Reinvigorating Excited State Coherences in $V$ Level Systems with the use of Trap States

Abstract: We investigate potential schemes to reinvigorate coherences between excited states in a $V$ level system under various excitation conditions. Coherent pulsed, cw and noisy pulsed excitation are considered and the existence of a trap state is shown to allow for the resurgence of excited state coherence in the two pulsed scenarios. With a short trap time (strong decoherence), it is possible to restart excited state coherence in the pulsed scenarios. In the case of cw excitation with relaxation back to the ground state, the coherences between the excited states do not vanish in the long time limit but instead approach a non-zero value.