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Updated: May 10, 2026

The Generation of Higher-order Laguerre-Gauss Optical Beams for High-precision Interferometry
Published on: August 12, 2013
Optical nonreciprocity of cold atom Bragg mirrors in motion
S A R Horsley1, Jin-Hui Wu, M Artoni
1Electromagnetic and Acoustic Materials Group, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4QL, England. s.horsley@exeter.ac.uk
Abstract:
Reciprocity is fundamental to light transport and is a concept that holds also in rather complex systems. Yet, reciprocity can be switched off even in linear, isotropic, and passive media by setting the material structure into motion. In highly dispersive multilayers this leads to a fairly large forward-backward asymmetry in the pulse transmission. Moreover, in multilevel systems, this transport phenomenon can be all-optically enhanced. For atomic multilayer structures made of three-level cold 87Rb atoms, for instance, forward-backward transmission contrast around 95% can be obtained already at atomic speeds in the meter per second range. The scheme we illustrate may open up avenues for optical isolation that were not previously accessible.
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