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  • Open Access

Reversible optical nonreciprocity and its scaling optimization in cold atoms via coherently induced four-wave mixing

Tian-Yun Chen and Jin-Hui Wu*

  • *Contact author: jhwu@nenu.edu.cn
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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 023212 – Published 27 May, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/t29c-cm3b

Abstract

We present a further investigation on the optical nonreciprocity based on four-wave mixing (FWM) by leveraging coherently driven cold atoms, as a beneficial supplement to the usual cavity-waveguide solution in virtue of the on-demand tunability and broadband advantage. We consider two parameter regimes unexplored yet, where the probe and coupling fields are set with vanishing or large detunings while the dressing field is kept on resonance. Numerical results reveal that the forward (backward) probe exhibits a high transmittance (is strongly absorbed) in the resonant regime, but may be largely converted into an FWM field (propagate almost freely) in the far-detuned regime. The optimization of such a reversible unidirectional transmission featured by large isolation ratios and low insertion losses can be attained only when the coupling and dressing fields fulfill different scaling relations in amplitude, which has been well explained via analytical results. It is also viable to achieve reversible unidirectional transmission for a probe field of fixed large detunings by simply tuning the coupling field in a wide spectral range. Our findings provide additional insights into the FWM-based optical nonreciprocity and may enable more powerful unidirectional devices in quantum networks.

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 023212– Published 27 May, 2026
  • Received 25 November 2025
  • Accepted 11 May 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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