Journal of the Optical Society of America B
Electromagnetically induced transparency with variable fluctuation time of photon number of pseudothermal probe light
In‐Ho Bae, Hee Jung Lee, Han Seb Moon
Abstract
We investigate the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in Rb atoms interacting with a pseudothermal probe light exhibiting a Bose–Einstein photon number distribution. The EIT spectrum in the 5S1/2−5P1/2 transition of the Λ-type system of the 87Rb atom was observed using a coupling laser and the pseudothermal probe light generated by passing the probe laser though a rotating rough disk. From the EIT spectrum with pseudothermal light, we experimentally demonstrated that the fluctuation of the number of photons was the same as the superposition of frequency noise of the probe light. The coherence time of the pseudothermal probe light was estimated from the measured EIT spectra. We confirmed that the experimental results as a function of the rotating speed of the rough disk were in good agreement with the numerically calculated results.