Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Stimulated Generation of Superluminal Light Pulses via Four-wave Mixing

Published

Author(s)

Ryan T. Glasser, Ulrich Vogl, Paul D. Lett

Abstract

We report on the four-wave mixing of superluminal pulses, in which both the injected and generated pulses involved in the process propagate with negative group velocities. Generated pulses with negative group velocities of up to vg = −c/880 are demonstrated, corresponding to the generated pulse’s peak exiting the 1.7 cm long medium ~50 ns earlier than if it had propagated at the speed of light in vacuum, c. We also show that in some cases the seeded pulse may propagate faster than c, and that the generated conjugate pulse peak may exit the medium even earlier than the amplified seed pulse peak. We can control the group velocities of the two pulses via the seed detuning and the input seed power.
Citation
Physical Review Letters
Volume
108

Keywords

atomic vapor, Four-wave mixing, negative group velocity, nonlinear optics, superluminal

Citation

Glasser, R. , Vogl, U. and Lett, P. (2012), Stimulated Generation of Superluminal Light Pulses via Four-wave Mixing, Physical Review Letters, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=910231 (Accessed October 16, 2024)

Issues

If you have any questions about this publication or are having problems accessing it, please contact reflib@nist.gov.

Created April 26, 2012, Updated February 19, 2017