Ultrafast creation and control of population density gratings via ultraslow polarization waves.
In the regime of resonant coherent light-matter interaction, light pulses may interact with each other indirectly via a polarization wave created by the other pulse. We show that such interaction allows fast creation and erasing of high-contrast dynamic population density gratings, as well as control of their period in a few-cycle regime. Our scheme uses counter-propagating optical pulses, which do not cross each other in the medium. The mechanism is able to work with pulse durations up to the single-cycle limit. Somewhat surprisingly, ultrafast grating wave vector control requires the generation of polarization waves with the phase velocity much smaller than that of light.
R M
RM
Arkhipov
M V
MV
Arkhipov
I
I
Babushkin
A
A
Demircan
U
U
Morgner
N N
NN
Rosanov