Polarization effects in electromagnetically induced transparency - art. no. 053802

We demonstrate the magnitude dependence of electromagnetically induced tran sparency, in a three-level cascade scheme in rubidium, on the probe and cou pling field polarizations. We show that this dependence is due to the prese nce of the degenerate magnetic sublevels and the strengths of their relativ e dipole matrix elements. It is shown that this can lead to modified absorp tion profiles when electromagnetically induced transparency is used for spe ctroscopic purposes. We present theory that is in good agreement with our e xperiments.