Abstract
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.
© 2016 Optical Society of America
Full Article | PDF ArticleMore Like This
Rostislav Arkhipov, Anton Pakhomov, Olga Diachkova, Mikhail Arkhipov, and Nikolay Rosanov
Opt. Lett. 49(10) 2549-2552 (2024)
A. Fusaro, J. Garnier, C. Michel, G. Xu, J. Fatome, L. G. Wright, F. W. Wise, and A. Picozzi
Opt. Lett. 41(17) 3992-3995 (2016)
Ayhan Tajalli, Bruno Chanteau, Martin Kretschmar, Heiko.G. Kurz, David Zuber, Milutin Kovačev, Uwe Morgner, and Tamas Nagy
Opt. Lett. 41(22) 5246-5249 (2016)