Tunable nonlinearity in atomic response to a bichromatic field

Abstract

Atomic response to a probe beam can be tailored, by creating coherences between atomic levels with help of another beam. Changing parameters of the control beam will change the nature of coherences and hence the nature of atomic response as well. Such change can depend upon intensity of both probe and control beams, in a nonlinear fashion. We present a situation where this nonlinearity in dependence can be precisely controlled, as to obtain different variations as desired. We also present a detailed analysis of how this nonlinear dependency arises and show that this is an interesting effect of several Coherent Population Trap(CPT) states that exist and a competition among them to trap atomic population in them.

16 pages and 6 figures