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Journal of Physics B Atomic and Molecular Physics

Amplitude modulated coherent irradiation of a three-level atom

David Thomas Pegg

Published Jun 28, 1983• 14 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The author examines the problem of an unequally-spaced three-level atom irradiated by two laser beams of arbitrary intensity which have passed through the same modulator, and identify some solvable limiting cases. They find in particular the time evolution of the atom under the action of intense arbitrary shaped pulses with different Rabi frequencies, and also of tuned sinusoidally modulated beams. In the former case the author finds it is possible to achieve direct population transfer between the outer states without affecting the population of the middle state, and in the latter they find a resonance effect when the modulation frequency is in the region of a combination of the two different Rabi frequencies.

DOI
10.1088/0022-3700/16/12/010

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The author examines the problem of an unequally-spaced three-level atom irradiated by two laser beams of arbitrary intensity which have passed through the same modulator, and identify some solvable limiting cases. They find in particular the time evolution of the atom under the action of intense arbitrary shaped pulses with different Rabi frequencies, and also of tuned sinusoidally modulated beams. In the former case the author finds it is possible to achieve direct population transfer between the outer states without affecting the population of the middle state, and in the latter they find a resonance effect when the modulation frequency is in the region of a combination of the two different Rabi frequencies.
The problem of finding the time development of a three-level atom in interaction with two modulated laser beams is discussed. Formulation of the Hamiltonian in terms of spin-one operators, their squares and their anti-commutators allows exact and approximate analytical solutions for the time evolution operator to be found for a wide variety of interactions involving fields which are amplitude or frequency modulated. A fortuitous set of cyclic commutation relations among the subset of operator combinations Jx, {Jx, Jy} and {Jz, Jx} which allows an exact solution to be found for double photon resonance when the fields are amplitude modulated in quadrature, also allows the possibility of finding approximate solutions for more general modulation phase relations. The use of the formalism for describing population trapping and for finding a method of transient atomic state squeezing is also briefly discussed. The optical-frequency rotating-wave approximation is used throughout.
We present a detailed experimental study of the frequency-modulated excitation of a two-level atom, using a microwave field to drive transitions between two Rydberg Stark states of potassium. In the absence of a modulation the interaction is the standard model of the Rabi problem, producing sinusoidal oscillations of the population between the two states. In the presence of a frequency modulation of the interacting field, however, the time evolution of the system is significantly modified, producing square wave oscillations of the population, sinusoidal oscillations at a different frequency, or even sinusoidal oscillations built up in a series of stair steps. The three responses described above are each found in a different regime for the frequency of the modulation with respect to the unmodulated Rabi frequency: the low-, high-, and intermediate-frequency regimes, respectively.
For a three-level atom excited by two laser fields whose amplitudes are sinusoidally modulated with a phase difference of \ensuremath{\pi}/2, we show that, rather surprisingly, a second (independent) linear constant of motion may be obtained even more directly by the coherence vector method than by the recent density-matrix formulation of Hioe. As a consequence it is found that the two corresponding eigenvectors of the time-independent time-evolution matrix in the degenerate subspace with two zero eigenvalues are orthogonal if a certain relation holds between the laser modulation and Rabi frequencies.
The interactions of sub-cycle and single-cycle pulses with two- or three-level quantum systems are studied, respectively. For the two-level quantum system, two cases in which the carrier frequency of pulses is in resonance and far from resonance with the atom are analysed. The ultrafast complete population transfer can be obtained. The sub-cycle pulse with a far off-resonant carrier frequency is found to be more suitable for the population transfer. The relation between the area of pulses and population transfer is clarified in the sub-cycle and single-cycle domain. For the Lambda-type three-level quantum system, more than 90% of population transfer can be achieved from one level to another. The scheme is insensitive to the variation of the laser parameters such as the peak Rabi frequency and the carrier frequency for both two- and three-level quantum systems.