Abstract

Imaging cold atom samples provides interesting opportunities for studying not only the external atomic distribution, but also the internal atomic state, particularly for atoms prepared in a coherent state. We have previously developed techniques for off-resonant imaging of a cold atom cloud, without optical elements, computationally extracting the atomic column density map from a diffraction pattern (diffraction contrast imaging or DCI). We are now combining two lasers and three atomic states in a Λ-system to explore atomic coherence via two-dimensional imaging of electromagnetically induced transparency.

© 2007 Optical Society of America