Self-Stopping of Light

authored by

Mikhail Arkhipov, Rostislav Arkhipov, Ihar Babushkin, Nikolay Rosanov

Abstract

Here, we show that light can bring itself to a complete standstill (self-stop) via self-interaction mediated by the resonant nonlinearity in a fully homogeneous medium. An intense few-cycle pulse, entering the medium, may reshape to form a strongly coupled light-matter bundle, in which the energy is transferred from light to the medium and back periodically on the single-cycle scale. Such oscillating structure can decelerate, alter its propagation direction, and even completely stop, depending on the state of its internal degrees of freedom. This phenomenon is expected to occur in the few-cycle strong-field regime when the Rabi oscillation frequency becomes comparable with the frequency of the incoming light.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Quantum Optics
PhoenixD: Photonics, Optics, and Engineering - Innovation Across Disciplines

External Organisation(s)

Saint Petersburg State University

Type

Article

Journal

Physical review letters

Volume

128

ISSN

0031-9007

Publication date

20.05.2022

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Physics and Astronomy(all)

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.203901 (Access: Closed)