Resonance fluorescence spectra of a strong bichromatic field interacting with a three-level atom in the ‘‘V’’ configuration

Abstract

We have considered the fluorescence spectra arising from the interaction of a three-level atom in the ‘‘V’’ configuration with two strong electromagnetic fields whose initially populated modes ωa and ωb are equal to the two atomic transition frequencies, respectively. The excitation spectra are calculated by making use of the Green function formalism where the hierarchy of the Green functions is truncated by a decoupling scheme which takes into account photon–photon correlations from each laser field in the limit of high photon densities. The excitation spectra consist of the central peak of the excitation frequency ωa and four pairs of sidebands, which are peaked at the frequencies ωa±η1(2)1/2, ωa±η2/(2)1/2, ωa±(η21+η22)1/2/(2)1/2, and ωa±2(η21+η22)1/2/(2)1/2, where η1 and η2 are the Rabi frequencies of the two laser fields, respectively. Similar spectra are exhibited near the excitation frequency ωb. Numerical calculations for selected values of the Rabi frequencies are graphically presented and compared with those known in the literature. In the Appendix expressions for the excitation spectra are derived first when the two laser fields are treated classically, and second, when the fields are quantized but photon–photon correlations are neglected. It is shown that when the two laser fields are treated classically, the derived results are identical to those obtained when the fields are quantized only when photon–photon correlations arising from each laser field are discarded. The derived results when the fields are quantized but without photon–photon correlations taken into account are also identical to those obtained by the use of the dressed-atom approach. The appearance of the new sidebands reveals the boson character of the photon fields in question. The merit of the method is that it yields results describing both the classical as well as the quantum nature of the photon fields involved.