Trichromatic phase manipulation of the response of a two-level medium to an arbitrarily intense probe field

The phase dependence and independence of the response of a trichromatically driven two-level medium to an arbitrarily intense probe field have been studied. The sum of the relative phases of the sideband components of the trichromatic field compared to the central component plays a crucial role in the response of the medium. For a weak probe field, as the sum of the relative phases changes from 0 to pi, multiple switching can be achieved, in which switching from normal to anomalous dispersion occurs in multiple separate frequency regimes. The remarkable dependence on the sum phase is also shown for a strong probe field. On the other hand, when the sum of the two relative phases is fixed, the changes in the respective phases have no influence on the response of the medium.