Propagation of coupled dark-state polaritons and storage of light in a tripod medium

We consider the slow light propagation in an atomic medium with a tripod level scheme. We show that the coexistence of two types of dark-state polaritons leads to the propagation dynamics, which is qualitatively different from that in a $\Lambda $-medium, and allows therefore for very efficient conversion of signal photons into spin excitations. This efficiency is shown to be very close to 1 even for very long signal light pulses, which could not be entirely compressed into a Lambda-medium at a comparable strength of the control field.