Light-Drag Enhancement by a Highly Dispersive Rubidium Vapor

Physical Review Letters
Akbar SafariRobert W Boyd

Abstract

The change in the speed of light as it propagates through a moving material has been a subject of study for almost two centuries. This phenomenon, known as the Fresnel light-drag effect, is quite small and usually requires a large interaction path length and/or a large velocity of the moving medium to be observed. Here, we show experimentally that the observed drag effect can be enhanced by over 2 orders of magnitude when the light beam propagates through a moving slow-light medium. Our results are in good agreement with the theoretical prediction, which indicates that, in the limit of large group indices, the strength of the light-drag effect is proportional to the group index of the moving medium.

References

Oct 4, 2000·Physical Review Letters·U Leonhardt, P Piwnicki
Feb 15, 2001·Physical Review Letters·O KocharovskayaM O Scully
Aug 25, 2004·Physical Review Letters·Dmitry StrekalovLute Maleki
May 16, 2007·Physical Review Letters·Ryan M CamachoRobert W Boyd
Dec 8, 2009·Science·Robert W Boyd, Daniel J Gauthier
Jul 2, 2011·Science·Sonja Franke-ArnoldMiles J Padgett

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Citations

Mar 25, 2019·Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics : PCCP·Lin ChengYanpeng Zhang
Mar 24, 2020·Physical Review Letters·Zilong ChenShau-Yu Lan
Jul 8, 2020·Optics Letters·Y SolomonsN Davidson

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