Abstract
The paper presents a critical analysis of publications on one of the methods of creating so-called slow light (light with an anomalously low group velocity) arising due to a high steepness of the refractive index dispersion curve. The method employs, for this purpose, the effect of coherent population oscillations accompanied by burning of a narrow spectral hole in the homogeneously broadened absorption spectrum. The interpretation of the experimental data in the studies under consideration is based on the analysis of the response of a nonlinear medium to a low-frequency intensity modulation of the propagating light beam. We show that all the observations of these papers can be easily interpreted in the framework of the simplest model of a saturable absorber and have nothing to do with the hole burning effect or group velocity reduction.
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Original Russian Text © V.S. Zapasskiĭ, G.G. Kozlov, 2006, published in Optika i Spektroskopiya, 2006, Vol. 100, No. 3, pp. 465–471.
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Zapasskiĭ, V.S., Kozlov, G.G. A saturable absorber, coherent population oscillations, and slow light. Opt. Spectrosc. 100, 419–424 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0030400X06030192
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S0030400X06030192