Fluorescence from doubly driven four-level atoms

Abstract

The unusually narrow features in the fluorescence from 85Rb driven by two laser fields L1 and L2, reported in [1], are explained on the basis of a four-level density matrix calculation. The L2 laser enables atom transfer to the fluorescing levels connected by the strong L1 laser. In turn the L1 laser causes the Autler-Townes splitting of the upper levels connected by L2 laser. These two effects are shown to maximise fluorescence within a narrow spectral range of the scanned L2 laser due to velocity selection of atoms from co-propagating and counter propagating L1 and L2 lasers. The analysis reveals the existence of narrow spectral features from a collection of atoms at room temperature even in the absence of induced coherences between the levels.