Soliton slow light for closed loop quantum systems

Abstract

This paper describes the dynamics of solitonic pulse propagation in a closed loop quantum system comprised of five atomic energy levels. In this system four higher energy levels with four control laser fields form a closed ring-shape loop which is coherently coupled to a ground level state by a tunable probe laser field. Although the propagation of an intense probe pulse suffers losses and broadening in linear regime, there exist specific conditions where the probe pulse is found to become robust during its propagation. We attribute this regime to the formation of an optical soliton with a slow group velocity because of the balance between the dispersion and Kerr optical nonlinearity. Results obtained are based on the theoretical model using the coupled Maxwell–Bloch equations for the nonlinear propagation.