Cooperative effects in a system of strongly driven three-level atoms
S. V. Lawande, B. N. Jagatap · Physical Review A · 1989
Cooperative effects in a system of three-level atoms in cascade configuration interacting with intense resonant fields are investigated. Analytical expressions for atomic populations in the excited levels, fluorescence intensities, and normalized intensity correlations are presented. The intensity correlations are used to test the violation of the Cauchy-Schwarz inequalities. The analytical results predict in the cooperative limit N\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}, a discontinuous behavior of all atomic observables with respect to a parameter related to the field amplitudes and the atomic decay coefficients. This discontinuous behavior is analogous to a typical nonequilibrium first-order phase transition.