Annual Meeting Optical Society of America
Lasing without inversion—gain enhancement with a colored pump
Gautam Vemuri, G. S. Agarwal, THOMAS W. MOSSBERG
Abstract
Most models of lasing without inversion utilize incoherent pumping of the upper state of the transition on which lasing occurs. We suggest replacing incoherent pumping by a color pump (i.e. laser with a finite bandwidth) for selective pumping of the upper state, where one can also take advantage of the tunability of the laser. A three-level ladder system is considered with the upper two levels providing the lasing transition. We reduce the density matrix equations for this system to a set of eight coupled Langevin equations with multiplicative noise. These equations are solved using Monte-Carlo methods to obtain the gain as a function of various atom and field parameters. The use of the color pump leads to a significant enhancement in gain. Using a dressed states formalism, an explanation of the possible physical mechanism behind this gain enhancement is provided.