Two-photon scattering of a tightly focused weak light beam from a small atomic ensemble: An optical probe to detect atomic level structures

Abstract

We study two-photon scattering of a tightly focused weak light beam from a small atomic ensemble of two-level atoms (2LAs). This is similar to the scattering of photons from an atomic ensemble in a one-dimensional waveguide. The scaling of two-photon nonlinearity at single-photon resonance shows a non-monotonic behaviour with an increasing number of few identical 2LAs. The two-photon nonlinearity decays monotonically with an increasing number of atoms for incident photons detuned from single-photon resonance. Single-photon transport in two 2LAs is similar to that in a single V-type three-level atom (3LA). However two-photon transport in these two systems shows very different line-shapes. When single-photon transmission is zero in these systems, two transmitted photons are bunched together in a V-type 3LA, while their correlation is zero in two 2LAs. The difference in the two-photon line-shape persists for few 2LAs and 3LAs. Therefore, the two-photon scattering of a tightly focused weak light beam can be used as a probe to detect atomic level structures of different atoms with similar transition energies.