Laser cooling in standing waves is related to the study of coherent optical transients. Transients in the u-component of the optical Bloch vector lead to a simple and unified physical picture of cooling at both low saturation parameter (optical molasses) and high saturation parameter (stimulated cooling). Optical molasses is shown to result from a free induction decay transient depending on the coherence relaxation time T2, while stimulated cooling is an incoherent effect of the population relaxation time T1. The sign, tuning, and saturation characteristics of each are attributed to specific transient phenomena. The model offers a bare-state physical picture of laser cooling which complements the dressed-state "Sisyphus" model. Phase-interrupting processes which make T2 < 2T1 reduce the trap potential by a factor of T2/2T1 and lead to a cooling force proportional to T2–2T1 which has not appeared in previous theories. The new term dominates both optical molasses and stimulated cooling when T2 «T1.
We consider a quantum–mechanical two-level system under the influence of both diagonal and off-diagonal stochastic perturbations, and focus on the decay times T1 and T2, which refer to the relaxation to equilibrium of the populations and relative phase of the two levels, respectively. From both theoretical and experimental viewpoints one traditionally expects that T2≤2T1. On the other hand, from a fourth-order cumulant expansion calculation of the asymptotic time dependence of the density matrix elements, Budimir and Skinner [J. Stat. Phys. 49, 1029 (1987)] showed that, in fact, in some instances T2>2T1. In this paper we solve the stochastic model numerically, which leads to the exact time dependence of the density matrix at all times. We find that the analytic prediction that T2>2T1 is not only correct, but also meaningful, in the sense that the density matrix elements decay exponentially after only a short transient time.
A new method of picosecond and femtosecond transient spectroscopy yielding information about ultrafast relaxation processes without requiring ultrashort light pulses is presented. It is based on the present theoretical analysis of the resonant degenerate four-wave-mixing process excited by two temporally incoherent light beams with wave vectors ${\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{\mathrm{k}}}_{1}$ and ${\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{\mathrm{k}}}_{2}$ which are originated from a single beam at frequency $\ensuremath{\omega}$ but have mutual time delay $\ensuremath{\tau}$. Under the assumption that the incoherent light field has Gaussian random complex amplitude and that the resonant material consists of the usual two-level atoms, the statistically averaged intensity of the output light field with ${\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{\mathrm{k}}}_{3}=2{\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{\mathrm{k}}}_{2}\ensuremath{-}{\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{\mathrm{k}}}_{1}$ at $\ensuremath{\omega}$ is calculated as a function of $\ensuremath{\tau}$. Even with the light having a much longer duration than both
T1 (the longitudinal relaxation time) and
T2 (the transverse relaxation time), the correlation trace, i.e., output intensity versus $\ensuremath{\tau}$, represents a decay profile determined mainly by
T2 for both homogeneously and inhomogeneously broadened transitions, as long as the light correlation time ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{c}$ is much shorter than the relaxation times. The correlation trace does not always represent a single-exponential decay but is sometimes slightly deformed by the
T1 effect. However, it does not cause a significant error in the determination of
T2. Moreover, as $\frac{{T}_{2}}{{T}_{1}}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$, the trace becomes a single-exponential decay curve determined only by
T2. The feature of the results obtained by the present method is similar to that obtained by the conventional coherent transient spectroscopy with short pulses, such as the photon echo. The time resolution in the present method, however, is limited only by ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{c}$ much shorter than the light duration. By regarding the incoherent light as a series of random ultrashort pulses, the present four-wave-mixing process is also interpreted as the ensemble of numerous transient four-wave-mixing processes caused by various combinations of these pulses.