Intracavity self-induced transparency of a multilevel absorber

Abstract

Intracavity self-induced transparency of a three-level absorber is studied in the scope of solid-state laser generation of an ultrabroadband electromagnetic pulse that drives the population of all absorber levels through complete Rabi flopping. We show that at sufficient pump rates a Ti:sapphire laser forces an intracavity GaAs single quantum-well absorber, which provides an inter-valence-band transition in the THz domain in addition to two direct optical interband transitions, into the self-induced transparency regime and acts as an all-solid-state ultrabroadband pulse emitter. In dependence on the resonator bandwidth, the intracavity pulse energy and the absorber dipole moments we obtain a multilevel self-induced transparency pulse spectrum which extends from the THz domain up to the ultraviolet. The steady-state sub-10-fs pulse consists of only a few optical cycles with the high-frequency components at its leading edge and a single to subcyclic THz component at its trailing edge.