Phase Control of Collective Quantum Dynamics

The manipulation of the steady-state behavior of a collection of dipole-interacting three-level atoms in a $V$ or $\Lambda$ configuration is investigated as a function of the relative phase of two strong coherent driving fields. For larger samples, the phase is shown to be a convenient parameter to rapidly populate or depopulate completely a trapping state of the ensemble. As applications, we present the appropriately prepared atomic sample as an optical switching device and show its virtues in controlling the collective steady-state resonance fluorescence intensity.

Figure 1

Bare-state notation of the three-level systems.

Figure 2

The dependence of (a),(b) the steady-state population of the collective dressed state $|{\Psi }_1⟩$ and (c),(d) of the total collective steady-state fluorescence intensity as a function of the relative phase $\Delta \phi ≔{\phi }_2-{\phi }_3$ for the $V$ system. The dash-dotted, dashed, and solid curves correspond to $N=1$, $N=10$, and $N=200$, respectively. Further ${\Omega }_2={\Omega }_3$, $\eta =1$, $\Phi (r)=1$ and (a),(c) $\mathcal{C}=2$, (b),(d) $\mathcal{C}=0.5$.

Figure 3

The same as in Fig. 2 but for the $\Lambda$ system.