Electromagnetically induced transparency by NMR

Abstract

Electromagnetically Induced Transparency (EIT) is a quantum nonlinear optical interference effect in which light at a certain frequency makes normally opaque atomic systems transparent to light at another frequency. Recent experiments in Atomic Molecular and Optical (AMO) physics demonstrated how the EIT effect can be used to store light pulses in an atomic system by coupling the light to the atomic system. One of the most elegant predictions of EIT theory is that the quantum phase of the dark state of the system remains unchanged even with a coupling between the dark state and another state. However, this has never been experimentally shown because of the lack of atomic systems that have long enough decoherence times and the difficulty of applying the complex pulse sequences needed to measure quantum phases in atomic systems. In this thesis, I use nuclear magnetic resonance techniques to implement the EIT effect and confirm this prediction, using Ramsey interferometry and visibility measurements to quantify the loss of quantum phase.