Abstract: Due to interaction with the vacuum of the radiation field, a K-type atomic system with near-degenerate excited and ground levels, which is driven by two strong coherent fields and two weak probe fields, has additional coherence terms — the vacuum-induced coherence (VIC) terms. In this paper, we find that, if the interference is optimized, the two-photon absorption properties of this atom system can be significantly modified and electromagnetically-induced transparency (EIT) is dependent on this interference. Furthermore, we find that in all the cases the coherence can suppress or enhance the partial two-photon transparency, while the complete transparency window is still strictly preserved, which means that it cannot be affected by the VIC. Another important result is the finding of the crucial role played by the relative phase between the probe and coupling fields: the relative height of absorption peaks can be modulated by the relative phase. The physical interpretation of the phenomena has been given.

Key words: vacuum-induced coherence, electromagnetically-induced transparency, phase-dependent optical properties