Physical Review A
Two-mode lasing without inversion with injected atomic coherence
Pál Bogár, János A. Bergou
Abstract
Noninversion lasing is investigated in \ensuremath{\Lambda}-type three-level atomic systems that are coupled to two modes of the electromagnetic field. As a result of an external field driving the transition between the lower two closely spaced levels, laser action can be achieved in both modes simultaneously at arbitrarily small initial upper-level population (lasing without inversion) provided the pumping rate exceeds a certain threshold. The relative phase of the two modes is locked to a particular value controlled by the phase of the external field. In addition, new regimes of the laser operation arise when initial coherences between various atomic levels are also injected into the resonator. Firstly, laser action can be achieved in both modes at arbitrarily small pumping (no threshold). Secondly, the injected atomic coherence can control competition between the modes, and result in a variety of multistable steady-state behavior illustrating the very sensitive dynamics of the system.