Artigo Revisado por pares

Observation of Large Kerr Nonlinearity at Low Light Intensities

2003; American Physical Society; Volume: 91; Issue: 9 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1103/physrevlett.91.093601

ISSN

1092-0145

Autores

Hoonsoo Kang, Yifu Zhu,

Tópico(s)

Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates

Resumo

We report an experimental observation of large Kerr nonlinearity with vanishing linear susceptibilities in coherently prepared four-level rubidium atoms. Quantum coherence and interference manifested by electromagnetically induced transparency suppress the linear susceptibilities and greatly enhance the nonlinear susceptibilities at low light intensities. The measured Kerr nonlinearity is comparable in magnitude to the linear dispersion in a simple two-level system and is several orders of magnitude greater than the Kerr nonlinearity of a conventional three-level scheme under similar conditions.

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