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Physical Review A

Investigation of electromagnetically induced transparency in the strong probe regime

Stephan Wielandy, Alexander L. Gaeta

Published Sep 1, 1998• 96 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We study the response of an inhomogeneously broadened atomic three-level ladder system to a strong probe beam under conditions in which electromagnetically induced transparency would be induced on a weak probe beam. Theoretical analysis and experimental data show that saturation effects associated with the strong probe can substantially alter the behavior of the system and can result in enhanced probe absorption under exactly the same circumstances in which a weak probe would experience enhanced transparency. Strong probe effects are also shown to lead to a breakdown of the correspondence between population inversion and gain. A power-series solution of the density-matrix equations describing the ladder system provides a physical picture for strong probe effects in terms of interfering multiphoton transition pathways.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.58.2500

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We study the response of an inhomogeneously broadened atomic three-level ladder system to a strong probe beam under conditions in which electromagnetically induced transparency would be induced on a weak probe beam. Theoretical analysis and experimental data show that saturation effects associated with the strong probe can substantially alter the behavior of the system and can result in enhanced probe absorption under exactly the same circumstances in which a weak probe would experience enhanced transparency. Strong probe effects are also shown to lead to a breakdown of the correspondence between population inversion and gain. A power-series solution of the density-matrix equations describing the ladder system provides a physical picture for strong probe effects in terms of interfering multiphoton transition pathways.
We conduct theoretical studies on electromagnetically induced absorption via incoherent collisions in an inhomogeneously broadened ladder-type three-level system with the density-matrix approach. The effects of the collision-induced coherence decay rates as well as the probe laser field intensity on the probe field absorption are examined. It is shown that with the increase of the collisional decay rates in a moderate range, a narrow dip due to electromagnetically induced transparency superimposed on the Doppler-broadened absorption background can be turned into a narrow peak under the conditions that the probe field intensity is not very weak as compared to the pump field, which results from the enhancement of constructive interference and suppression of destructive interference between one-photon and multiphoton transition pathways. The physical origin of the collision-assisted electromagnetically induced absorption is analyzed with a power-series solution of the density-matrix equations.
Summary form only given. Though experiments in which a strong probe field was applied to an EIT system have been performed using pulsed lasers, previous investigations of the steady-state response of an EIT system to cw lasers have focused on the limit in which the probe field is weak. We investigate the behavior of an inhomogeneously broadened ladder system interacting with probe and control fields that are both strong. The experimental system we study is a gas of /sup 85/Rb atoms, where the lower level is the 5S/sub 1/2/ state, the intermediate level is the 5P/sub 3/2/ state, and the upper level is the 5D/sub 5/2/ state. To facilitate two-photon Doppler cancellation, the control and probe laser beams are counterpropagating. We theoretically model the response of this system by numerically solving the appropriate system of density-matrix equations without any approximations with respect to the strength of the control or probe field, and then numerically performing a Doppler average over the atomic velocity distribution.
The propagation of a probe field through a four-level Y-type atomic system is described in the presence of two additional coherent radiation fields, namely, the control field and the coupling field. An expression for the probe response is derived analytically from the optical Bloch equations under steady state condition to study the absorptive properties of the system under probe field propagation through an ensemble of stationary atoms as well as in a Doppler broadened atomic vapor medium. The most striking result is the conversion of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) into electromagnetically induced absorption (EIA) as we start switching from weak probe regime to strong probe regime. The dependence of this conversion on residual Doppler averaging due to wavelength mismatch is also shown by choosing the coupling transition as a Rydberg transition.
We study the phenomenon of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in room-temperature Rb vapour under conditions of a strong probe laser. The atoms form a ladder system with the lower transition coupled by the probe laser and the upper transition coupled by the control laser. Density-matrix analysis of the system shows that, for zero-velocity atoms, the strong probe beam causes a reduction in absorption and broadening of the profile. But the lineshape after thermal averaging shows a splitting of the EIT resonance and enhanced absorption near line centre. The experimental observations in 85Rb^{85}Rb85Rb agree qualitatively with the predicted lineshapes.
Near the condition of electromagnetically induced transparency in a three-level system, the absorption experienced by the weak probe laser beam interacting with one transition is very sensitive to the frequency detuning of the strong-coupling laser beam coupled to another transition. When the frequency detuning of the coupling laser is modulated at different frequencies, the resulting change in probe absorption as a function of that modulation frequency can be described by a transfer function. The effects on the transfer function from various experimental parameters are calculated numerically. Experimental measurements are shown to be in good agreement with the predicted behavior.