Abstract

A collection of two-level atoms interacting with radiation shows striking new features in the presence of a squeezed vacuum (SV). In the presence of SV, several nonlinear optical phenomena, such as radiative decay,¹ fluorescence from two-level atoms,² laser cooling of atoms,³ and optical bistability in a cavity,⁴ have been shown to exhibit behavior remarkably different from that with the ordinary vacuum. The phase sensitivity of most of these phenomena in the presence of the SV is a general feature that emerges and is exploited. In this work we present the results describing intrinsic optical bistability (IOB) in a dense two-level atomic sample embedded in the SV and driven by an external field.

© 1991 Optical Society of America