EFFECT OF ATOMIC-STATE COHERENCE AND SPONTANEOUS EMISSION ON 3-LEVEL DYNAMICS

For a three-level atom in the ssV configuration (i.e., having two excited states each dipole-coupled to a common ground state), we have found a particular linear combination of bare-atom states in which Rabi oscillations and their associated collapses and revivals do not occur. Moving to a dressed-state picture, we discover that this particular linear combination state is just that dressed state which is decoupled from all the field modes. It is a dressed state for which the transition dipole moments with the other dressed states are zero. The existence of this decoupled dressed state depends on the tuning of the dressing laser field, which in turn depends on the bare-atom excited-state dipole moments and energy-level separation. When we include spontaneous emission, the population decays from the other dressed states into this decoupled state and remains coherently trapped there, producing a system that experiences no dynamical behavior. This is exact for -function photon statistics (i.e., if there is no intensity uncertainty). The trapping becomes less perfect as the photon statistics are allowed to have a greater bandwidth. Also, if the applied field is tuned incorrectly, the spontaneous realignment of the atomic state amplitudes does not result in a totally decoupled dressed state, and the dynamics proceed normally. © 1990 The American Physical Society.