Enhancement of lateral and rotary light drag via Zeeman coherence oscillations beyond the multiphoton-resonance condition
Phys. Rev. A 113, 033703 – Published 2 March, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/tldr-1vpx
Abstract
We investigate the lateral and rotary photon drag effects in a Doppler-free and Doppler-broadened duplicated two-level atomic system, focusing on the influence of the controlling field strength, the detuning, and the relative phase of applied fields. The phase of the applied fields plays a crucial role in modulating the absorption and dispersion characteristics in multiphoton resonance, enabling control over the photon drag effect. Beyond the multiphoton resonance condition, adjusting the detuning of the controlling field can influence photon drag based on the Zeeman coherence oscillations. The results indicate that small values of the controlling field strength lead to subluminal light propagation with an absorption doublet, while increasing the strength of the controlling field changes the system to superluminal light propagation with a gain doublet. Eliminating the multiphoton resonance condition significantly enhances the magnitude of photon drag while maintaining very low light absorption in both Doppler-free and Doppler-broadened regimes.
