arXiv:1310.7330 · Europhysics Letters (EPL)
Polarization-rotation resonances with subnatural widths using a control laser
Sapam Ranjita Chanu, Kanhaiya Pandey, Vineet Bharti, Ajay Wasan, Vasant Natarajan A
Abstract
We demonstrate extremely narrow resonances for polarization rotation in an atomic vapor. The resonances are created using a strong control laser on the same transition, which polarizes the atoms due to optical pumping among the magnetic sublevels. As the power in the control laser is increased, successively higher-order nested polarization-rotation resonances are created, with progressively narrower linewidths. We study these resonances in the D 2 line of Rb in a room temperature vapor cell, and demonstrate a width of for the third-order rotation. The physical basis for the observed resonances is that optical pumping results in a simplified ΛV-type level structure with differential dressing of the levels by the control laser , which is why the control power has to be sufficiently high for each resonance to appear. This explanation is borne out by a density-matrix analysis of the system. The dispersive lineshape and subnatural width of the resonance lends itself naturally to applications such as laser locking to atomic transitions and precision measurements.