Physical Review A
Electromagnetically induced transparency in rubidium vapor prepared by a comb of short optical pulses
Vladimir A. Sautenkov, Yuri V. Rostovtsev, C. Y. Ye, George R. Welch, Olga A. Kocharovskaya, Marlan O. Scully
Abstract
It was shown by Kocharovskaya and Khanin [Sov. Phys. JETP 63, 945 (1986)] that a comb of optical pulses can induce a ground-state atomic coherence and change the optical response of an atomic medium. In our experiment, we studied the propagation of a comb of optical pulses produced by a mode-locked diode laser in rubidium atomic vapor. Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) was observed when the pulse repetition rate is a subharmonic of the hyperfine splitting of the ground state. The width of the EIT resonance is determined by the relaxation rate of the ground-state coherence. Possible applications to magnetometery, atomic clocks, and frequency chains are discussed.