2007/02/28 by M. Shuker, Ofer Firstenberg, O. Firstenberg +6 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.76.023813
published as Phys. Rev. A 76, 023813 (2007). · Introduction revised
arxiv created 2007/03/13 · openalex publication_date 2007/08/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Dicke narrowing is a phenomenon that dramatically reduces the Doppler width of spectral lines, due to frequent velocity-changing collisions. A similar phenomenon occurs for electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) resonances, and facilitates ultranarrow spectral features in room-temperature vapor. We directly measure the Dicke-like narrowing by studying EIT line shapes as a function of the angle between the pump and probe beams. The measurements are in good agreement with an analytic theory with no fit parameters. The results show that Dicke narrowing can increase substantially the tolerance of hot-vapor EIT to angular deviations. We demonstrate the importance of this effect for applications such as imaging and spatial solitons using a single-shot imaging experiment, and discuss the implications for the feasibility of storing images in atomic vapor.