Analytic solutions of the susceptibility for Doppler-broadened two-level atoms

Abstract

We derive the rigorous analytic solutions for the susceptibility of Doppler-broadened two-level atoms, valid for arbitrary laser intensities. As is usually the case with real atoms, we observe that, when the homogeneous linewidth is much narrower than the Doppler width, the real part of the susceptibility is given by the product of an imaginary error function and a Gaussian, whereas the imaginary part consists simply of a Gaussian function. By employing the analytic results, in particular, we study the effects of optical pumping and saturation on the atomic susceptibility. We also find that the real (imaginary) part of the susceptibility is weakly (strongly) dependent on such parameters as the laser intensity or the optical pumping rate. The availability of analytic solutions for the simple laser-atom interaction may provide convenient tools for its understanding as well as application to more general and realistic situations.