Radiation forces on a three-level atom in the high-order Bessel beams

Abstract

The general expressions of the average dissipative and dipole forces acting on a Λ-configuration three-level atom in an arbitrary light field are derived by means of the optical Bloch equations based on the atomic density matrix elements, and the general properties of the average dissipative and dipole forces on a three-level atom in the linearly-polarized high-order Bessel beams (HBBs) are analysed. We find a resonant property (with two resonant peaks) of the dissipative force and a non-resonant property (with two pairs of non-resonant peaks) of the dipole force on the three-level atom, which are completely different from those on the two-level atom. Meanwhile we find a saturation effect of the average dissipative force in the HBB, which comes from the saturation of the upper-level population. Our study shows that the general expressions of the average dissipative and dipole forces on the three-level atom will be simplified to those of the two-level atom under the approximation of large detuning. Finally, we study the axial and azimuthal Doppler cooling of atoms in 1D optical molasses composed of two counter-propagating HBBs and discuss the azimuthal influence of the HBB on the Doppler cooling limit. We also find that the Doppler limit of atoms in the molasses HBB is slightly below the conventional Doppler limit of ħΓ(2κB) due to the orbital angular momentum lħ of the HBB.