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Physical Review A

Propagation of an arbitrary elliptically polarized few-cycle ultrashort laser pulse in resonant two-level quantum systems

Xiaohong Song, Shangqing Gong, Ruxin Li, Zhizhan Xu

Published Jul 28, 2006• 13 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We investigate the propagation of an arbitrary elliptically polarized few-cycle ultrashort laser pulse in resonant two-level quantum systems using an iterative predictor-corrector finite-difference time-domain method. It is shown that when the initial effective area is equal to $2\ensuremath{\pi}$, the effective area will remain invariant during the course of propagation, and a complete Rabi oscillation can be achieved. However, for an elliptically polarized few-cycle ultrashort laser pulse, polarization conversion can occur. Eventually, the laser pulse will evolve into two separate circularly polarized laser pulses with opposite helicities.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.74.015802

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We investigate the propagation of an arbitrary elliptically polarized few-cycle ultrashort laser pulse in resonant two-level quantum systems using an iterative predictor-corrector finite-difference time-domain method. It is shown that when the initial effective area is equal to 2\ensuremathπ2\ensuremath{\pi}2\ensuremathπ, the effective area will remain invariant during the course of propagation, and a complete Rabi oscillation can be achieved. However, for an elliptically polarized few-cycle ultrashort laser pulse, polarization conversion can occur. Eventually, the laser pulse will evolve into two separate circularly polarized laser pulses with opposite helicities.
We investigate the propagation of an arbitrary elliptically polarized few-cycle ultrashort laser pulse in resonant two-level quantum systems using an iterative predictor-corrector finite-difference time-domain method. It is shown that when the initial effective area is equal to 2 pi, the effective area will remain invariant during the course of propagation, and a complete Rabi oscillation can be achieved. However, for an elliptically polarized few-cycle ultrashort laser pulse, polarization conversion can occur. Eventually, the laser pulse will evolve into two separate circularly polarized laser pulses with opposite helicities.
The propagation of an arbitrary polarized few-cycle ultrashort laser pulse in a degenerate three-level medium is investigated by using an iterative predictor-corrector finite-difference time-domain method. It is found that the polarization evolution of the ultrashort laser pulse is dependent not only on the initial atomic coherence of the medium but also on the polarization condition of the incident laser pulse. When the initial effective area is equal to $2\ensuremath{\pi}$, complete linear-to-circular and circular-to-linear polarization conversion of few-cycle ultrashort laser pulses can be achieved due to the quantum interference effects between the two different transition paths.
Influence of multiphoton ionization on the propagation and spectrum of few-cycle circularly (elliptically) polarized laser pulses in an open two-level medium (two-level plus continuum model) is investigated based on the conventional two-level model proposed by Slavcheva and Hess (Phys. Rev. A 72 (2005) 053804), and the propagation dynamics of an arbitrary elliptically polarized laser pulse is reduced into that of right and left circularly polarized laser pulses. When the laser intensity is high enough to cause ionization, there are significant impacts of ionization on the pulse reshaping and on the higher order spectral components, and the impacts for the open two-level model are different from those for the closed two-level model.
Propagation and amplification of an ultrashort laser pulse in a two-level medium is numerically investigated with the use of the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) procedure simultaneously solving Maxwell and Schrodinger equations with no assumptions characteristic of slowly varying envelope approximation. Comparison of the results of FDTD numerical simulations with the predictions of the pulse area theorem has demonstrated that the developed numerical procedure provides an adequate description of pulse evolution in a two-level medium. Amplification of ultrashort light pulses in a two-level medium is analyzed. Two methods of improving the gain of ultrashort pulses in a two-level medium by modulating the spatial distribution of dipole moments of resonant transitions and using initially chirped frequency-detuned pulses are explored.
By solving the Maxwell-Bloch equations, we study the area evolution of a few-cycle pulse laser propagating in a resonant two-level-atom medium. We find that in short propagation distance, the pulse envelope, obtained within the slowly varying envelope approximation and the rotating-wave approximation, agrees nicely with the carrier field. In this case, the area theorem can still predict the profile of the area evolution of a few-cycle optical pulse. However, contrary to the long-pulse case, the variation of the few-cycle pulse area is caused by the pulse splitting but not by the pulse broadening or the pulse compression. Furthermore, the negative area occurs when the pulse area decreases. As a result, a pulse with area less than $\ensuremath{\pi}$ is not absorbed rapidly according to the usual Beer's law of absorption but evolves to nonvanishing zero $\ensuremath{\pi}$ pulse.