Hamburg 2009 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 46: Quanteneffekte: Lichtstreuung und Ausbreitung
Q 46.1: Talk
Thursday, March 5, 2009, 10:30–10:45, VMP 6 HS-E
Negative refraction in atomic two-component media — •Bastian Jungnitsch1,2 and Jörg Evers2 — 1Institut für Quantenoptik und Quanteninformation, Technikerstraße 21a, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria — 2Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Saupfercheckweg 1, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
We discuss the feasibility of negative refraction at optical wavelengths and low absorption in gases consisting of two species of atoms. In such a setup, one species contributes the electric response, and the other one the magnetic response, respectively.
To obtain a negative refractive index, both responses must be large. We therefore optimize the typically small magnetic susceptibility in different systems. Specifically, we investigate a mechanism in closed-loop systems that enhances the magnetic response by a scattering of the electric probe field component into the magnetic probe transition. In addition to a parametric enhancement by a factor of α−1 [1], where α is the fine structure constant, we find a strong non-parametric enhancement of the response [2].
Based on these findings, we calculate the refractive index for several combinations of two realistic level schemes. Since we consider active media, potential instabilities of the probe field are also addressed. As the main result, we obtain high negative refractive indices at vanishing absorption for several candidate systems.
[1] J. B. Pendry, Science 306, 1353 (2004).
[2] B. Jungnitsch and J. Evers, Phys. Rev. A 78, 043817 (2008)