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Physical Review A

Electromagnetically induced transparency in paraffin-coated vapor cells

Mason Klein, Michael Hohensee, David F. Phillips, Ronald Lee Walsworth

Published Jan 31, 2011• 66 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Antirelaxation coatings in atomic vapor cells allow ground-state coherent spin states to survive many collisions with the cell walls. This reduction in the ground-state decoherence rate gives rise to ultranarrow-bandwidth features in electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) spectra, which can form the basis of, for example, long-time scale slow and stored light, sensitive magnetometers, and precise frequency standards. Here we study, both experimentally and theoretically, how Zeeman EIT contrast and width in paraffin-coated rubidium vapor cells are determined by cell and laser-beam geometry, laser intensity, and atomic density. Using a picture of Ramsey pulse sequences, where atoms alternately spend ``bright'' and ``dark'' time intervals inside and outside the laser beam, we explain the behavior of EIT features in coated cells, highlighting their unique characteristics and potential applications.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.83.013826

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Antirelaxation coatings in atomic vapor cells allow ground-state coherent spin states to survive many collisions with the cell walls. This reduction in the ground-state decoherence rate gives rise to ultranarrow-bandwidth features in electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) spectra, which can form the basis of, for example, long-time scale slow and stored light, sensitive magnetometers, and precise frequency standards. Here we study, both experimentally and theoretically, how Zeeman EIT contrast and width in paraffin-coated rubidium vapor cells are determined by cell and laser-beam geometry, laser intensity, and atomic density. Using a picture of Ramsey pulse sequences, where atoms alternately spend bright'' and dark'' time intervals inside and outside the laser beam, we explain the behavior of EIT features in coated cells, highlighting their unique characteristics and potential applications.
Alkali vapor cells with antirelaxation coated walls can have long atomic coherence times. However, using such coated cells in the hyperfine configuration for electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) requires longitudinal atomic motion to be confined to less than the hyperfine wavelength. We employed a narrow (1 mm) coated cell geometry to study hyperfine EIT and slow and stored light in warm R87b vapor, with results comparable to those in buffer gas cells and showing the promise of such cells for several applications.
Preliminary results from an experimental study of slow light in anti-relaxation-coated Rb vapour cells are presented, and the construction and testing of such cells are described. The slow ground state decoherence rate allowed by coated cell walls leads to a dual-structured electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) spectrum with a very narrow (< 100 Hz) transparency peak on top of a broad pedestal. Such dual-structured EIT permits optical probe pulses to propagate with greatly reduced group velocity on two time scales. Ongoing efforts to optimize the pulse delay in such coated cell systems are discussed.
Abstract The features of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in gas cells with antirelaxation coating of the walls are considered. It is shown that the simultaneous effect of the motion of atoms, the finite size of a cell, and the nondegeneracy of the ground state of atoms leads to a number of qualitative phenomena. In particular, even for the simplest three-level lambda scheme with a nondegenerate ground state, a significant difference in the spectra of EIT is revealed and investigated in detail depending on the relation between the frequencies of the probe and control fields, i.e., depending on whether the probe radiation is scattered in the Stokes or anti-Stokes channel. A significant spatial inhomogeneity of the excited low-frequency coherence is observed, which persists for large cells even far from their boundaries. In this case, the EIT resonances formed by atoms in different regions of a cell turn out to be differently shifted in frequency, which causes an additional inhomogeneous broadening of the observed profile. The observed effects are studied as a function of the nature of the accommodation of atoms on the surface of the antirelaxation coating.
Abstract Destruction of the laser-induced coherence in the ground state of alkali atoms manifests itself as an ultra-narrow resonance in the atomic spectrum. Depending on the geometry of irradiation and observation, the coherent spectroscopy studies CPT (coherent population trapping), EIT (electromagnetically-induced transparency) or EIA (electromagnetically-induced absorption). In the present work, we investigated EIA on the D1 87Rb line by applying a counter-propagating dual-beam scheme. The main advantage of this scheme is the high resonance contrast – an important parameter for many applications. In our previous work performed in a paraffin-coated cell we observed that, unlike the resonance in buffer gas cell detected in the same experimental scheme, the EIA signal has a complex form, because it is formed by two atomic sub-ensembles in the vapor cell with different relaxation rates determined by the laser excitation conditions. We focused on the narrow component, since it has a higher amplitude-width ratio, making it preferable for applications. We investigate the influence of the atomic vapor density and the pump laser intensity on the resonance parameters in order to optimize the amplitude ratio of the wide and narrow components and achieve the highest amplitude-width ratio value for the narrow component of the EIA resonance.
We report on magnetic-field induced transparency (MIT) based on Ramsey electromagnetically induced absorption (EIA) in a paraffin-coated Rb vapor cell. Changing the laser polarization from linear to circular in the presence of a weak residual transverse magnetic field to the laser propagation, the narrow absorption due to the Ramsey EIA transformed into the transparency due to MIT of the 5S1/2 (F = 2)-5P3/2 (F' = 3) transition of 87Rb in the paraffin-coated Rb vapor cell. The spectral widths of the EIA and MIT in the Hanle configuration were measured to be 0.6 mG (425 Hz) and 1.2 mG, respectively. MIT depended on the long preservation time of the ground-state coherent spin states and the transverse magnetic field. From the numerical results, the crossover between the Ramsey EIA and the MIT could be illustrated as the superposition of both signals.
Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) is a promising approach for implementing quantum memory, a key component of quantum communication networks. However, its storage time is limited by decoherence, primarily due to atomic motion. Anti-relaxation coatings can mitigate decoherence by minimizing atom-wall interactions. In this study, we experimentally investigate EIT-based quantum memory in cesium vapor cells with different anti-relaxation coatings. We compare the EIT characteristics and storage behavior across different coatings to assess their suitability for quantum memory applications.