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Physical Review Letters

Observation of Quantum Destructive Interference in Inelastic Two-Wave Mixing

Kaijun Jiang, L. Deng, M. G. Payne

Published Feb 23, 2007• 19 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Using room-temperature 87Rb atoms we demonstrate a quantum destructive interference between two one-photon excitation pathways in an inelastic two-wave mixing scheme that corresponds to the "strong-storage and weak-retrieval" of an optical field. This destructive interference is fundamentally different from the usual electromagnetically induced transparency because it is critically dependent on the generation and propagation of a wave-mixing field. We also show that contrary to the common belief, the maximum atomic coherence in general does not lead to the maximum mixing-wave conversion efficiency.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.98.083604

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Physical Review A•Nov 1, 1996•8 citations
Using room-temperature 87Rb atoms we demonstrate a quantum destructive interference between two one-photon excitation pathways in an inelastic two-wave mixing scheme that corresponds to the "strong-storage and weak-retrieval" of an optical field. This destructive interference is fundamentally different from the usual electromagnetically induced transparency because it is critically dependent on the generation and propagation of a wave-mixing field. We also show that contrary to the common belief, the maximum atomic coherence in general does not lead to the maximum mixing-wave conversion efficiency.
We investigate a four-state system interacting with long and short laser pulses in a weak probe beam approximation. We show that when all lasers are tuned to the exact unperturbed resonances, part of the four-wave mixing (FWM) field is strongly absorbed. The part that is not absorbed has the exact intensity required to destructively interfere with the excitation pathway involved in producing the FWM state. We show that with this three-photon destructive interference, the conversion efficiency can still be as high as 25%. Contrary to common belief, our calculation shows that this process, where an ideal one-photon electromagnetically induced transparency is established, is not most suitable for high-efficiency conversion. With appropriate phase matching and propagation distance, and when the three-photon destructive interference does not occur, we show that the photon flux conversion efficiency is independent of probe intensity and can be close to 100%. In addition, we show clearly that the conversion efficiency is not determined by the maximum atomic coherence between two lower excited states, as commonly believed. It is the combination of phase matching and constructive interference involving the two terms arising in producing the mixing wave that is the key element for the optimized FWM generation. Indeed, in this scheme no appreciable excited state is produced, so that the atomic coherence between states |0〉 and |2〉 is always very small.
We show that in a two-mode, three-level, double-$\ensuremath{\Lambda}$ system an efficient multiphoton destructive interference involving one- and three-photon pumping pathways occurs, leading to a unique type of induced transparency. Unlike the conventional electromagnetically induced transparency achieved with a three-state $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$ system, the induced transparency is critically dependent upon two distinctive relaxation processes involving the production and propagation of an internally generated field. When a two-mode probe field is injected under suitable conditions, we show that the two probe pulses, after a characteristic propagation distance, evolve into a pair of temporal, amplitude, and group velocity matched pulse, traveling loss free in a highly dispersive medium.
Electromagnetically induced transparency may lead to suppression of two-photon absorption in a four-level atomic system. This phenomenon is manifested by destructive quantum interference among multiple excitation paths created by a coherent coupling field. We report an experimental observation of such suppression of two-photon absorption in cold 87Rb{}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb atoms.
Atomic coherence and interference in an atomic medium exhibiting electromagnetically induced transparency may lead to enhancement or suppression of nonlinear susceptibilities. Absorptive photon switching has been observed by constructive quantum interference, which is based on the enhanced third-order, nonlinear absorption in a four-level system. In a different four-level system, suppression of the two-photon absorption by destructive quantum interference has been observed. Experiments were carried out on 87Rb atoms cooled and confined in a magneto-optical trap and the experimental results agree with theoretical calculations of simple four-level model systems.
We report experimental results on two-color multiphoton ionization and four-wave-mixing production under conditions where one form of laser-induced transparency (LIT) occurs. Under the conditions of LIT, multiphoton-ionization line shapes obtained by tuning one laser through a two-photon resonance exhibit a pronounced Autler-Townes splitting at low concentrations, when a second laser couples the two-photon state to a third level. In this concentration region we observed a four-wave-mixing field that increased quadratically with concentration. As the concentration is increased the Autler-Townes splitting starts to decrease, and disappears completely as a critical concentration is reached. Simultaneously, the four-wave-mixing field intensity starts to level off and finally becomes concentration independent. These observations are explained in terms of odd-photon destructive interference between different excitation pathways. In rubidium, we demonstrate that above concentrations of n\ensuremath{\simeq}5\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}1014{10}^{14}1014 ${\mathrm{cm}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}3}$ the four-wave-mixing field is concentration independent and the multiphoton-ionization line shape shows no Autler-Townes splitting, and the width of the line shape is determined by the laser bandwidth. The results presented here demonstrate that destructive interference significantly limits the high-efficiency and high-intensity nonlinear optical generation promised in early studies on LIT, at least for the multimode laser system used in the present experiment. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.