A four-level tripod active-Raman-gain scheme is analyzed for obtaining phase-controlled gain, phase shift, and group velocity at room temperature. The scheme can be used to eliminate significant probe field atten- uation or distortion which is unavoidable in the scheme based on electromagnetically induced transparency. It is shown that the intensity gain, phase shift, and group velocity of a probe field can be simultaneously manipulated by changing the relative phase of two pump fields. The scheme is also different from that proposed recently by Deng et al. where a probe-field gain always exists. New features of the scheme presented here raise the possibility of designing rapidly responding optical switches and gates for optical information processing.
We study the ultraslow optical solitons in a resonant three-level atomic system via electromagnetically induced transparency under a density-matrix （DM） approach. The results of linear and nonlinear optical properties are compared with those obtained by using an amplitude variable （AV） approach. It is found that the results for both approaches are the same in the linear regime if the corresponding relations between the population-coherence decay rates in the DM approach and the energy-level decay rates in the AV approach are appropriately imposed. However, in the nonlinear regime there is a small difference for the self-phase modulation coefficient of the nonlinear SchrSdinger equation that governs the time evolution of probe pulse envelope. All analytical predicts are checked by numerical simulations.
