference of different nature on resonant Faraday rotation is studied using as examples the effect of electromagnetically induced transparency in pure discrete atomic transitions and the transparency windows of autoionization resonances of gaseous media. A common numerical criterion for a substantial effect of spectral interference and coherence of atomic transitions on magneto-optical phenomena is established. A direct relationship between the polarization ellipse rotation angle of cw monochromatic light and reduction of the light pulse group velocity resulting from a strong frequency dispersion of the resonant refractive index is found. The known experimental data on ultraslow light pulses indicate the possibility of interference enhancement of the Faraday effect by a factor of 10⁶?10⁷.     

Controlling the parameters of short-wavelength radiation pulses using the interference of transitions to a continuum

Specific features of the propagation of light pulses with frequency lying in the range of autoionization resonances of the medium are analyzed. It is shown that the interference nature of the autoionization spectra makes it possible to combine a strong frequency dispersion of the refractive index with small absorption when the radiation frequency approaches the spectral range of the "transparency window" of an isolated resonance or of a series of overlapped autoionization resonances. This allows one to control the time delay of the pulses and their group velocity. Depending on the parameters of the medium, the pulse group velocity may be maximally reduced by a factor of 10⁴–10⁵.     

Electromagnetically-induced transparency and slow light in room temperature <Superscript>4</Superscript>He*

Electromagnetically-induced transparency (EIT) in three-level Λ-systems is based on quantum interference effects involving coherence between the two lower levels, which allow propagation of a resonant probe light beam in the presence of a strong coupling field. We have observed transparency in ultra-narrow (<10 kHz) windows at the resonant 1.083 μm transition for purely electronic spins in gaseous ⁴He* at room temperature. Slow light is an interesting outcome of the EIT phenomenon due to extreme dispersion within the narrow transparency window. We have obtained group delays of about 4 μs in a 2.5 cm long He* cell. A complete theoretical analysis explains our observations emphasizing the positive role of collisions. Slow light with 1-GHz Doppler broadening opens the door to applications of controllable large-bandwidth delays in radars.     

Electromagnetically induced transparency and theoretical slow light in semiconductor multiple quantum wells

We report an experimental demonstration of electromagnetically induced transparency in the transient optical response in a cascade-type three-level system of GaAs/AlGaAs multiple quantum wells, and analyze the cascade-type three-level schemes with density matrix and Maxwell equations to then obtain the phase shift, group velocity, and group-velocity dispersion. The calculated group velocity is ??6.87×10⁴?m/s and the corresponding pulse delay is ??7?ps. Finally, we provide a convenient basis for investigating many-body effects in semiconductors.     

Interference method of measuring the extinction coefficient of birefringent optical fibers

The extinction coefficient of a birefringent optical fiber (the ratio between the radiation power output of the polarization mode and the radiation power transferred from this mode to another one) characterizes the capability of a birefringent fiber to retain the polarization state of the radiation. In relatively short birefringent fibers (1–100 m), the extinction coefficient may reach 10⁴–10⁶. Such high values of the extinction coefficient are difficult to measure by standard techniques (excitation of one polarization mode by an incoherent source with subsequent recording of the light intensity at the output of the analyzer). An interference method of measuring the extinction coefficient of birefringent fibers is suggested. It is based on using a coherent source and measuring interference oscillations caused by an additional phase modulation at the input of the fiber. This method does not require precise polarization matching between the laser source and fiber and considerably loosens requirements for the polarizer-analyzer extinction and resolution of the photodetector. As a result, using simple standard components (semiconductor laser, film polarizer, and photodetector), one can measure extinction coefficient as high as 10⁶. The suggested interference method of measuring the extinction coefficient of birefringent fibers receives a theoretical analysis, and experimental data obtained for 2- to 1000-m-long fibers are presented.     

Dispersive Properties of tunnelling—induced transparency in an asymmetric double quantum well

We have investigated the dispersive properties of tunnelling-induced transparency in asymmetric double quantum well structures where two excited states are coupled by resonant tunnelling through a thin barrier in a three-level system of electronic subbands. The intersubband transitions exhibit high dispersion at zero absorption, which leads to the slow light velocity in this medium as compared with that in vacuum (c=3×10⁸). The group velocity in a specific GaAs/AlGaAs sample is calculated to be v_g=c/4.30. This structure can be used to compensate for the dispersion and energy loss in fibre optical communications.     

