Publication Date

6-2003

Description

We introduce a simple model for electromagnetically induced transparency in which all fields are treated quantum mechanically. We study a system of three separated atoms at fixed positions in a one-dimensional multimode optical cavity. The first atom serves as the source for a single spontaneously emitted photon; the photon scatters from a three-level lambda-configuration atom which interacts with an additional single-mode field coupling two of the atomic levels; the third atom serves as a detector of the total transmitted field. We find an analytical solution for the quantum dynamics. From the quantum amplitude describing the excitation of the detector atom we extract information that provides exact single-photon analogues to wave delays predicted by semi-classical theories. We also find complementary information in the expectation value of the electric field intensity operator.

Journal

Journal of Optics B: Quantum and Semiclassical Optics

Volume

5

First Page

289

Last Page

299

Department

Physics & Astronomy

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1088/1464-4266/5/3/315

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