The threshold for the transition between Autler–Townes splitting (ATS) and electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) is studied through examining the dynamics of decaying dressed states, which are derived from the effective Hamiltonian. It is found that the threshold corresponds to the suppression of the Rabi oscillation of the populations by the relaxation as the coupling field becomes weak. Moreover, ATS and EIT belong to two different regimes, the former being in the non-perturbation regime, where there is coherent Rabi oscillation of the populations of the states coupled by the coupling field. By contrast, EIT is in the perturbation regime, and the transparency window in the EIT resonance can be explained as being due to the gain of the four-wave mixing process. Experiments are performed in cold rubidium atoms, where both the absorption and dispersion are measured, showing that EIT can be discriminated from ATS through Fourier transformation of the spectra. Compared to the statistical method proposed by Anisimov et al (2011 Phys. Rev. Lett. 107 163604), our method is more direct and is deterministic.
The effects of Doppler broadening on Autler-Townes (AT) splitting in six-wave mixing (SWM) are investigated by the dressed-state model. We analyze the velocities at which the atoms are in resonance with the dressed states through Doppler frequency shifting and find that, depending on the wave-number ratio, there may be two resonant velocities which can originate from resonance with one of the dressed states or from resonance with two different dressed states. Based on this model, we discuss a novel type of AT doublet in the SWM spectrum, where macroscopic effects play an important role. Specifically, the existence of resonant peaks requires polarization interference between atoms of different velocities in addition to a change in the number of resonant atoms involved. Our model can also be employed to analyze electromagnetically induced transparency resonance and other types of Doppler-free high-resolution AT spectroscopy.
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