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Lucia Florescu

Publications and source records attributed to Lucia Florescu.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Semiclassical model of stimulated Raman scattering in photonic crystals.

We study the stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) of light from an atomic system embedded in a photonic crystal and coherently pumped by a laser field. In our study, the electromagnetic field is treated classically and the atomic system is described quantum mechanically. Considering a decomposition of the pump and Stokes fields into the Bloch modes of the photonic crystals and using a multiscale analysis, we derive the Maxwell-Bloch equations for SRS in photonic crystals. These equations contain effective parameters that characterize the SRS gain, the nonlinear atomic response to the electromagnetic field, and the group velocity and that can be calculated in terms of the Bloch modes of the unperturbed photonic crystal. We show that if the pump laser frequency is tuned near a photonic band edge and the atomic system is carefully chosen such that the Stokes mode matches another photonic band edge, low-threshold, enhanced Raman amplification is possible. Possible physical realizations of SRS in photonic crystals are also discussed.

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Lasing in a random amplifying medium: spatiotemporal characteristics and nonadiabatic atomic dynamics.

We study the dynamics of lasing from photonic paints excited by short, localized, optical pulses, using a time-dependent diffusion model for light propagating in the medium containing active atoms. The full time-dependent, nonadiabatic nonlinear response of the atomic system to the local optical field intensity is described using the Einstein rate equations for absorption and emission of light. Solving the time-dependent diffusion equation for the light intensity in the medium with nonlinear gain and loss, we derive detailed information on the spectral, spatial, and temporal properties of the emitted laser light. Our model recaptures the effects of scatterers to narrow the emission spectral linewidth and to narrow the emitted pulse duration, at a specific threshold pump intensity. Our model also describes how this threshold pump intensity decreases with scatterer density and excitation spot diameter, in excellent agreement with experimental results.

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Theory of photon statistics and optical coherence in a multiple-scattering random-laser medium.

We derive the photon-number probability distribution and the resulting degree of second-order optical coherence for light emission from a uniformly distributed active species within a multiple-light-scattering medium. This is obtained from a master equation describing the probability distribution for photons in the vicinity of position r, traveling with a wave vector k, related, in turn, to a coarse-grained average of the optical Wigner coherence function. Using a simple model for isotropic, spatially uncorrelated scatterers, this reduces to a generalization of the master equation of a conventional laser in which the medium behaves like a random collection of low-quality factor cavities that are coupled by photon diffusion between a given cavity and its neighbors. Laserlike coherence, on average, is obtained in the random laser above a specific pumping threshold. Photon-number statistics above and below the lasing threshold are computed by first assuming that the atomic response to the local electromagnetic fields is nearly instantaneous. Corrections to this simple model, arising from nonadiabatic atomic dynamics, are then estimated. The dependence of the photon statistics on scatterer density, gain concentration, and position within a sample reveal that, on average, increase of the scattering strength (decrease of the photon transport mean free path) in the medium leads to a sharper peak in the local photon-number distribution, characteristic of increased local coherence in the optical field. We also evaluate the coherence of the output field at points outside the random-laser medium. This is a weighted average of radiation emitted at different positions in the sample, exhibiting varying degrees of coherence due to variations in the local pumping intensity.

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