Optical Nonreciprocity of Cold Atom Bragg Mirrors in Motion

Reciprocity is fundamental to light transport and is a concept that holds also in rather complex systems. Yet, reciprocity can be switched off even in linear, isotropic, and passive media by setting the material structure into motion. In highly dispersive multilayers this leads to a fairly large forward-backward asymmetry in the pulse transmission. Moreover, in multilevel systems, this transport phenomenon can be all-optically enhanced. For atomic multilayer structures made of three-level cold Rb-87 atoms, for instance, forward-backward transmission contrast around 95% can be obtained already at atomic speeds in the meter per second range. The scheme we illustrate may open up avenues for optical isolation that were not previously accessible.