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Australian Journal of Physics

Time-dependent Studies of Optical Bistability in Atomic Sodium

W. Schulz, W. R. MacGillivray, M. C. Standage

Published Jun 1, 1989• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A bistable system consisting of an optical cavity with a medium of sodium atomic beams has been subjected to square pulses of light resonant with a D transition. The lifetimes of the field in the cavity and of the atomic medium are approximately equal. The system transmission data recorded has been compared with simulated data calculated from a theoretical model which treats the atomic energy configuration associated with the D lines as a three-level, lambda-type. Good qualitative agreement is obtained showing the system switching on to the high transmission branch. In particular, as the intensity of the input pulse ends, from the high intensity side, to the low to high branch transition threshold, switching is delayed by a time which is more than one order of magnitude longer than the field and atomic lifetimes.

DOI
10.1071/ph890267

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Quantum Electronics•Mar 31, 1997•1 citation
A bistable system consisting of an optical cavity with a medium of sodium atomic beams has been subjected to square pulses of light resonant with a D transition. The lifetimes of the field in the cavity and of the atomic medium are approximately equal. The system transmission data recorded has been compared with simulated data calculated from a theoretical model which treats the atomic energy configuration associated with the D lines as a three-level, lambda-type. Good qualitative agreement is obtained showing the system switching on to the high transmission branch. In particular, as the intensity of the input pulse ends, from the high intensity side, to the low to high branch transition threshold, switching is delayed by a time which is more than one order of magnitude longer than the field and atomic lifetimes.
Experiments were performed on a bistable system consisting of a low finesse cavity and sodium atoms as the nonlinear medium. The atoms were excited by a dye laser system tuned to the D lines. Both ring and Fabry-Perot configurations were employed, and steady-state as well as transient behaviour was investigated. Flat mirrors of approximately 93% reflectivity were used in all experiments. With sodium vapour as the medium, experiments were performed in steady state, and a marked difference was observed in the behaviour of the Fabry-Perot cavity as compared to the ring set-up. This discrepancy could be explained when the sodium transition was modelled as a three - level lambda -type system, where the Doppler width is of the same order of magnitude as the ground state splitting. In this case the atoms with a Doppler shift close to half the ground state splitting have a major influence on the macroscopic refractive index. Extensive computer simulations were performed using this three -level model, and good qualitative agreement between experiment and theory was obtained for both types of cavity. A vacuum system containing a multiple atomic beam apparatus was constructed in order to reduce the Doppler width. Both the ring and the Fabry-Perot configuration could be set up inside the vacuum chamber.. The steady-state experiments displayed bistability when the laser intensity, laser frequency or cavity frequency were cycled. At higher atomic densities the system showed instabilities and multiple switching.
Abstract Preliminary results are reported on the response of an intrinsic bistable system to the rapid switch-on of an injected light field. The bistable system consists of a linear array of 25 sodium atomic beams contained in a low finesse Fabry—Perot etalon. The beams are aligned perpendicular to the direction of propagation of the cavity field and are collimated sufficiently to resolve the D-line ground state 32S1/2 hyperfine structure. The etalon conditions are such that the cavity lifetime is an estimated 6 ns compared with the atomic lifetime of 16 ns; hence the system approaches the bad cavity limit in which the atom dynamics should be observable. The radiation from a single-mode ring dye laser is switched on to the bistable system in approximately 1 ns. Although preliminary results show low branch to high branch switching there is no evidence of the expected nutational oscillations.
A study is presented of the transmission characteristics of low-finesse ring and Fabry-Perot optical cavities containing sodium vapor and operated below the threshold for optical bistability. Novel features are observed in the transmission signals obtained as the laser light frequency is swept through resonance with a sodium D transition. The ring cavity transmission peaks display a broad absorption profile except for the peak which is tuned to the center of the profile which is almost completely transmitted. A similarly tuned cavity transmission peak in the Fabry-Perot \'etalon is split into three, with the central peak being very narrow. A theoretical description for each cavity is developed in terms of a \ensuremath{\Lambda}-type, three-state model for the atomic energy levels associated with the transition. Using parameter values based on the experimental conditions, theoretical transmission signals for the linear cavity are obtained which are in good detailed agreement with the experimental results. For the ring cavity, agreement is also good except for the degree of absorption of the central peak.
Observations of steady-state hysteresis in absorptive bistability are reported for well-collimated atomic beams of sodium within a traveling-wave interferometer. The atomic medium approximates a system of homogeneously broadened "two-level" atoms, and effects due to standing waves are eliminated. The experiment thus represents the first demonstration of optical bistability under conditions that have been widely employed in theoretical models. Absolute measurements of switching intensities versus atomic cooperativity CCC are reported, and a preliminary comparison with Gaussian-beam theory is made.
Abstract We theoretically investigate the atomic optical bistability (AOB) in a three-level Λ-type atomic system confined in a unidirectional optical ring cavity. The role of the intensity or detuning of the control field on AOB is explored, and results show that absorption, dispersion, and nonlinearity can be modified significantly by the control field due to quantum coherence and interference in multilevel atomic systems. Thus, tuning the intensity or detuning of the control field can manipulate the switch-up and switch-down thresholds, as well as the area of the bistable hysteresis loop. According to the controllability of AOB, we design various schemes to realize dynamical all-optical switching between the high and low outputs of two bistable curves for a fixed cavity input. In addition, dynamical all-optical memory switching can be implemented by adding a pulse sequence for the intensity or detuning of the control field. For appropriate parameters, such as the cooperative coefficient, the extinction ratio of the switching can be improved dramatically.