Theoretical seminar | 09 September 2026

The creation of light-induced refractive-index gratings in various media is well known upon the interference of monochromatic light beams, but in this case the dynamic control of the parameters of such gratings proves difficult. Besides, the grating period is limited by half the wavelength of interfering beams. Such possibilities can be enabled upon the coherent propagation of ultrashort pulses in a resonant medium, when the gratings formation comes from the interaction of incident pulses with the residual waves of macroscopic polarization in the medium.
In this talk some theoretical results on the possibility of the creation and ultrafast control of the refractive-index gratings in resonant media by a sequence of few-cycle pulses will be presented. It is shown that adjusting the excitation pulse parameters enables creation of population gratings in resonant media with periods, which can be orders of magnitude smaller than the wavelength of the resonant transition in the medium. Such subwavelength gratings exist over limited time slot as deterined by the relaxation times in the medium, what makes it necessary to use few-cycle excitation pulses for the efficient gratings control.

Main paper/arXiv, related to the seminar, and other references

- Rostislav Arkhipov, Anton Pakhomov, Olga Diachkova, Mikhail Arkhipov, and Nikolay Rosanov, "Bragg-like microcavity formed by collision of single-cycle self-induced transparency light pulses in a resonant medium", Optics Letters 49 (10), 2549-2552 (2024).
URL: https://opg.optica.org/ol/abstract.cfm?uri=ol-49-10-2549

- A.V. Pakhomov, N.N. Rosanov, M.V. Arkhipov, R.M. Arkhipov, "Coherent control of a multi-level resonant medium by subcycle pulses", J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 41 (1), 46-54 (2024).
URL: https://opg.optica.org/josab/abstract.cfm?uri=josab-41-1-46

- Rostislav Arkhipov, Anton Pakhomov, Olga Diachkova, Mikhail Arkhipov, and Nikolay Rosanov, "Analytical and numerical study of light-induced optical microcavity generation by half-cycle light pulses in the resonant medium", J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 41 (8), 1721-1731 (2024).
URL: https://opg.optica.org/josab/abstract.cfm?uri=josab-41-8-1721

- R.M. Arkhipov, A.V. Pakhomov, M.V. Arkhipov, I. Babushkin, A. Demircan, U. Morgner, and N.N. Rosanov, "Population density gratings induced by few-cycle optical pulses in a resonant medium", Scientific Reports 7, 12467 (2017).
URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-12267-w