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Optica Acta International Journal of Optics

Theory of the Laser Quenching of Metastable Levels

S. Swain

Published Sep 1, 1981• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The theory of the quenching of metastable atoms in an atomic beam by a finite bandwidth laser is considered. General expressions for the lineshape are obtained and evaluated numerically. It is found that for sufficiently large laser intensity the spectrum is well approximated by a universal curve.
DOI
10.1080/713820730

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This paper discusses the theory of the quenching of a metastable atomic state by means of a high-frequency electromagnetic wave. The particular problem for which numerical results are presented is that of the quenching of the metastable 2S2S2S state of atomic hydrogen by means of the light from a ruby laser. The general theory is worked out both by means of the quantum electrodynamical perturbation theory and by means of a strong signal theory. The relation between these two techniques is discussed.
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Metastable states of atomic hydrogen in an ideal linearly polarized laser have been shown to exist. These states, in the laboratory frame, have the electron oscillating with a large amplitude. The electron will radiate both even and odd harmonics of the laser frequency at a rate calculated here. The electron may also radiate nonharmonic radiation, thereby leaving the atom in an excited state. This process contributes to the width of the ground state. Both processes are evaluated at an upper limit of intensity imposed upon the theory by the dipole approximation.
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One-atom lasers are important because their governing equations can be solved exactly, even with a quantized field. We present a fully quantum-mechanical treatment of one-atom lasers modeled by quantum-optical master equations. These are solved numerically without any significant approximations. We show that laser action is possible with one atom, and that it might be achievable experimentally. Laser action is characterized by the dominance of stimulated emission over spontaneous emission. We use the one-atom laser model to investigate, without approximation, some interesting generic laser phenomena. Under certain conditions lasers produce intensity squeezed light, and then the laser linewidth increases with the pumping rate, in contrast with standard lasers. We also report ``self-quenching'' behavior: lasers with incoherent pumping out of the lower laser level turn off when the pumping is sufficiently fast because the coherence between the laser levels is destroyed.
According to laser theory the lineshape of a laser broadened by Ornstein-Uhlenbeck phase fluctuations is non-Lorentzian. The equations describing the interaction of such a laser with atomic systems are cast into a form which has the same structure as the density-matrix equations in the absence of fluctuations but with modified detunings, damping parameters and interaction matrix elements. By these means the authors derive substitution rules for taking into account the effect of these non-Lorentzian lineshapes which generalize those already known for Lorentzian lineshapes arising from Wiener-Levy fluctuations. The theory is applied to two-photon ionisation and analytic expressions are obtained for the rate of this process. For the extended two-level model the authors' results agree with those of Yeh and Eberly (1981) in the appropriate limit, but they also consider a more general model which leads to enhanced single-photon ionisation rates.