Ultranarrow Faraday rotation filter at the Rb D1 line

We present a theoretical and experimental study of the ultranarrow bandwidth Faraday anomalous dispersion optical filter operating at the rubidium D-1 line (795 nm). This atomic line gives better performance than other lines for key figures of merit, e.g., simultaneously 71% transmission, 445 MHz bandwidth, and 1.2 GHz equivalent-noise bandwidth. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America