Abstract
A theoretical analysis is presented of the change in the momentum of a three-level atom due to its interaction with counterpropagating laser pulses that overlap in time. The two lower energy states of the atom are metastable; i.e., a lambda-type configuration of atomic levels is considered. The cases of two and four counterpropagating pulses having different carrier frequencies are considered. In the case of adiabatic atom-field interaction, it is shown that the atom’s momentum can change by an integer multiple of the photon momentum and the corresponding standard deviation is small as compared to the photon momentum squared.
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