Experimental observation of carrier-envelope phase effects by multicycle pulses

We present an experimental and theoretical study of carrier-envelope phase (CEP) effects on the population transfer between two bound atomic states interacting with pulses consisting of many cycles. Using intense radio-frequency pulse with Rabi frequency of the order of the atomic transition frequency, we investigated the influence of CEP on the control of phase dependent multi-photon transitions between the Zeeman sub-levels of the ground state of $^{87}$Rb. Our scheme has no limitation on the duration of the pulses. Extending the CEP control to longer pulses creates interesting possibilities to generate pulses with accuracy that is better then the period of optical oscillations.Comment: 8 Pages, 6 Figure

Transverse localization and slow propagation of light

The effect of finite control beam on the transverse spatial profile of the slow light propagation in an electromagnetically induced transparency medium is studied. We arrive at a general criterion in terms of eigenequation, and demonstrate the existence of a set of localized, stationary transverse modes for the negative detuning of the probe signal field. Each of these diffraction-free transverse modes has its own characteristic group velocity, smaller than the conventional theoretical result without considering the transverse spatial effect