Simulation of electromagnetically and magnetically induced transparency in a magnetized plasma

Abstract

Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), a phenomenon well known in atomic systems, has a natural analogy in a classical magnetized plasma. The magnetized plasma has a resonance for right-hand polarized electromagnetic waves at the electron cyclotron frequency Omega(0), so that a probe wave with frequency omega(1) = Omega(0) cannot propagate through the plasma. The plasma can be made transparent to such a probe by the presence of a pump wave. The pump may be an electromagnetic wave or magnetostatic wiggler. Simulations and theory show that the physical reason for the transparency is that the beating of the probe wave with the pump wave sets up a plasma oscillation, and the upper sideband of the pump wave cancels the resonant plasma current due to the probe. The theory of plasma EIT derived here extends that found in the earlier work to include the effects of the lower sideband of the pump and renormalization of the plasma frequency and an analysis of the transient response. A detailed comparison of theory to one-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations is presented and estimates for the performance ion accelerator using the EIT interaction are given. The dispersion relation and estimates for the phase velocity and amplitude of the plasma wave are in good agreement with particle-in-cell simulations.