Resonant two-photon absorption is discussed for the case in which the exciting field may be intense enough and near enough to resonance to cause appreciable saturation. A single pair of levels in an otherwise quite general atom is assumed to satisfy the appropriate resonance condition, and equations are derived governing the time evolution of the associated 2 × 2 submatrix of the full atomic density matrix. Atomic relaxation is treated explicitly. The analysis, which treats both inversion-symmetric and inversion-nonsymmetric cases within the same general formalism, is developed systematically, the necessary approximations receiving careful discussion. The results are analogous to those for the corresponding one-photon process, but with a shift in the resonance frequency proportional to the intensity of the exciting field. This frequency shift is not identical to the one calculated by time-independent (second-order) perturbation theory, and becomes large when the energy of an intermediate state of the atom approaches the mean of the energies of the active states.

• Received 3 February 1971

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.4.1666