Coherent control of optical bistability in Rydberg electromagnetically-induced transparency atomic system

Abstract: We study optical bistable behavior of a Rydberg electromagnetically-induced transparency (EIT) atomic medium in a unidirectional optical ring-cavity. Due to strong van del Waal (vdW) interactions between the atoms, both optical nonlinear dispersion and nonlinear absorption coefficients are enhanced substantially. Under the condition of two-photon on resonance, we show that probe one-photon detuning can change the phase of the third order nonlinearity coefficient, which tunes the character of the optical bistability within different ratios of dispersive and absorptive types. This enables the single-photon control over photonic devices for further manipulation of light other than switches and transistors. More interestingly, we predict appearance of a scaling phenomena for optical bistabilities with the factors of coupling Rabi frequency and atomic density. Additionally, we also discuss the influence of the cavity detuning and the mirror transmission coefficient on the optical bistable behavior. The strong bistable feature provides a good ingredient for realizing all-optical logic gate devices in optical computing.