Coherent control of group index and magneto-optical anisotropy in a multilevel atomic vapor

Abstract

We study electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in a heated potassium vapor cell, using a simple optical setup with a single free-running diode laser and an acousto-optic modulator. Despite the fact that the Doppler width is comparable to the ground state hyperfine splitting, transparency windows with deeply sub-natural line widths and large group indices are obtained. A longitudinal magnetic field is used to split the EIT feature and induce magnetooptical anisotropy. Using the beat note between co-propagating coupling and probe beams, we perform a heterodyne measurement of the circular dichroism (and therefore birefringence) of the EIT medium. The observed spectra reveal that lin-par-lin polarizations lead to greater anisotropy than lin-perp-lin. A simplified analytical model encompassing sixteen Zeeman states and eighteen \Lamda\ subsytems reproduces the experimental observations.

Published version; available with Open Access at https://www.osapublishing.org/oe/fulltext.cfm?uri=oe-24-14-15494

References in corpus (6)

• Single-atom imaging of fermions in a quantum-gas microscope
• Imaging and addressing of individual fermionic atoms in an optical lattice
• Demonstration of a Tunable-Bandwidth White Light Interferometer using Anomalous Dispersion in Atomic Vapor
• The Hilbert transform: Applications to atomic spectra
• Absolute absorption on the potassium D lines:theory and experiment
• Velocity-selective EIT measurement of potassium Rydberg states

Cited by in corpus (6)

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• Hyperfine Paschen-Back regime of Potassium D${}_2$ line observed by Doppler-free spectroscopy
• Polariton dynamics in strongly interacting quantum many-body systems
• Saturated absorption technique used in Potassium microcell for magnetic field sensing
• Polaritons for testing the universality of an impurity in a Bose-Einstein condensate