Optical bistability enabled control of resonant light transmission for an atom-cavity system

Abstract

The control of light transmission through a Fabry-Perot cavity containing atoms is theoretically investigated, when the cavity mode beam and an intersecting control beam are both close to specific atomic resonances. A four-level atomic system is considered and its interaction with the cavity mode is studied by solving for the time dependent cavity field and atomic state populations. The conditions for optical bistability of the atom-cavity system are obtained in steady state limit. For an ensemble of atoms in the cavity mode, the response of the intra-cavity light intensity to the intersecting resonant beam is understood for stationary atoms (closed system) and non-static atoms (open system). The open system is modelled by adjusting the atomic state populations to represent the exchange of atoms in the cavity mode, with the thermal environment. The solutions to the model are used to qualitatively explain the observed steady state and transient behaviour of the light in the cavity mode, in Sharma et. al. [1]. The control behaviour with three- and two-level atomic systems is also studied, and the rich physics arising out of these systems, for closed and open atomic systems is discussed.

Corrected typos and updated PACS. 11 pages, 12 figures. Sequel to arXiv:1503.08438v1

References in corpus (5)

• Vacuum Rabi splitting and intracavity dark state in a cavity-atoms system
• Observation of a Cooperative Radiation Force in the Presence of Disorder
• Photon bubbles in ultra-cold matter
• Optical control of resonant light transmission for an atom-cavity system
• Cavity-output-field control via interference effects

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Dynamical Exploration of Amplitude Bistability in Engineered Quantum Systems
• Ground state bistability of cold atoms in a cavity
• Lasing by driven atoms-cavity system in collective strong coupling regime
• All-optical switching in a continuously operated and strongly coupled atom-cavity system
• Detection of ultracold molecules using an optical cavity
• Tunable nonlinear coherent perfect absorption and reflection in cavity QED
• Quantum interference control of perfect photon absorption in a three-level atom-cavity system
• Optical switch based on dressed intracavity dark states
• Controllable optical bistability with perfect photon absorption
• Phase-dependent quantum correlation in cavity-atom system
• Doubly-resonant-cavity electromagnetically induced transparency