Atomic coherence and its potential applications

Laser-induced atomic coherence and interference, and related effects in multi-level atomic and molecular systems have been actively studied in 70's and 80's as important techniques for laser spectroscopy. This field was reenergized after the first experimental demonstration of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in three-level atomic gas systems about twenty years ago by the group of Professor S.E. Harris at Stanford University. Such EIT effects were later observed in atomic vapor cells with low-power diode lasers under two-photon Doppler-free configurations and in cold atoms confined in magneto-optical traps, as well as in many molecular and solid material systems. In the past twenty years, many interesting phenomena related to laser-induced atomic coherence and interference were experimentally demonstrated, such as slow and superluminal light propagations, lasing without inversion, enhanced refractive index, enhanced nonlinear optical processes, matched light pulses, optical memory, correlated/entangled photon pairs, controllable optical bistability, and cavity-QED effects. The atomic coherence effects in multi-level media have been shown to have potential applications in all-optical switching/router, logic gates, precision measurements, optical buffer/delay lines for optical communication and computing, and quantum information processing. © 2009 Bentham Science Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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