ABSTRACT
We report a proof-of-principle experiment where the refractive index of an atomic vapor is enhanced while maintaining vanishing absorption of the beam. The key idea is to drive alkali atoms in a vapor with appropriate control lasers and induce a gain resonance and an absorption resonance for a probe beam in a two-photon Raman configuration. The strength and the position of these two resonances can be manipulated by changing the parameters of the control lasers. By using the interference between these two resonances, we obtain an enhanced refractive index without an increase in the absorption.
ABSTRACT
We demonstrate the generation of two high-power laser beams whose frequencies are separated by the ground state hyperfine transition frequency in (87)Rb. The system uses a single master diode laser appropriately shifted by high frequency acousto-optic modulators and amplified by semiconductor tapered amplifiers. This produces two 1 W laser beams with a frequency spacing of 6.834 GHz and a relative frequency stability of 1 Hz. We discuss possible applications of this apparatus, including electromagnetically induced transparency-like effects and ultrafast qubit rotations.
