Influence of Doppler-broadening on absorption-dispersion properties in a resonant coherent medium

We investigate the influence of Doppler broadening on absorption-dispersion properties in a four-level atomic system that can evolve from a normal dispersion to an anomalous dispersion. Our results show that the absorption-dispersion properties become strongly dependent on the propagation directions of the applied fields if Doppler broadening is taken into account. Especially, the switchover in the sign of the dispersion is still achievable even in the presence of Doppler broadening if properly arranging the propagation directions of the applied fields, which is in contrast with the otherwise behaviours in some other configurations.