Quantum phase transitions of three-level atoms interacting with a one-mode electromagnetic field

Abstract: We apply the energy surface method to study a system of Na three-level atoms interacting with a one-mode radiation field in the \Xi, \Lambda and V configurations. We obtain an estimation of the ground-state energy, the expectation value of the total number of excitations, and the separatrix of the model in the interaction parameter space, and compare the results with the exact solutions. We have first and second-order phase transitions, except for the V configuration which only presents second-order phase-transitions.