Modulation transfer spectroscopy for ^87Rb atoms: theory and experiment

Abstract

We conducted a theoretical and experimental study of lineshape in modulation transfer spectroscopy for ⁸⁷Rb atoms. When a linearly polarized pump beam, modulated at an angular frequency of Ω, overlaps in parallel with an unmodulated linearly polarized probe beam, combined modulated probe beams are generated via nonlinear interaction with atoms. The detected modulation transfer signals are calculated by numerically solving the complete optical Bloch equations for the ⁸⁷Rb atoms without the use of any phenomenological parameters. We find that the calculated results are in good agreement with experimental results.