We show that the recently demonstrated technique for generating stationary pulses of light [M. Bajcsy, A. S. Zibrov, and M. D. Lukin, Nature (London) 426, 638 (2003)] can be extended to localize optical pulses in all three spatial dimensions in a resonant atomic medium. This method can be used to dramatically enhance the nonlinear interaction between weak optical pulses. In particular, we show that an efficient Kerr-like interaction between two pulses can be implemented as a sequence of several purely linear optical processes. The resulting process may enable coherent interactions between single photon pulses.

• Received 19 October 2004

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.063902