Effect of Laser Light Ellipticity on Hanle Electromagnetically Induced Absorption Amplitude and Line Width

Using the S1/2Fg = 2 −→ P3/2Fe = 3 transition in Rb, we analyzed the interaction between the arbitrarily polarized laser light and Zeeman sublevels in the Hanle configuration. We studied theoretically and confirmed experimentally that the effect of the laser light polarization on the electromagnetically induced absorption strongly depends on the laser light power. For the same atomic transition, and for single laser light power (3 mW), it was recently shown that electromagnetically induced absorption line widths increase with polarization ellipticity and that electromagnetically induced absorption amplitude has maximum for certain laser light polarization different than linear. Here, we present results for amplitudes and widths of electromagnetically induced absorption for different laser light polarizations and for the laser light power ≤ 200 μW. It is verified that for small laser light power maximal electromagnetically induced absorption amplitude is for the linear polarization, whereas for larger power maximum of the electromagnetically induced absorption is at higher polarization ellipticity.