Over the last decade there has been a continuing interest in slow and stored light based on the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) effect, because of their potential applications in quantum information manipulation. However, previous experimental works all dealt with the single-component slow light which cannot be employed as a qubit. In this work, we report the first experimental demonstration of two-component or spinor slow light (SSL) using a double tripod (DT) atom-light coupling scheme. The oscillations between the two components, similar to the Rabi oscillation of a two-level system or a qubit, were observed. Single-photon SSL can be considered as two-color qubits. We experimentally demonstrated a possible application of the DT scheme as quantum memory and quantum rotator for the two-color qubits. This work opens up a new direction in the slow light research.

Date Published: 7 March 2016
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 9763, Slow Light, Fast Light, and Opto-Atomic Precision Metrology IX, 97630P (7 March 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2220197

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9763:
Slow Light, Fast Light, and Opto-Atomic Precision Metrology IX
Selim M. Shahriar; Jacob Scheuer, Editor(s)