Radiation-induced nonlinear optical response of quartz fibers

The intensity of radiation-induced luminescence and transient optical losses in KU-1 (Russia) and K-3 (Japan) quartz glass optical tibers irradiated in a fast pulsed fission reactor (a pulse duration of 80 μs and a neutron flux up to 7 × 10¹⁶ cm^–2 s^–2) has been measured in the visible range. The intensity of the fast luminescence component nonlinearly depends on the neutron flux. The luminescence intensity and the transient optical losses depend on the probe light intensity. Suppression of radiation-induced luminescence is observed at wavelengths that are longer or shorter than the probe light wavelength. Light probing leads to an increase in transient optical losses and a more rapid recovery of transparency. A model of two photon fluxes is proposed to analyze the relationship of the effects of suppression of radiation-induced luminescence and the increase in optical losses upon light probing. The effect of suppression of radiation-induced luminescence can be used to control the optical properties of fibers in radiation fields.     

Effects of thermal light source properties in two-photon subwavelength coincidence interference experiments

We perform two-photon coincidence subwavelength interference experiments from double slit using independent photons obtained from a pseudo-thermal light source produced by (i) slowly rotating ground glass (RGG) with turbid solution of a different density and (ii) RGG. The turbid solution is water solution containing 3 μm diameter polystyrene microspheres. It is found that the visibility of the obtained interference pattern decreases in first experiment with increasing the density of the turbid solution from N = 10¹⁰ spheres m⁻³ to N = 10¹⁴ spheres m⁻³. However, the results are reported here for the density of N = 10¹⁴ spheres m⁻³. The visibility obtained with RGG with turbid solution having N = 10¹⁴ spheres m⁻³is 23% which increases to 27% with RGG but the resolution decreases. The effect of coherence width of source in two-photon interference pattern is also studied with pseudo-thermal light obtained by RGG. It was observed that on increasing the coherence width the visibility of interference fringes increased and quality of the fringe reduced and when the coherence width was more then slit separation, in coincidence measurements, no interference pattern appeared. The results are used to explore the classical subwavelength interference nature with thermal light.     

Anomalous polarization dependence of the photon drag and optical rectification fields inn-type gallium phosphide

The photon drag and optical rectification response fromn-type gallium phosphide containing 2.4×10¹⁶ electrons cm^–3 has been studied using laser sources at 10.61 and 2.83m. By using different contact configurations, the existence of an additional electric field term in the propagation direction has been deduced. This field is shown to arise from the spatial derivatives of the photon drag and optical rectification field components caused by absorption of the radiation. The importance of this effect in detector design is considered.     

Quantum interference effects of γ radiation under crossing-anticrossing of nuclear levels in an RF field

The quantum interference effects occurring in resonant scattering of a γ photon in the multilevel γ-optical medium ⁵⁷Fe, affected by an external RF field, have been theoretically investigated. It is shown that a significant reconstruction of the hyperfine structure of nuclear states leads to the interference of partial forwardscattering amplitudes of a γ photon and, therefore, to a significant change in the nuclear refractive index of the γ-optical medium, depending on the amplitude, frequency, and phase of the external RF field. The conditions are found under which the effect of electromagnetically induced transparency can be observed in the technique of in-phase detection of γ photons.     

Electromagnetically induced transparency in five-level cascade scheme of Rb atoms: An analytical approach

Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in the five-level cascade scheme of ⁸⁵Rb atoms is investigated by analytical method. In the weak field limit of the probe light, the linear susceptibility, absorption, and dispersion coefficients have been derived in analytical forms. Unusual EIT signatures of the system are studied in details.     

Study of nanostructure of highly purified water by measuring scattering matrix elements of laser radiation

Experiments on modulation interference microscopy and measurement of light scattering matrix elements showed that double distilled water purified from solid impurities contains macroscopic scatterers of optical radiation. It follows from numerical calculation that these scatterers can be micrometer-scale clusters formed by polydisperse air bubbles with effective radii of 70 to 90 nm. The fractal dimension of such clusters is within 2.4–2.8 and their concentration is ∼ 10⁶ cm⁻³.     

