Skip to content

Sagnac Interferometry in a Slow-Light Medium

Graham T. Purves, Charles S. Adams, Ifan G. Hughes

physics.atom-pharXiv:physics/0512126

Abstract

We use a Sagnac interferometer to measure the dispersive and absorptive properties of room temperature Rubidium vapor on the D2 line at 780.2 nm. We apply a pump beam such that the resulting Lambda system exhibits Electromagnetically Induced Transparency. Using a "biased alignment" technique we demonstrate a direct and robust method of measuring the rapid variation in the refractive index. Such a "slow-light" Sagnac interferometer is ideally suited to precision measurement applications such as magnetometry and inertial sensing.

Create a lesson