Interaction of three coherent fields with Doppler broadened serial four-level systems: Application to four-level FIR lasers

The semiclassical density matrix treatment is applied to serial four-level systems for the steady state. Phase and energy relaxations as well as Doppler effects and M degeneracy are accounted for. The calculations are restricted to parallel polarized fields, avoiding problems of quantum interference. The formalism is used to calculate the gain spectra of different four-level far-infrared (FIR) laser schemes: double resonance pumped laser, Raman laser, two-photon pumped laser, and hyper-Raman-laser.