Efficient atom localization via probe absorption in an inverted-<italic>Y</italic> atomic system.

The behaviour of atom localization in an inverted-<italic>Y</italic> atomic system is theoretically investigated. For the atoms interacting with a weak probe field and several orthogonal standing-wave fields, their position information can be obtained by measuring the probe absorption. Compared with the traditional scheme, we couple the probe field to the transition between the middle and top levels. It is found that the probe absorption sensitively depends on the detuning and strength of the relevant light fields. Remarkably, the atom can be localized at a particular position in the standing-wave fields by coupling a microwave field to the transition between the two ground levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]