Polarium model: Reflection and transmission of coherent radiation

Abstract

The coherent, radiative excitation modes of a resonant medium lend a resonant character to the amplitudes for reflection and transmission of light. For a plane wave incident upon a slab-shaped medium of two-level atoms, the reflection and transmission coefficients exhibit sharp peaks and dips as a function of the detuning of the wave from the central atomic resonance frequency. The locations and widths of these resonant features for a normally incident plane wave correspond to the imaginary and real parts, respectively, of the radiative decay constants of the coherent excitation modes of the medium discussed in the preceding paper [Phys. Rev. A 61, 063814 (2000)]. For the case of oblique incidence, generalizations of the modes discussed in the preceding paper are required. The richly detailed, resonant frequency dependence of the reflected and transmitted intensities is shown to depend significantly on the angle of incidence and the polarization of the incident light.