Highly sensitive controllability of optical bistability in three-level atomic systems

Abstract

We theoretically investigate the optical bistability phenomenon in an ensemble of N noninteracting three-level atoms trapped inside an optical cavity. The atoms are in a Λ-level configuration, where one atomic transition is coupled by a cavity mode, while the other one is coupled by a classical field. In addition, we consider a pumping field driving the cavity mode. With this system, we are able to observe new kinds of hysteresis, while scanning either the frequency of the pumping field or the Rabi frequency (intensity) of the control field. We show that they can be highly controllable via external parameters of the system, achieving very narrow widths, thus being very useful for building new devices, such as small fluctuation detectors in either frequency or intensity of laser fields.