Two-photon spectroscopy. III. General strong-field aspects

For pt.II see ibid., vol.9, p.1221 (1976). Discusses the steady-state response of a three-level atom in two-photon absorption. The applied laser fields can have arbitrary intensities (within the rotating-wave approximation (RWA)). A general expression is derived for the population excited on the uppermost energy level. Two special cases which allow a trivial Doppler averaging are treated in detail. For an off-resonant intermediate state the two-photon spectrum is a simple Lorentzian showing a power shift and modest cross power broadening. The same features are retained when several off-resonance intermediate levels are assumed. For very strong laser fields the Doppler shifts can be neglected in the first approximation. The corresponding spectra are analysed.