Multiphoton Rabi oscillations of a ringlike three-level system

Abstract

We propose a ringlike three-level model and show that it can be realized using Stark states of highly excited potassium interacting with two-mode microwave fields. We demonstrate this by using both analytical model and numerical simulations to study the problems of multiphoton Rabi oscillations. The results show that the Rabi oscillation patterns of the ringlike three-level system exhibit additional envelope and nodes compared to the oscillatory behavior of a three-level cascade system; in other words, there exist collapse and revival phenomena for Rabi oscillation patterns. The origin of the collapse and revival of the population oscillations is the multiphoton two-color resonances at frequency $\ensuremath{\Omega}=n{\ensuremath{\omega}}_{1}+m{\ensuremath{\omega}}_{2}$. Our analytic results are in good agreement with numerical simulations. In addition, all the analytical solutions for the three basic configurations of the three-level system classified as the $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$, vee, and cascade systems can be deduced from our analytical solution for the ringlike three-level configuration by setting one of the three coupling strengths equal to 0.