Recall and Creation of Spatial Excitation Distributions in Dielectric Media

Abstract

We present an analytical theory for the optical properties of a novel three-level medium for which the degree of its initial excitation is a function of the position. The spatial distribution of the excitation can be imaged on the temporal profile of an electromagnetic signal that is created inside the medium when traversed by a cw-laser field. We propose an experimental scheme to generate arbitrary spatial excitations.