Stationary light in cold atomic gases

Abstract

We discuss stationary light created by a pair of counter-propagating control fields in Lambda-type atomic gases with electromagnetically induced transparency for the case of negligible Doppler broadening. In this case the secular approximation used in the discussion of stationary light in hot vapors is no longer valid. We discuss the quality of the effective light-trapping system and show that in contrast to previous claims it is finite even for vanishing ground-state dephasing. The dynamics of the photon loss is in general non exponential and can be faster or slower than in hot gases.