Physical Review A
Observation of transient electromagnetically induced transparency in a rubidium Λ system
H.X. Chen, Alan V. Durrant, J. P. Marangos, Joan A. Vaccaro
Abstract
Observation of transient effects in electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) is reported in ${\mathrm{Rb}}^{85}$ cooled in a magneto-optical trap. The transmission of a weak probe beam in resonance with the ${5S}_{1/2}(F=3)$ to ${5P}_{3/2}(F=3)$ hyperfine transition increased transiently when a relatively strong coupling field in resonance with the ${5S}_{1/2}(F=2)$ to ${5P}_{3/2}(F=3)$ hyperfine transition was switched on rapidly using a Pockels cell. The probe transient showed an initial Rabi half-cycle overshoot before settling down to steady-state EIT. The results agreed well with computations using a three-state model of the \ensuremath{\Lambda} system. The computations also suggest that transient gain should be observed with coupling field power only four times larger than that presently available to us.