Tuning from enhanced absorption to transparency in the Hanle effect
Harish Ravi, Sapam Ranjita Chanu, Vasant Natarajan A
Abstract
We demonstrate that the Hanle effect can be tuned from enhanced absorption to enhanced transmission simply by changing the polarization of the laser beam from linear to circular. The experiments are done on the D$_2$ line of Cs at 852 nm, using the closed hyperfine transition $ F_g = 4 \rightarrow F_e = 5 $. The transformation can be understood qualitatively based on optical pumping and coherences among the magnetic sublevels of the levels involved. To increase the coherence time, the experiments done in a paraffin-coated Cs vapor cell (at room temperature). The observed linewidth is extremely narrow (about 1 mG or 175 Hz), making this a promising technique for all kinds of precision measurements.