Off-resonance absorption and dispersion in a Doppler-broadened medium

Abstract

We study the absorptive and dispersive properties of Doppler-broadened atomic media as a function of detuning. Beginning from the exact lineshape calculated for a two-level atom, a series of approximations to the electric susceptibility are made. These simplified functions facilitate direct comparison between absorption and dispersion, and show that dispersion dominates the atom-light interaction far from resonance. The calculated absorption and dispersion are compared to experimental data, showing the validity of the approximations.

9 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Absolute absorption on the rubidium D lines: comparison between theory and experiment
• Wide-bandwidth, tunable, multiple-pulse-width optical delays using slow light in cesium vapor
• Slow-light Faraday effect: an atomic probe with gigahertz bandwidth
• A heated vapor cell unit for DAVLL in atomic rubidium