Analytical studies on pump-induced optical resonances in an M-type six-level system

Abstract

In the domain of semiclassical formulation and for the Doppler-free atom–field interaction, we construct the optical Bloch equations involving an M-type six-level system coupled to two pump fields and a probe field. The response of the system is probed for different pump-induced transitions in double and triple-resonance situations. In order to obtain the coherent lineshapes (absorptive and dispersive), we use the usual perturbation method for obtaining the approximate analytical solutions to these coupled optical Bloch equations for the density matrix elements. The interferences between the probability amplitudes for different energy levels (dipole allowed and dipole forbidden) are taken care of. For off-resonance pump positions, the linewidths of the three probe transitions are insensitive to the pump Rabi frequencies. On the other hand, the shifts of the three resonance peaks are extremely sensitive to the pump Rabi frequencies. However, for on-resonance pump conditions, the sensitivities of pump Rabi frequencies on the linewidths of the resonance peaks and on the shifts of the resonance peak positions are opposite to those of their off-resonance counterparts. In particular, we have shown the asymmetric and symmetric Rabi splittings under different physical conditions, for non-zero and near-zero probe detuning, respectively. The Rabi splitting under triple-resonance conditions, significantly, modifies the dispersive lineshape at the centre of the absorption line. The two- and three-photon absorptions are also reported for different off-resonant pump positions.