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 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.