A
system, method, and apparatus for delayed
optical router based on
slow light and nondegenerate four-wave mixing processes are presented, in which three
laser pulses interact with a three-level
nonlinear optical medium composing two closely spaced ground states and an
excited state. The delayed
optical routing mechanism is based on a
slow light phenomenon, in which a
group velocity of an incoming input
signal pulse is slowed down due to
quantum coherence induced
refractive index change. The two-
photon coherence induced on the ground states via
electromagnetically induced transparency is optically recovered via nondegenerate four-wave mixing processes. The nondegenerate four-wave mixing generation is enhanced owing to absorption cancellation. In this case, the individual pulse switching / routing time is limited by the coherence
decay time that is much faster than
population decay time, where the
population decay-time is a
limiting factor of conventional switching devices. In the present invention of the delayed
optical router the overall switching / routing time, however, is controlled to be delayed by using the
slow light. Even though the overall switching / routing time can be delayed, the switching bandwidth of the present invention is not degraded at all because the input and output
signal's
group velocity across the delayed
optical router is still same. Therefore, the present invention of the delayed optical
router gives an
advantage of wide-bandwidth optical
data traffic control using a narrow-bandwidth
processing unit such as an electronic device. Another
advantage is
signal amplifications owing to the dark-
resonance enhanced nondegenerate four-wave mixing processes.