Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Downloads | Help

SYKL: Symposium Kernphysik mit starken Laserfeldern

SYKL 1: Resonant laser-nucleus interactions

SYKL 1.4: Invited Talk

Tuesday, March 11, 2008, 10:00–10:30, 1A

Aspects of Electromagnetically induced transparency using nuclear radiation — •Jos Odeurs — Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Instituut voor Kern- en Stralingsfysica, Celestijnenlaan 200D, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium

Coherence and interference using gamma radiation has led to the relatively new field of nuclear quantum optics. It deals with the resonant interaction of single gamma photons with an ensemble of nuclei incorporated in a solid-state lattice. Gamma ray sources having an extremely narrow energy spectrum (of the order of 10-9 eV) can be produced because of recoilless emission, i.e., the Mössbauer effect, which eliminates the phonon line broadening. Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) is the phenomenon, known in atomic quantum optics, where a resonant medium can become transparent for radiation by applying another coherent radiation field. An important deficit in absorption under well-defined conditions has been observed for gamma radiation emitted by the 14.4 keV excited state of 57Fe passing through a single crystal of FeCO3. The experiment will be described and the theory, based on a variation of EIT in the nuclear realm, called level-mixing induced transparency, will be outlined.

Slow group velocity for gamma radiation will be discussed. For the experiments on FeCO3, the group velocity of the single gamma photons can be estimated at 1 km/s.