Controlling the optical bistability and transmission coefficient in a four-level atomic medium

A novel four level atomic configuration is proposed for controlling the optical bistability and transmission coefficient with application on all-optical switching. Two circularly polarized components from a weak linearly-polarized probe beam are interacted separately by two transitions of this medium. A coherent coupling field has derived another atomic transition. It is demonstrated that the transmission coefficient of two orthogonally polarized beams at different frequencies can be achieved by adjusting the magnitude of the external magnetic field. It is found that the threshold of the optical bistability can be controlled by magnitude of the external magnetic field. Also, it is shown that optical bistability can be converted to optical multistability by switching the two orthogonally polarized beams. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.