Strong-field index enhancement via incoherent excitation

We show that it is possible, in principle,,to employ an incoherent field as a control field to achieve maximal atomic coherence for a probe field, which characterizes ultralarge index of refraction and vanishing absorption. For this purpose we consider a three-level V system in which there are two dipole transitions, of which one is weak and the other is strong. The strong probe field is applied to the weak transition and the incoherent field drives the strong transition. For such an arrangement, selective dressed-population trapping, which corresponds to maximal atomic coherence, is established by relying on the incoherent field and the spontaneous relaxation to transfer population from one dressed state to the other. This scheme as an extreme example explains that strong-field index enhancement based on selective dressed-population trapping is resistant to the control field fluctuations.