Role of inhomogeneous broadening in lasing without inversion in ladder systems

Abstract

We study the effect of Doppler broadening on the inversionless gain that can be realized in a ladder configuration. The gain is calculated when the strong coherent pump and the weak probe are either copropagating or counterpropagating. The results indicate that the counterpropagating situation is the optimal one for obtaining maximum amplification, since for identical Doppler broadening, the counterpropagating geometry yields higher amplification than the copropagating geometry. The effect of Doppler broadening on electromagnetically induced transparency in the same atomic system is also briefly discussed.