“Branching asymmetry” of the coherent population trapping resonance

The appearance of the population difference in the ground state of the $\Lambda $-system due to the spontaneous decay of the upper level into lower ones is considered. The resulting asymmetry of the coherent population trapping resonance is shown to lead to a frequency shift of the quadrature signal, which nonlinearly depends on the optical field intensity. In this case, this contribution is not suppressed due to the use of high modulation frequencies compared to the relaxation rate of ground state polarization (analogue of the Pound–Drever–Hall technique). A significant smallness of this shift when using a binary mixture of noble buffer gases is discussed.