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Physical Review A

Giant pulse lasing in three-level systems

J. Mompart, R. Corbalán, Ramon A. Vilaseca

Published Apr 1, 1999• 6 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We propose an alternative method to Q switching for generating giant pulses of laser light in three-level media. This mehod is based on the presence of an external coherent field driving one transition to allow the accumulation of a large population inversion in the other transition without laser oscillation even in a cavity with high-$Q$ factor. The switching off of the external coherent field causes the development of the giant pulse. Different time profiles for the switching off of the external field have been investigated.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.59.3038

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We propose an alternative method to Q switching for generating giant pulses of laser light in three-level media. This mehod is based on the presence of an external coherent field driving one transition to allow the accumulation of a large population inversion in the other transition without laser oscillation even in a cavity with high-QQQ factor. The switching off of the external coherent field causes the development of the giant pulse. Different time profiles for the switching off of the external field have been investigated.
The author demonstrate that lasing without inversion can be achieved through a self-pulsing instability. This is shown for the resonant coherently driven three-level media proposed by Kocharovskaya, Mandel and Radeonychev (1992) as inversionless amplifiers of a monochromatic field. A usual instability giving rise to CW lasing is also found. Both instabilities are mutually exclusive, since they are primarily determined by opposite signs of the population difference between the two levels coupled by the driving field. The general necessary conditions for inversionless lasing are given and it is found that the two instabilities require a good quality cavity and are produced in a limited range of driving field intensity.
We have studied an incoherently pumped laser operating with a Doppler-broadened three-level system placed in a doubly resonant cavity. This system generates two laser fields, one of them without population inversion. Both ladder and V-type three-level schemes are considered with a ratio $R={\ensuremath{\omega}}_{\ensuremath{\alpha}}/{\ensuremath{\omega}}_{\ensuremath{\beta}}$ of inversionless laser frequency ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{\ensuremath{\alpha}}$ to ordinary laser frequency ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{\ensuremath{\beta}}$ of R=0.67R=0.67R=0.67 and R=1.88,R=1.88,R=1.88, respectively. Dual-wavelength lasing extends up to Doppler-broadening values for optical transitions of atoms in a vapor cell. Some considerations for the practical realization of this dual-wavelength laser are discussed.
Laser Q-switching is a critical technique that enables periodic modulation of cavity loss and has been widely used to generate giant laser pulses. In this paper, an innovative active Q-switching laser model based on the mechanism of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) is proposed. The system utilizes a three-level atomic system that interacts with both the cavity mode and an external strong coupling field, acting as a dynamically tunable loss medium. By controlling the coupling field intensity, the cavity loss can be dynamically modulated due to the EIT effect, thereby achieving active Q-switching operation. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the threshold inversion population is reduced by more than one order of magnitude during EIT activation, which indicates the feasibility of this kind of Q-switching.
A superfluorescence effect in a V-type medium with initial Raman inversion, driven by a strong coherent field on one of the transitions, is studied analytically and numerically. It is shown that the collective spontaneous emission evolves in the presence of a minor population of an upper state of a superfluorescent transition. In the limit of the Rabi frequency of a driving field large compared to that of a superfluorescent pulse, the system of two equations for the fields and density-matrix equations for three states of the medium is reduced to Maxwell-Bloch equations for an effective two-level system. The shape of a superfluorescent pulse is perfectly described in terms of a slowly varying envelope function (which is a solution of the Maxwell-Bloch equations), filled with fast oscillations associated with Rabi floppings on the driving transition. In the average, i.e., after integrating over a period of Rabi oscillations, the upper superfluorescent state is populated less than other states, such that the phenomenon may be called ``superfluorescence without inversion'' by analogy with lasing without inversion.
We characterize analytically the nature of the lasing solutions of a laser operating without population inversion. We consider models involving three-level media interacting with a strong driving field and a lasing field in the vicinity of the lasing threshold. We assess the influence of different relaxation and pumping schemes on the dynamics of these lasers. We use the atom-field detuning, the cavity detuning, and the linear gain as bifurcation parameters. Depending on their values, the stable lasing solution is shown to be cw or self-pulsing. We show that the optimal lasing operation is achieved if both the driving field frequency and the cavity frequency are out of resonance with the atomic frequencies. Physically, the lasing regimes arise from nonlinearly interacting sidebands induced in the lasing medium by atomic interference.
We present a theory of light amplification in a cavity based on irreversibility of coherent excitation. It is predicted that the irreversibility of coherent excitation leads to a new way of lasing which is different from lasing with and without inversion in the conventional sense. Lasing with dynamically induced inversion is possible in coherently driven systems in which there is no conventional source of irreversible population pumping. This laser displays two interesting and important features: the maximum gain with inversion is substantially greater than gain without inversion, and in spite of the presence of the inversion, the noise intensity is reduced below the shot-noise limit.