Coherent perfect absorption in a weakly coupled atom-cavity system

Abstract: We study coherent perfect absorption (CPA) theoretically based on a weakly coupled atom-cavity system with an optically pumped second-order nonlinear crystal (SOC) embedded in the cavity. Our system does not require a strong coupling, which is often needed for CPA in previous studies but is challenging to implement experimentally in some systems. The role of the SOC is to introduce a tunable effective decay rate of the cavity, which can lead to CPA in the weak coupling regime. The proposed system exhibits bistable behaviors, with bistable patterns switchable between conventional and unconventional shapes. By varying the properties of the SOC, the operation point of CPA can be tuned to be inside or outside the bistable regime. It can also be located at the upper or the lower stable branch or even the unstable branch of the bistable hysteresis loop. It is however robust against the parameters of the SOC for any fixed effective decay rate. Our system can potentially be applied to realize optical devices such as optical switches in the weakly coupled regime.