Coherent Control of Light-Shifts and Application to Slow-Light and Pulse Amplification

The interaction of strong laser fields with matter causes light-shifts that play an important role in many fields as quantum optics, molecular physics and chemistry. Here the control results from the interference between two excitation quantum paths, corresponding to the absorption and to the emission by the dressed atomic system of one photon from/on the weak field mode respectively. This effect paves the way to many applications and we will describe a new method to slow the light in an atomic medium.