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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Coherent control of spontaneous emission in driven multilevel atoms

E. A. Gazazyan, V. O. Chaltykyan, A. D. Gazazyan

Published Oct 29, 2010• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Possibility of coherent control of spontaneous emission from four- and five-level systems in the laser radiation field is studied. The four-level system consists of two levels resonantly driven by laser radiation where either of levels may decay to a separate level. For such a system we show that the presence of the second decay channel may deteriorate the destructive interference occurring because of Autler-Townes effect in case of one decay channel. The five-level system represents two two-level resonantly driven systems with the upper levels decaying to a common level. For this case, the interference between the two decay channels is partially or completely destructive or constructive depending on the initial conditions and on the mutual orientation of the transition dipole moments. It is shown that population transfer takes place by the same quantum vacuum via spontaneous emission. The populations are shown to have damping oscillatory nature.

DOI
10.1117/12.890509

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Possibility of coherent control of spontaneous emission from four- and five-level systems in the laser radiation field is studied. The four-level system consists of two levels resonantly driven by laser radiation where either of levels may decay to a separate level. For such a system we show that the presence of the second decay channel may deteriorate the destructive interference occurring because of Autler-Townes effect in case of one decay channel. The five-level system represents two two-level resonantly driven systems with the upper levels decaying to a common level. For this case, the interference between the two decay channels is partially or completely destructive or constructive depending on the initial conditions and on the mutual orientation of the transition dipole moments. It is shown that population transfer takes place by the same quantum vacuum via spontaneous emission. The populations are shown to have damping oscillatory nature.
We study spontaneous emission from an atom under the action of laser fields. We consider two different energy level diagrams. The first one consists of two levels resonantly driven by laser radiation where either of levels may decay to a separate level. For such a system we show that the presence of the second decay channel may deteriorate the destructive interference occurring in case of one decay channel because of Autler-Townes effect. The second diagram represents two two-level resonantly driven systems with the upper levels decaying to a common level. For this diagram we show that there is no interference between the two decay channels when the laser fields are described in the Fock representation, while in case of definite-phase classical fields such interference takes place and is partially or completely destructive or constructive depending on the initial conditions and on the mutual orientation of the spontaneous emission dipole moments.
The earliest studies on the subject of spontaneous emission from an excited atom via interaction with the vacuum modes of the radiation field go back to the early days of quantum mechanics. In view of the fundamental nature of the vacuum fluctuations, it was long thought that spontaneous emission could not be controlled. However, in 1946 Purcell noted that the spontaneous emission rate of the atom inside a resonant cavity can be substantially enhanced (or suppressed) over its free-space value. This is due to the dramatic change of the density of modes of the vacuum field in a cavity. The enhancement and suppression of spontaneous emission in resonant and off-resonant cavities were observed experimentally in the 1980s. It was also realized in the 1950s and 1960s that coherent driving fields can dramatically change the characteristics of the spontaneous emission. The Autler-Townes doublet and Mollow three-peak spectrum are the examples of such behavior. A dramatic narrowing of the spectral peaks were discovered in driven multilevel atomic systems in the early 1990s. The role of atomic coherence in quenching spontaneous emission fluctuations in the context of laser physics was studied in the 1980s, via the correlated spontaneous emission laser (CEL). In this case atomic coherence results in the correlation of two spontaneous emission noise events so that the spontaneous emission quantum noise is eliminated in the relative linewidth. Later, it was “discovered” that the spontaneous emission can be suppressed through quantum interference between decay channels. Properly stated, this was rediscovered since it was first discovered and explained by Lamb in the 1940s. If the dipoles of two transitions from one upper level to two lower levels are parallel, the spontaneous emission in an ordinary vacuum can be cancelled. In a nonuniform vacuum, e.g., a cavity, the quenching of spontaneous emission can be achieved, even for the orthogonal dipoles.
We investigate the effect of the spontaneous decay-induced coherence on the control of coherent population transfer in a closed double $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$-type four-level system with the energy separation of the excited doublet comparable to their decay rates by using the stimulated Raman adiabatic passage technique. It is shown that when the two pulse laser fields are tuned to the particular frequency where the condition for quantum interference is satisfied, remarkable enhancement or suppression of population transfer can be realized through the spontaneous emission constructive or destructive quantum interference even with a finite pulse area, which is very favorable to coherent population transfer in quantum systems with weak oscillator strengths.
We study the spontaneous-emission properties of a coherently driven four-level atom, and show a few interesting phenomena such as fluorescence quenching, spectral-line narrowing, spectral-line enhancement, and spectral-line elimination. These phenomena can be observed in experiment since the rigorous condition of near-degenerate levels with nonorthogonal dipole moments is not required here. Qualitatively, these phenomena can be attributed to the quantum interference between competitive spontaneous-decay channels in the bare-state picture or the spontaneously generated coherence between two close-lying levels in the dressed-state picture.
The collective spontaneous emission of a pair of two coupled three-level radiators in vacuum is investigated in the presence of a possibly intense laser field. The parameters describing the collective interaction along with the population and decay rates of all involved dressed states are shown to be controllable by the applied laser field. In particular, all populations of the collective system may be transferred at will in a reversible way into a subradiant state, allowing effective storage and manipulation of the quantum system.
The spontaneous emission of a four-level atom embedded in a one-dimensional photonic crystal is investigated. The atom has two upper levels coupled by the same vacuum modes to a common lower level and is driven by a coherent field to an auxiliary level. Spontaneous emission can be suppressed significantly due to the combinational influences of the interference effect and the band edge effect. The radiation field emitted by the atom is also studied. Spontaneous emission can be modified by controlling the Rabi frequency of the driving.