Electromagnetically induced transparency in inhomogeneously broadened solid media

TL;DR

This paper investigates electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in solid media with inhomogeneous broadening, combining theoretical and experimental approaches to understand its characteristics and compare with atomic gases.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of EIT in inhomogeneously broadened solid systems, including experimental validation and theoretical modeling applicable to various materials.

Findings

EIT lineshapes resemble those in atomic gases

Observation of Autler-Townes splitting crossover

Quantitative agreement between experiment and theory

Abstract

We study, theoretically and experimentally, electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in two different solid-state systems. Unlike many implementations in homogeneously broadened media, these systems exhibit inhomogeneous broadening of their optical and spin transitions typical of solid-state materials. We observe EIT lineshapes typical of atomic gases, including a crossover into the regime of Autler-Townes splitting, but with the substitution of the inhomogeneous widths for the homogeneous values. We obtain quantitative agreement between experiment and theory for the width of the transparency feature over a range of optical powers and inhomogeneous linewidths. We discuss regimes over which analytical and numerical treatments capture the behavior. As solid-state systems become increasingly important for scalable and integratable quantum optical and photonic devices, it is vital to understand the effects of the inhomogeneous broadening that is ubiquitous in these systems. The treatment presented here can be applied to a variety of systems, as exemplified by the common scaling of experimental results from two different systems.