Simultaneous negative permittivity and permeability in a coherent atomic vapour
Shen Jian-Qi(沈建其)
Centre for Optical and Electromagnetic Research, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China Joint Research Centre of Photonics of the Royal Institute of Technology, (Sweden)and Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
Abstract A new quantum optical mechanism to realize simultaneously negative electric permittivity and magnetic permeability is suggested. In order to obtain a negative permeability, we choose a proper atomic configuration that can dramatically enhance the contribution of the magnetic-dipole allowed transition via the atomic phase coherence. It is shown that the atomic system chosen with proper optical parameters can give rise to striking electromagnetic responses (leading to a negative refractive index) and that the atomic vapour becomes a left-handed medium in an optical frequency band. Differing from the previous schemes of artificial composite metamaterials (based on classical electromagnetic theory) to achieve the left-handed materials, which consist of anisotropic millimetre-scale composite structure units, the left-handed atomic vapour presented here is isotropic and homogeneous at the atomic-scale level. Such an advantage may be valuable in realizing the superlens (and hence perfect image) with left-handed atomic vapour.
Received: 29 September 2006
Revised: 09 November 2006
Accepted manuscript online:
Fund: Project supported by the State
Key Development Program for Basic Research of China (Grant No
2004CB719800), partially by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (Grant No 10604046) and the Chinese Doctoral
Science Foundation.
Cite this article:
Shen Jian-Qi(沈建其) Simultaneous negative permittivity and permeability in a coherent atomic vapour 2007 Chinese Physics 16 1976
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