Influence of atomic densities on propagation property for femtosecond Gaussian pulse in a three-level Λ-type atomic medium

Abstract

We investigate effect of atomic densities (N) on propagation and spectral property of large area femtosecond Gaussian pulse (the pulse area is larger than 2π) in a three-level Λ-type atomic medium by using the numerical solution of the full Maxwell-Bloch equations without the slowly varying envelope and the rotating-wave approximations, and the solution is obtained by PC-FDTD method. It is shown that, variation of value of the atomic density has considerable effect on propagation and spectral property and the effect is closely relative to size of the pulse area. For the pulse with area 4π, propagate in the dilute medium with smaller atomic density, clear pulse splitting doesn’t occur, slight pulse spectrum broadening appears, the strength of the spectral component with higher frequency increases with the distance increasing; when the pulse propagates in the dilute medium with larger atomic density and in the dense medium, the main pulse splits into two sub-pulses, and the spectrum broadening in the dilute medium with larger atomic density is much larger than that in the dense medium. For the pulse with larger area 8π, the case of the pulse propagates in the dilute medium with smaller atomic density is similar to that of the 4π pulse; but when the pulse propagates in the dilute medium with larger atomic density and in the dense medium, the case is considerably different from that for 4π pulse, the main pulse splits into three sub-pulses, and the spectrum broadening in the dilute medium with larger atomic density is much smaller than that in the dense medium.