Abstract

We have demonstrated a technique for photon-echo interferometry, whereby photon echoes generated by adjacent transitions in simple atoms are made to destructively interfere, suppressing the echo intensity by 10^4. This technique serves as a sensitive probe of any perturbation that differentially affects the phase of the optical dipole moments of the adjacent transitions. The method is applied to place an upper limit on the rate of weak collision-induced optical coherence transfer between the adjacent optical transitions.

© 1993 Optical Society of America