Issue |
EPL
Volume 98, Number 4, May 2012
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 44009 | |
Number of page(s) | 6 | |
Section | Electromagnetism, Optics, Acoustics, Heat Transfer, Classical Mechanics, and Fluid Dynamics | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/98/44009 | |
Published online | 30 May 2012 |
Conversion between electromagnetically induced transparency and absorption in a three-level lambda system
Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science - Bangalore 560 012, India
a
vasant@physics.iisc.ernet.in
Received:
13
February
2012
Accepted:
26
April
2012
We show that it is possible to change from a subnatural electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) feature to a subnatural electromagnetically induced absorption (EIA) feature in a (degenerate) three-level Λ system. The change is effected by turning on a second control beam counter-propagating with respect to the first beam. We observe this change in the D2 line of Rb in a room temperature vapor cell. The observations are supported by density-matrix analysis of the complete sublevel structure including the effect of Doppler averaging, but can be understood qualitatively as arising due to the formation of N-type systems with the two control beams. Since many of the applications of EIT and EIA rely on the anomalous dispersion near the resonances, this introduces a new ability to control the sign of the dispersion.
PACS: 42.50.Gy – Effects of atomic coherence on propagation, absorption, and amplification of light; electromagnetically induced transparency and absorption / 32.80.Qk – Coherent control of atomic interactions with photons / 32.80.Xx – Level crossing and optical pumping
© EPLA, 2012
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.