Experimental preparation of pure superposition states of atoms via elliptically polarized bichromatic radiation

Abstract

We propose a simple and effective way of creating pure dark superposition states. The generation of pure states is carried out by using bichromatic radiation with controllable polarization ellipticity. We experimentally confirm analytic formulas for polarization ellipticity to obtain m-m pure dark states in the system of Zeeman sublevels of alkali atoms. For 87Rb we experimentally accumulated 60% of the atoms in the 0-0 dark state and 50% into the (+/-1) - (+/-1) dark states.