Electromagnetically induced absorption due to transfer of population in degenerate two-level systems

Abstract

We predict the occurrence of electromagnetically induced absorption (EIA) in cycling degenerate two-level transitions where ${F}_{e}={F}_{g}+1$ and ${F}_{g}>0$, interacting with pump and probe lasers with the same polarization. The EIA is due to transfer of population (TOP) between the Zeeman levels of the ground hyperfine state, rather than transfer of coherence (TOC) which occurs for perpendicularly polarized lasers. We model EIA-TOP using a double two-level system (TLS) which we compare with the four-level $N$ system, which models EIA-TOC. When the pump intensity is low, both models give an EIA peak at line center. The effect of introducing phase-changing collisions is studied, in the presence and absence of Doppler broadening, for both the double TLS and $N$ systems. In the presence of phase-changing collisions, the central EIA peaks are narrowed in both models and persist to higher pump Rabi frequencies than in the absence of collisions. In the double TLS, in the presence of Doppler broadening, the central EIA-TOP peak becomes narrower and does not develop a dip in its center, in contrast to the $N$ system. The central dip that appears in the Doppler-broadened EIA-TOC spectrum can be wiped out by adding phase-changing collisions. We demonstrate that EIA-TOP can be obtained for realistic atomic transitions interacting with lasers that have the same polarization.