Stationary and quasistationary light pulses in three-level cold atomic systems

Abstract

We have studied stationary and quasistationary signal light pulses in cold \ensuremath{\Lambda}-type atomic media driven by counterpropagating control laser fields at the condition of electromagnetically induced transparency. By deriving a dispersion relation we present spectral and temporal properties of the signal light pulse and a significant influence of atomic decoherence on the coupled stationary light pulses for spatial splitting. Finally we discuss quasistationary light pulse evolution characterized by frozen spatial spreading for a robust coherent control of slow light pulses.