Visualization of two-photon Rabi oscillations in evanescently coupled optical waveguides

Abstract

An optical analogue of two-photon Rabi oscillations, occurring in a three-level atomic or molecular system coherently driven by two detuned laser fields, is theoretically proposed and experimentally demonstrated using three evanescently coupled optical waveguides realized on an active glass substrate. The optical analogue stems from the formal analogy between spatial propagation of light waves in the three-waveguide structure and the coherent temporal evolution of populations in a three-level atomic medium driven by two laser fields under two-photon resonance. In our optical experiment, two-photon Rabi oscillations are thus visualized as a slow spatial oscillatory exchange of light power between the two outer waveguides of the structure with a small excitation of the central waveguide.