Inelastic wave mixing and multi-photon destructive interference based induced transparency in coherently prepared media

• Published in: Optics communications 2004-12, Vol.242 (4-6), p.641-647
• Main Authors: Deng, L., Payne, M.G., Garrett, W.R.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Destructive interference; Effects of atomic coherence on propagation, absorption and amplification of light; Exact sciences and technology; Fundamental areas of phenomenology (including applications); Hyper-Raman; Induced transparency; Nonlinear optics; Optics; Phase conjugation, optical mixing; photorefractive and kerr effects; Physics; Quantum optics; Wave mixing
• ISSN: 0030-4018; 1873-0310
• DOI: 10.1016/j.optcom.2004.09.005

We consider a multi-level medium initially prepared with a coherent superposition of two initial levels that are not directly dipole-coupled. We study the production of multi-wave mixing in the coherent medium, where the process begins on one and terminates on the other of the two prepared levels. We find that a new type of wave mixing field can be efficiently generated in such a system with characteristics of both conventional four-wave mixing and stimulated hyper-Raman emission. We also show that two multi-photon destructive interferences build up simultaneously, leading to simultaneous reduction of the attenuation of the pump and wave-mixing fields. As a consequence a pair of ultra slow, temporally and group-velocity matched pump and wave-mixing fields can be generated. This type of multi-photon induced transparency and its consequences are qualitatively different from the conventional EIT where the destructive interference occurs between two single photon channels.