Level mixing induced transparency

We discuss level mixing induced transparency (LMIT), which is experimentally found in a thick absorber of FeCO₃ containing the ⁵⁷Fe Mössbauer nuclei. LMIT is observed if two hyperfine levels of the excited state nucleus cross. Absorption of gamma radiation drops by about 25% with respect to the sum of two overlapping absorption lines. The absorption deficit is explained by the mixing of the crossing levels with a symmetry breaking interaction. The level mixing induces a polarization change of the scattered radiation. In such a way, the radiation develops in “normal modes,” which are less absorbed in a thick absorber. We show that, in spite of the absorption drop, the area of the absorption line does not change. This confirms the general knowledge that interference phenomena (destructive or constructive) do not change the lifetime of an excited state particle (atom, nucleus, etc).     

Maxwell-Schrödinger equations for a dilute gas Bose-Einstein condensate coupled to an electromagnetic field

We give a general formulation of the semiclassical approach to solving the problem of interaction between a Bose-Einstein condensate of dilute gas and electromagnetic radiation without using the commonly applied mean-field approximation. We suggest variants of the systems of Maxwell-Schrödinger equations whose solution describes such effects as superradiant light scattering, light beam amplification, atomic wave (atomic laser) amplification, induced transparency, and reduction in the group velocity of light.     

Femto-Second Transform Limited Pulse Generation with Higher Order Dispersion Effects for Dispersion-Shifted Optical Communication System

The paper deals with the influence of higher-order effects of dispersion on the femto-second transform limited pulse generation by compensating for linear chirp of self-phase modulation spectra in the dispersion-shifted fibers. It has been shown that the minimum propagation length with first-order dispersion term is 23 m, as reported earlier. If the higher-order dispersion effects are taken into consideration, this length is reduced to 11.5 m. With compensation of the first-order dispersion term, this length can be enhanced to 6.8161 × 10³ km. This length can further be improved to 6.0343 × 10⁹ km by compensation of first- and second-order dispersion terms together. The minimum pulse width and linewidth product without dispersion, with dispersion including higher-order dispersion effects, and with dispersion compensation, is found to be 0.44, 0.4418, and 0.4411, respectively.     

Interferenz von Licht verschiedener Frequenz

A new method of rotating a photografic screen allows the recording of the moving interference pattern produced by two light beams of different frequency. The method is demonstrated with frequency differencies up to 3 · 10³ sec^?1. It probably can be applied up to 10⁸ sec^?1 by using intense laser light. The interference between waves with different frequencies demands a generalisation of the concepts of partial coherence. This is performed by defining a general function of mutual coherence, which now includes also the moving interferences. The new definitions of the general degree of coherence and of the general visibility are applied to the demonstrated example.     

Incoherent and coherent backscattering of light by a layer of densely packed random medium

The problem of light scattering by a layer of densely packed discrete random medium is considered. The theory of light scattering by systems of nonspherical particles is applied to derive equations corresponding to incoherent (diffuse) and interference parts of radiation reflected from the medium. A solution of the system of linear equations describing light scattering by a system of particles is represented by iteration. It is shown that the symmetry properties of the T-matrices and of the translation coefficients for the vector Helmholtz harmonics lead to the reciprocity relation for an arbitrary iteration. This relation is applied to consider the backscattering enhancement phenomenon. Equations expressing the incoherent and interference parts of reflected light from statistically homogeneous and isotropic plane-parallel layer of medium are given. In the exact backscattering direction the relation between incoherent and interference parts is identical to that of sparse media.     

Optical and magnetic properties of iron garnet films with high defect density

We have used spectroscopic and magneto-optic methods to study the effect of defects on the transmission spectrum, thickness, refractive index, and period of the striated domain structure in thin iron garnet films exposed to fast neutron fluences of 4.5·10¹⁷ and 10¹⁹ cm^–2. We observed both a decrease in transmission and a smearing of the interference maxima. The decrease in the quality of the interference fringes was observed in the visible spectrum for these samples. It was due to increased diffuse scattering of light by nonuniformities whose dimensions were comparable to the wavelength of the scattered light. It was determined that radiation defect clusters had no influence on the film thickness, but they did significantly alter the wavelength dependence of the refractive index and increased the period of domain structure striations.Translated from Izvestiya Vysshikh Uchebnykh Zavedenii, Fizika, No. 8, pp. 45–48, August, 1988.We wish to thank A. G. Shishkov for discussions of the experimental results.     

Relativistic three-quark equations and low-lying baryon spectroscopy

The relativistic three-quark equations are found in the framework of the dispersion relations technique. The approximate solutions of these equations using the method based on the extraction of leading singularities of the amplitude are obtained. The calculated mass values of two baryonic multipletsJ ^P =1/2⁺, 3/2⁺ are in good agreement with the experimental ones.