Adiabatons in a double tripod coherent atom-light coupling scheme

Abstract

Optical adiabatons are specific shape-invariant pulse pairs propagating at the reduced group velocity and without optical absorption in the medium. The purpose of this study is to analyze and demonstrate adiabaton formation in many level atomic systems. Here we focus on the analysis of five level M-type and double tripod systems. It is found that M-type atomic systems are prone to intensity dependent group velocity and pulse front steepening which prevents the formation of long range optical adiabatons. In contrast, the double tripod atomic system is quite favorable for the formation of optical adiabatons leading to two different optical field configurations propagating with invariant shape.