Closed-loop superluminal passive cavity

We demonstrate the operation of a closed-loop fast-light cavity that allows rapid (~10 ms) measurements of the cavity mode frequency and its uncertainty. We vary the scale factor by temperature tuning the atomic density of an intracavity vapor cell. The cavity remains locked even as the system passes through the critical anomalous dispersion where a pole is observed in the scale factor. Positive and negative scale-factor enhancements as large as |S| ≈70 were obtained. To our knowledge, these are the first experiments that demonstrate a scale-factor enhancement in a closed-loop fast-light device by changing the optical path length, laying the groundwork for the improvement of cavity-based metrology instruments such as optical gyroscopes.