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IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics

Optical bistability from three-level atoms

Daniel F. Walls, P. Zoller, Moira L. Steyn‐Ross

Published Mar 1, 1981• 36 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A novel mechanism is proposed for optical bistability utilizing the population trapping which may occur in a coherent superposition of sublevels in a three-level system. The resulting bistability does not require atomic saturation and is insensitive to Doppler and laser bandwidth effects.
DOI
10.1109/jqe.1981.1071106

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We have experimentally studied the optical bistable behavior in an optical ring cavity filled with a collection of three-level $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$-type rubidium atoms, interacting with two collinearly propagating laser beams. The bistability so observed is very sensitive to the induced atomic coherence in this electromagnetically induced transparency system or consequently to the altered nonlinearity in the system and, thus, can easily be controlled by changing the intensity and the frequency detuning of the coupling field.
We report on studies on optical bistability from coherently driven $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$-type three-level atoms in a Fabry-Perot resonator. The nonlinear mechanism relies on transverse optical pumping and is due to population trapping in a coherent superposition of the ground-state sublevels. If, under appropriate conditions, a zero-field level-crossing resonance (Hanle resonance) occurs in the atomic system, the optical device is shown to display dispersive or absorptive bistability. Our theoretical studies are based on numerical solutions of the corresponding three-level Bloch equations in the presence of optical feedback. Experiments are performed on the D1{D}_{1}D1​ line in a sodium-filled Fabry-Perot resonator using transverse optical Zeeman pumping of the 2S12^{2}S_{\frac{1}{2}}2S21​​ ground state. The measurements are found to be in fair agreement with the theoretical predictions from our simple model.