Optical bistability in one-dimensional doped photonic crystals with spontaneously generated coherence

Abstract

We investigate optical bistability in a multilayer one-dimensional photonic crystal where the central layer is doped with Lambda-type three-level atoms. We take into account the influence of spontaneously generated coherence when the lower atomic levels are sufficiently close to each other, in which case Kerr-type nonlinear response of the atoms is enhanced. We calculate the propagation of a probe beam in the defect mode window using the numerical nonlinear transfer matrix method. We find that Rabi frequency of a control field acting on the defect layer and the detuning of the probe field from the atomic resonance can be used to control the size and contrast of the hysteresis loop and the threshold of the optical bistability. In particular we find that at the optimal spontaneously generated coherence, a three orders of magnitude lower threshold can be achieved relative to the case without the coherence.