Electromagnetically induced conical emission

Abstract

We describe theoretically a scheme for observing conical emission, a transverse nonlinear optical effect, in an atomic vapor with all excitation fields below the saturation level of the involved atomic transitions. The scheme relies on the giant Kerr nonlinearities possible under electromagnetically induced transparency to introduce a radially varying phase shift to a weak probe field by a weak signal field. The probe's far-field diffraction pattern shows multiple concentric rings around the probe beam's axis, characteristic of conical emission.