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 D1 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.