Evidence of slow-light effects from rotary drag of structured beams

Self-pumped slow light, typically observed within laser gain media, is created by an intense pump field. By observing the rotation of a structured laser beam upon transmission through a spinning ruby window, we show that the slowing effect applies equally to both the dark and bright regions of the incident beam. This result is incompatible with slow-light models based on simple pulsereshaping arising from optical bleaching. Instead, the slow-light effect arises from the long upper-state lifetime of the ruby and a saturation of the absorption, from which the Kramers–Kronig relation gives a highly dispersive phase index and a correspondingly high group index. 5 Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed. Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. New Journal of Physics 15 (2013) 08302