Condition for resonant optical bistability

We address a two-level system in an environment interacting with an electromagnetic field in the dipole approximation. The resonant optical bistability induced by local-field effects is studied by considering the relationship between the population difference and the excitation field. The diversity of various systems is included by accounting for system self-action via the surface part of Green's dyadic in the general form. The bistability condition and the exact solution of the steady-state optical Bloch equations at the absolute bistability threshold are derived analytically.

Figure 1

The right-hand side of Eq. (3a) for $G=6$, $\Delta =1$ (solid line), $G=4$, $\Delta =1$ (dashed line), and $G=8i$, $\Delta =0$ (dotted line).

Figure 2

Stability phase map: outside the gray area the system can be bistable. The solid line represents the phase boundary given by Eq. (1a). See text for more details.