Dark-state polaritons for multicomponent and stationary light fields

We present a general scheme to determine the loss-free adiabatic eigensolutions (dark-state polaritons) of the interaction of multiple probe laser beams with a coherently driven atomic ensemble under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency. To this end we generalize the Morris-Shore transformation to linearized Heisenberg-Langevin equations describing the coupled light-matter system in the weak excitation limit. For the simple lambda-type coupling scheme the generalized Morris-Shore transformation reproduces the dark-state polariton solutions of slow light. Here we treat a closed-loop dual- V scheme wherein two counterpropagating control fields generate a quasistationary pattern of two counterpropagating probe fields-so-called stationary light. We show that contrary to previous predictions, there exists a single unique dark-state polariton; it obeys a simple propagation equation. © 2008 The American Physical Society.