Light scattering under conditions of nonstationary electromagnetically induced transparency

The propagation of probe radiation pulses in ultracold atomic ensembles is studied theoretically under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency. The pulse 'stopping' process is considered which takes place upon nonadiabatic switching off and subsequent switching on the control field. We analysed the formation of an inverted recovered probe radiation pulse, i.e. the pulse propagating in the direction opposite to the propagation direction before the pulse stopping. Based on this analysis, a scheme is proposed for lidar probing atomic or molecular clouds in which the probe pulse penetrates into a cloud over the specified depth, while information on the cloud state is obtained from the parameters of the inverted pulse. Calculations are performed for an ensemble of ⁸⁷Rb atoms.