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Physical Review A

Radiative emission of driven two-level atoms into the modes of an enclosing optical cavity: The transition from fluorescence to lasing

A. Lezama, Yifu Zhu, Manoj Kanskar, THOMAS W. MOSSBERG

Published Feb 1, 1990• 94 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The radiative emission of strongly driven, two-level-like barium atoms into the modes of a confocal optical cavity is studied as a function of barium density. As the barium density is increased, the spatial profile, intensity, and spectrum of light emitted out the ends of the confocal cavity display dramatic changes indicative of a transition from fluorescence to lasing. In this novel two-level system, laser action can be explained in terms of an inversion between the dressed atom-field states or in terms of a type of stimulated hyper-Raman scattering in which atoms lase from the ground to the excited atomic state. A simple dressed-atom rate-equation analysis of this two-level-atom laser is presented. It is pointed out that this same system may provide a means of realizing two-photon-like laser action.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.41.1576

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The radiative emission of strongly driven, two-level-like barium atoms into the modes of a confocal optical cavity is studied as a function of barium density. As the barium density is increased, the spatial profile, intensity, and spectrum of light emitted out the ends of the confocal cavity display dramatic changes indicative of a transition from fluorescence to lasing. In this novel two-level system, laser action can be explained in terms of an inversion between the dressed atom-field states or in terms of a type of stimulated hyper-Raman scattering in which atoms lase from the ground to the excited atomic state. A simple dressed-atom rate-equation analysis of this two-level-atom laser is presented. It is pointed out that this same system may provide a means of realizing two-photon-like laser action.
It is well known that driven two-level atoms can exhibit optical amplification.1 This fact has led to the recent demonstration of single-photon lasing in cell and atomic-beam type ensembles of two-level atoms.2 We show that the same simple two-level system can also be utilized as a two- or more-photon amplifying medium. The underlying physics can be understood in terms of the atom field dressed-state picture. When driven by a field detuned from the atomic resonance, significant population inversion between the dressed-state doublets can be created. In the dressed picture, single-photon lasing occurs between inverted sublevels of adjacent dressed-state doublets. Transitions between nonadjacent doublets are still inverted, but require two or more photons. In the degenerate case, the multiphoton emission frequencies differ from the single-photon emission frequency and can hence be selectively enhanced using an optical cavity. Due to the peculiar structure of dressed levels, the multiphoton emissions are all connected through near resonant intermediate states. The multiphoton emissions can also be viewed as a stimulated hyper-Raman scattering of successively higher order.
The emission of strongly driven two-level-like Ba atoms into the modes of an optical cavity has been studied as a function of cavity tuning and Ba density. At low densities, the cavity-mode emission viewed as a function of cavity tuning is identical in form to the three-peaked Mollow emission spectrum. At high densities, however, the cavity-mode emission is strongly amplified (attenuated) when the cavity is tuned to the frequency of one (the other) Mollow sideband. It is predicted that modest increases in Ba density will cause lasing to occur in this system.
We present a perturbative derivation of the fluorescence spectrum for a three-level atom driven by a classical radiation field. The energies of the three atomic levels are equal to \ensuremath{\Elzxh}${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\omega}}}_{\mathrm{i}}$ (i=1, 2, and 3) with ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\omega}}}_{3}$\ensuremath{\gtrsim}${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\omega}}}_{2}$\ensuremath{\gtrsim}${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\omega}}}_{1}$ and ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\omega}}}_{32}$\ensuremath{\gg}${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\omega}}}_{21}$ (${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\omega}}}_{\mathit{ij}}$=${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\omega}}}_{\mathit{i}}$-${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\omega}}}_{\mathit{j}}$). The radiation field, having a frequency \ensuremath{\Omega}\ensuremath{\gtrsim}${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\omega}}}_{31}$, can be considered to drive the 2-3 transition only. Spontaneous emission from the ground state, via a normally counter-rotating atom-vacuum interaction term in the Hamiltonian, conserves energy when a photon is subsequently absorbed from the laser field. The spectrum is explained in terms of a Raman process, and in terms of an interaction between the laser field and the coupled atom-vacuum field system. Connection is made with a dressed-atom description of the problem. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
This paper is concerned with two rather basic phenomena: the incoherent fluorescence spectrum of an atom driven by an intense laser field and the coupling of the atom to the (empty) modes of the radiation field. The sum of the many-photon processes gives rise to the inelastic part of the atomic fluorescence, which, for a two-level system, has a well-known characteristic three-peak structure known as the Mollow spectrum. From a theoretical point of view, the Mollow spectrum finds a natural interpretation in terms of transitions among laser-dressed states which are the energy eigenstates of a second-quantized two-level system strongly coupled to a driving laser field. As recently shown, the quasi-energies of the laser-dressed states receive radiative corrections which are nontrivially different from the results which one would expect from an investigation of the coupling of the bare states to the vacuum modes. In this article, we briefly review the basic elements required for the analysis of the dynamic radiative corrections, and we generalize the treatment of the radiative corrections to the incoherent part of the steady-state fluorescence to a three-level system consisting of 1S, 3P and 2S states.
Summary form only given. Studies of the classic problem of two non-degenerate atomic energy states exposed to an intense monochromatic driving field have enabled fundamental discoveries in quantum optics including inversionless optical gain, multiphoton laser action, and electromagnetically induced transparency. Nevertheless, the level degeneracy present in many atomic systems can and has been shown to play key roles in a variety of unique driven atom dynamics ranging from light-shift mediated stimulated Raman optical gain and lasing to electromagnetically induced absorption. To date, however, the potentially rich dynamics of these novel systems has received relatively little attention. Atomic barium (Ba) possesses a diversity of naturally abundant isotopes with varying degrees of level degeneracy, making it ideally suited to studies of degenerate two-level driven atom dynamics.