Regular Article

Coherent control of subluminal optical solitons by the incoherent pumping in a ladder-type atomic system

School of Physics and Electronics, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250014, P.R. China

^a e-mail: tanch@sdnu.edu.cn

Received: 4 January 2018
Received in final form: 25 March 2018
Published online: 1 June 2018

Abstract

We investigate the coherent control of subluminal optical solitons in a ladder-type atomic system with an incoherent pumping. In the linear regime, we find that the quantum interference of the system remains destructive when the incoherent pumping is less than the spontaneous radiation rate of the intermediate state, and the incoherent pumping can introduce an active gain into the system under this condition without changing the linear coherent properties of the system. In addition, the group velocity of the probe field can be hugely suppressed. In the nonlinear regime, a giant Kerr nonlinearity can be achieved without linear absorption. Thus, the lossless slow light optical solitons can be produced and propagate over a long distance being stable. The coherent control of the subluminal optical solitons can be realized by changing the incoherent pumping.