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Based on our experimental observations of the resonant stimulated Raman gain and loss spectra in Rb atomic vapor, we propose an alternative interpretation of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). We find that, in the presence of a coupling field, a probe beam can exhibit both gain and loss depending on the frequencies of the incident beams. The gain and loss can coexist in a Doppler-broadened system, leading to polarization interference between atoms of different velocities, with a sharp transition from gain to loss as the probe-field frequency is scanned. We use the concept of Raman gain, instead of the commonly accepted quantum Fano interference, to explain the phenomenon of EIT and its transparency window as being due to the suppression of linear absorption by the Raman gain. Using this concept, the phenomena of EIT and Autler-Townes splitting may be explained within the same framework.

We measure the absorption and dispersion in a Doppler-broadened Λ-type three level system by resonant stimulated Raman spectroscopy with homodyne detection. Through studying the dressed state energies of the system, it is found that the absorption and dispersion satisfy the Kramers–Kronig relation. The absorption and dispersion spectra calculated by employing this relation agree well with our experimental observations.

Based on Akaike's information criterion (AIC) for a coherently driven ensemble of cold rubidium atoms, we study the crossover between electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) and Autler–Townes (AT) splitting from the dispersion as well as the absorption viewpoint. We find that the dispersion signal is more sensitive than the absorption signal, showing more pronounced features in the Akaike per-point weights spectrum, which provides a cleaner way of discerning EIT from AT splitting.

The threshold for the transition between Autler–Townes splitting (ATS) and electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) is studied through examining the dynamics of decaying dressed states, which are derived from the effective Hamiltonian. It is found that the threshold corresponds to the suppression of the Rabi oscillation of the populations by the relaxation as the coupling field becomes weak. Moreover, ATS and EIT belong to two different regimes, the former being in the non-perturbation regime, where there is coherent Rabi oscillation of the populations of the states coupled by the coupling field. By contrast, EIT is in the perturbation regime, and the transparency window in the EIT resonance can be explained as being due to the gain of the four-wave mixing process. Experiments are performed in cold rubidium atoms, where both the absorption and dispersion are measured, showing that EIT can be discriminated from ATS through Fourier transformation of the spectra. Compared to the statistical method proposed by Anisimov et al (2011 Phys. Rev. Lett. 107 163604), our method is more direct and is deterministic.