CONTINUOUS-WAVE ELECTROMAGNETICALLY INDUCED TRANSPARENCY - A COMPARISON OF V-SYSTEM, LAMBDA-SYSTEM, AND CASCADE SYSTEMS

A theoretical and experimental investigation has been carried out into the viability of V-type, Lambda-type, and cascade systems within rubi dium for the observation of electromagnetically-induced transparency ( EIT), A Lambda-type system is also discussed where EIT is induced on a two-photon transition. Continuous-wave single-frequency titanium sapp hire lasers have been employed to provide the applied optical fields. It is found that systems that have a strong coupling field resonant wi th the 5S(1/2) ground state suffer from complicating optical pumping m echanisms that tend to mask EIT windows. It is also found that wavelen gth matching of the applied optical fields enhances the observation of EIT since this results in a reduced residual Doppler linewidth of the atomic system.