Control of light speed: From slow light to superluminal light

Qun-Feng Chen, Yong-Sheng Zhang, Bao-Sen Shi, Guang-Can Guo

Published 2008-07-01Version 1

A scheme for controlling light speed from slower-than-c to faster-than-c in an atomic system is presented in this paper. The scheme is based on far detuning Raman effect. Two far detuning coupling fields with small frequency difference will produce two absorptive peaks for the probe field in a $\Lambda$ structure, and an optical pump between the two ground states can change the absorptive peaks into enhanced peaks, which makes the normal dispersion between the two peaks change into anomalous dispersion, so the probe field can change from slow light to superluminal propagation.