Controllable double electromagnetically induced transparency in a closed four-level-loop cavity-atom system

We present a theoretical study of an optical cavity coupled with single four-level atoms in closed loop formed via applied control lasers. The transmitted probe field from the cavity is analyzed. We show that the electromagnetically induced transparency（EIT） in the cavity and the normal mode splitting will be very different with changing the closed interaction phase and the intensity of the free-space control laser. This coupled cavity-atom system presents a variational double-EIT that comes from modulating the splitting of the dark state, which means that we could realize the gradual transfer between one EIT peak and two EIT peaks by adjusting the applied control lasers, and the normal mode splitting sidebands will shift slightly by changing the free-space control laser. This means that we could control the output cavity probe field more freely and it is easer to realize optical switch controlled by more parameters. We also depict the angular dispersion of the intracavity probe field in different free-space control laser. The large phase shift（-π → π） of the reflected intracavity probe field will be very useful for optical temporal differentiation and quantum phase gate.

Inversely-designed terahertz metadevice with ultrafast modulation of double electromagnetically induced transparency windows

Terahertz metasurfaces have great applications for efficient terahertz modulation, but there are still problems in designing terahertz metadevices in terms of complexity and inefficiency. Herein, we demonstrate an inversely-designed terahertz metasurface with double electromagnetically induced transparency(EIT)-like windows by incorporating a particle swarm optimization(PSO) algorithm with the finite-difference time-domain method. We prepared and tested the metadevices, and the experimental terahertz signals are close to the designed results. By hybridizing amorphous germanium film with the inversely-designed metasurface, two EIT-like windows, including transmission and slow-light effect, exhibit ultrafast modulation behavior in 25 ps excited by a femtosecond laser. The modulation depths of transmission in two transparency windows are 74% and 65%, respectively. The numerical simulations also illustrate the ultrafast dynamic process and modulation mechanism, which match well with the experiment results. Our work thus offers opportunities for designing other objective functions of the terahertz metadevice.

Absorption spectra and enhanced Kerr nonlinearity in a four-level system

In a coherent system, enhanced nonlinearity can be reached via far-detuned coupling fields in the presence of Autler–Townes splitting. We explore the absorption spectra and the Kerr nonlinearity of the coherent system via the interaction between a four-level atomic system and triple fields. We obtain the absorption spectra with double, triple and even quadruple peaks which depend on both the magnitude and the difference of the coupling fields. The Kerr nonlinearity always remains reversely correlated with the absorption spectra. We find that the large coupling detunings can lead to a significant growth of the Kerr nonlinearity and the degenerate four-wave mixing. Both the Kerr nonlinearity and the four-wave mixing can be managed by adjusting the detunings of the coupling fields.