Title: Electromagnetically Induced Transparency (EIT) Amplitude Noise Spectroscopy,
Abstract: Intensity noise cross-correlation of the polarization eigenstates of light
emerging from an atomic vapor cell in the Hanle configuration allows one to
perform high resolution spectroscopy with free- running semiconductor lasers.
Such an approach has shown promise as an inexpensive, simpler approach to
magnetometry and timekeeping, and as a probe of dynamics of atomic coherence in
warm vapor cells. We report that varying the post-cell polarization state basis
yields intensity noise spectra which more completely probe the prepared atomic
state. We advance and test the hypothesis that the observed intensity noise can
be explained in terms of an underlying stochastic process in lightfield
amplitudes themselves. Understanding this stochastic process in the light field
amplitudes themselves provides a new test of the simple atomic quantum optics
model of EIT noise.