Optical attenuation without absorption

Abstract

We consider a coherent state of light propagating through an ensemble of two-level atoms where all the atoms are initially in their ground state. In ordinary absorption, the transition of atoms to their excited state along with the absorption of a photon will remove energy from the beam and attenuate the signal. Here we show that post-selecting on those cases in which none of the atoms made a transition to the excited state can give even more attenuation than would normally occur due to absorption. The same process can also produce amplification when there is a sufficiently strong interaction between the photons and the atoms.