Optical bistability with interacting atoms

Shangqing Gong, Si-de Du, Zhizhan Xu

Qiang Zheng, Sheng-Chang Li, Xiaoping Zhang +2 more

We study the optical bistability for a Bose—Einstein condensate of atoms in a driven optical cavity with a Kerr medium. We find that both the threshold point of optical bistability transition and the width of optical bistability hysteresis can be controlled by appropriately adjusting the Kerr interaction between the photons. In particular, we show that the optical bistability will disappear when the Kerr interaction exceeds a critical value.

Harry J. Kimble, Albert T. Rosenberger, P. D. Drummond

郑强, 栗生长, 张小平 +2 more

We study the optical bistability for a Bose-Einstein condensate of atoms in a driven optical cavity with a Kerr medium. We find that both the threshold point of optical bistability transition and the width of optical bistability hysteresis can be controlled by appropriately adjusting the Kerr interaction between the photons. In particular, we show that the optical bistability will disappear when the Kerr interaction exceeds a critical value.

Harry J. Kimble, David E. Grant, Albert T. Rosenberger +1 more

Sunita Singh, Jagdish Rai, C. M. Bowden +1 more

Intrinsic optical bistability due to dipole-dipole interactions among interacting two-level atoms shows strong phase dependence in the presence of a squeezed vacuum. We show that by varying the relative phase between the squeezed vacuum and the incident field, it is possible to excite the system of two-level atoms from the lower to upper branch of the bistable curve. On this basis, an optical switch that utilizes this phase dependence for intrinsic optical bistability is proposed.