Optical vortex filtering for the detection of Electromagnetically Induced Transparency

We report the realization of an optical filter based on an optical vortex mask designed to exclusively detect a weak coherent laser field in the presence of much stronger spatially-overlapping field. We demonstrate the performance of such an optical vortex filter to eliminate the strong control field and detect only a weak optical field's transmission under the conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency. The attractive feature of such filter is its insensitivity to optical field frequencies and polarizations, which makes it applicable for a wide range of coherent processes.