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Physical Review A

Theory of two-photon double-beam optical bistability

Govind Prasad Agrawal, Christos Flytzanis

Published Dec 1, 1981• 18 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Transmission characteristics of a nonlinear Fabry-Perot interferometer with two independent optical beams are considered under steady-state conditions. The sum frequency of two beams is taken to be near a two-photon resonance of the nonlinear medium. Two beams are coupled through the intensity-dependent susceptibility and influence propagation of each other in a mutual way. A set of two coupled-state equations is derived and it incorporates saturated absorption and dispersion as well as the effect of optical Stark shift. The system is found to have as many as seven stationary states, and at most, three are stable among them. The degenerate case of a single beam in two-photon resonance with the medium is also considered with particular emphasis on the effect of the optical Stark shift on optical bistability.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.24.3173

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Two-Photon Double-Beam Optical Bistability

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Fiber & Integrated Optics•Jan 1, 1997•3 citations
Transmission characteristics of a nonlinear Fabry-Perot interferometer with two independent optical beams are considered under steady-state conditions. The sum frequency of two beams is taken to be near a two-photon resonance of the nonlinear medium. Two beams are coupled through the intensity-dependent susceptibility and influence propagation of each other in a mutual way. A set of two coupled-state equations is derived and it incorporates saturated absorption and dispersion as well as the effect of optical Stark shift. The system is found to have as many as seven stationary states, and at most, three are stable among them. The degenerate case of a single beam in two-photon resonance with the medium is also considered with particular emphasis on the effect of the optical Stark shift on optical bistability.
The theory of the optical multistability by two-photon resonant interaction is investigated. The nonlinear medium inside a Fabry-Perot cavity is in two-photon resonance with the laser beam. The two-photon equation of state including dynamical Stark shift and relaxation parameters is obtained and studied under mean-field approximation. The equations for both Fabry-Perot cavity and ring cavity take basically the same form. The physics mechanisms resulting in optical multistability are also studied. It has been shown that the combined effects of Kerr switching and saturation absorption switching can lead to two-photon optical double-bistability, tristability as well as bistability. Furthermore, the criterion conditions under which double-bistability or tristability can occur are given and discussed. Finally, the phase-conjugated reflectivity by two-photon four-wave mixing is also shown to exhibit multistability as well as hysteresis.
A general theory of optical bistability for a homogeneously broadened two-level system in a Fabry-Perot interferometer is presented. Both absorptive and dispersive mechanisms are included, and in the mean-field approximation a cubic state equation is derived relating transmitted intensity to all physical parameters. From the perspective of catastrophe theory, this equation describes an elementary cusp catastrophe. We show that bistable switching may follow not only from sweeping the incident laser intensity, but also with continuous variation of atomic or cavity detuning, or atomic density, with the laser intensity fixed. For the case having incident intensity as the variable control, the domain of bistability is studied in some detail as a function of the remaining fixed parameters. Stability criteria are considered for the general case including both absorption and dispersion.
A semiclassical theoretical model is described under the plane-wave and mean-field approximations on the transmission characteristics of a system of two-level atoms with large permanent dipole moments contained in a Fabry-Perot cavity and driven by two coherent two-photon resonant fields. In the steady-state situation, the coupled field equations are solved by eliminating one of the field variables to obtain the state equation. This state equation is numerically analyzed in detail, thus providing the regions on two-dimensional maps corresponding to one, three, and five stationary states of the system. The linear stability analysis is also carried out for the case when the length of the cavity is such that the medium-relaxation times are much shorter than the cavity-photon life times for both the waves. The simple stability criterion that the negative-slope regions of the transmission curves are unstable holds, but only the lowest positive-slope branches show stability in all of the cases we tested numerically.