Electromagnetically induced left-handedness in a dense gas of three-level atoms

Abstract

We discuss how a three-level system can be used to change the frequency-dependent magnetic permeability of an atomic gas to be significantly different from 1. We derive the conditions for such a scheme to be successful and briefly discuss the resulting macroscopic electrodynamics. We find that it may be possible to obtain left-handed electrodynamics for an atomic gas using three atomic levels.