Two-photon scattering of a tightly focused weak light beam from a small atomic ensemble : an optical probe to detect atomic level structures

摘要

We study two-photon scattering of a tightly focused weak light beam from asmall atomic ensemble of two-level atoms (2LAs). This is similar to thescattering of photons from an atomic ensemble in a one-dimensional waveguide.The scaling of two-photon nonlinearity at single-photon resonance shows anon-monotonic behaviour with an increasing number of few identical 2LAs. Thetwo-photon nonlinearity decays monotonically with an increasing number of atomsfor incident photons detuned from single-photon resonance. Single-photontransport in two 2LAs is similar to that in a single V-type three-level atom(3LA). However two-photon transport in these two systems shows very differentline-shapes. When single-photon transmission is zero in these systems, twotransmitted photons are bunched together in a V-type 3LA, while theircorrelation is zero in two 2LAs. The difference in the two-photon line-shapepersists for few 2LAs and 3LAs. Therefore, the two-photon scattering of atightly focused weak light beam can be used as a probe to detect atomic levelstructures of different atoms with similar transition energies.