Nonlinear optics with stationary pulses of light.
We show that the recently demonstrated technique for generating stationary pulses of light [M. Bajcsy, A. S. Zibrov, and M. D. Lukin, Nature (London) 426, 638 (2003)] can be extended to localize optical pulses in all three spatial dimensions in a resonant atomic medium. This method can be used to dramatically enhance the nonlinear interaction between weak optical pulses. In particular, we show that an efficient Kerr-like interaction between two pulses can be implemented as a sequence of several purely linear optical processes. The resulting process may enable coherent interactions between single photon pulses.
André
A
A
Physics Department, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
Bajcsy
M
M
Zibrov
A S
AS
Lukin
M D
MD