title: Photon lifetime in a cavity containing a slow-light medium.
abstract: We investigate experimentally the lifetime of the photons in a cavity containing a medium exhibiting strong positive dispersion. This intracavity positive dispersion is provided by a metastable helium gas at room temperature in the electromagnetically induced transparency regime, in which light propagates at a group velocity of the order of 10⁴ m·s⁻¹. The results definitely prove that the lifetime of the cavity photons is governed by the group velocity of light in the cavity and not its phase velocity.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire Aimé Cotton, CNRS-Université Paris Sud 11, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France. thomas.laupretre@lac.u‐psud.fr
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Lauprêtre
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Proux
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ghosh
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Schwartz
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Goldfarb
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Bretenaker