Shannon Mayer, University of Portland

Recent advances in atomic and optical physics have given scientist the ability to control light in unique and intriguing ways. For example, electromagnetically-induced transparency (EIT) is a technique that can be used to make a resonant optical transition transparent to resonant laser light. Because EIT allows for active control of the response a medium has to a resonant light field, it provides a unique means of coherently controlling photons and has applications in quantum computing and optical communications. This talk will describe an experiment for investigating EIT in rubidium gas and also discuss two-photon spectroscopy in rubidium as well as a method for generating coherent blue light in a rubidium vapor using two red diode lasers.