Polarization rotation of light propagating through a medium with efficient four-wave mixing and cross-phase modulation

Abstract

We have studied the rotation of an elliptically polarized light propagating through thermal rubidium vapor with efficient four-wave mixing (FWM) and cross-phase modulation (XPM). These nonlinear processes are enhanced by Zeeman coherence within the degenerate sub-levels of the two-level atomic system. The elliptically polarized light with small ellipticity is considered as the superposition of a strong-linearly-polarized pump beam and a weak-orthogonal-polarized probe beam. The interference of the probe and the newly generated light field due to degenerate FWM and their gain in the medium due to a large XPM induced by the pump beam leads to the rotation of the elliptical polarized light. A theoretical analysis of the probe propagation through the nonlinear medium was used to explain the experimental observation and the fitting of the experimental data gives the estimates of the third-order non-linear susceptibilities associated with FWM and XPM. Our study can provide useful parameters for the generation of efficient squeezed vacuum states and squeezed polarization states of light. Furthermore our study finds application in controlling the diffraction of a linearly-polarized light beam traversing the medium.