The mean first passage time of a three-level atomic optical bistable system subjected to noise

The transient properties of a three-level atomic optical bistable system in the presence of multiplicative and additive noises are investigated. The explicit expressions of the mean first-passage time (MFPT) of the transition from the high intracavity intensity state to low one are obtained by numerical computations. The impacts of the intensities of the multiplicative noise D_M and the additive noise D_A, the intensity of correlation between two noises λ, and the intensity of the incident light y on the MFPT are discussed, respectively. Our results show: (i) For the case of no correlation between two noises (λ=0.0), the increase in D_M and D_A can lead to an increase in the probability of the transition to the low intracavity intensity state, while the increase in y can lead to a retardation of the transition; and (ii) for the case of correlation between two noises (λ≠0.0), the increase in λ can cause an increase in the probability of the transition, and the increase in D_A can cause a retardation of the transition firstly and then an increase in the probability of the transition, i.e., the noise-enhanced stability is observed for the case of correlation between two noises.