Kinetic Description of Interaction of Radiation with - and Three-Level Molecular Systems.

Françoise Hénin, Michel De Haan

Igor M. Beterov, V. P. Chebotaev

Hans Frauenfelder

Benny Carmeli, Abraham Nitzan

Multiphoton excitation and dissociation of large molecules under collisionless conditions is discussed in terms of an intercontinuum random coupling model. The mathematical approach described in a previous paper is used to obtain the general solution for a system of consecutively coupled discrete states, quasicontinuous manifolds, and continuous (dissociative) manifolds of molecular levels (eigenstates of the total molecular Hamiltonian), where the radiative coupling matrix elements are assumed to be given as a linear combination of smoothly varying and randomly varying (over level indices in the molecular manifolds) components. In the range of discrete molecular levels the time evolution is coherent and described in terms of the optical Bloch equation. In the quasicontinuous and continuous ranges the time evolution may be described in terms of Markoffian kinetic equations for the number of photons absorbed by the molecule, provided that the intramolecular vibrational relaxation widths associated with the optically active molecular modes is much larger than the Rabi frequency associated with the excitation of these modes. The kinetic evolution itself consists of direct multiphoton excitation processes (simultaneous transitions from the upper discrete levels to all higher energy molecular manifolds) resulting from the smooth component in the radiative coupling, and a consecutive excitation process described by the Pauli master equation with rates given by the golden rule expression. The interaction which enters into the golden rule expression is the variance in the radiative coupling. The direct excitation component contributes a negligible part of the overall excitation even if the random and smooth radiative coupling components are comparable. The resulting incoherent time evolution of the multiphoton excitation process is consistent with available experimental results. Coherent effects in the time evolution are expected for higher radiation field intensities, where the Rabi frequency becomes comparable to the intramolecular vibrational relaxation rate.

N. A. Enaki

The collective decay effects between the dipole-active three-level subsystems in the nonlinear interaction with dipole-forbidden transitions, like 2 S − 1 S of hydrogen-like radiators, are proposed, taking into consideration the cooperative exchanges between two species of atoms through the vacuum field in the scattering and the two-photon resonance processes. One of them corresponds to the situation when the total energy of the emitted two photons by the three-level radiator in the cascade configuration enters into the two-photon resonance with another type of dipole-forbidden transitions of hydrogen-like (or helium-like) atoms. The similar situation appears in the cooperative scattering between two species of quantum emitters when the difference of the excited energies of the two dipole-active transitions of the three-level radiators is in the resonance with the dipole-forbidden transitions of the Hydrogen-like radiators. These effects are accompanied by the interference between single- and two-quantum collective transitions of the inverted radiators from the ensemble. The two-particle collective decay rate is defined in the description of the atomic correlation functions taking into consideration the phase retardation between them. The kinetic equations which describe the cooperative processes as the function of time and correlation are obtained. The behavior of the system of radiators at short and long time intervals in comparison with the retardation time between them is studied.

L. É. Pargamanik, L. V. Chebotarev