Coherence generation and population transfer in a three-level ladder system

This work explores the effect of spontaneous emission on coherence generation and population transfer in a three-level ladder atomic system driven by two pulses in counterintuitive order. With adiabatic evolution and the weak-dephasing approximation, we find that a large coherence and population transfer can be achieved even with spontaneous decay rate. The maximum coherence and population transfer decrease with the increase of spontaneous decay rate from the highest state to intermediate state. But this effect can be compensated by shortening the pulse width and enlarging the delay time. Results show that the coherence generation and population transfer never depend on the spontaneous decay rate from the intermediate state to ground state. The validity of the analytic solution is examined by numerical calculation.