  Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) has mainly been modelled for
three-level systems. In particular, a considerable interest has been dedicated
to the Lambda-configuration, with two ground states and one excited state.
However, in the alkali-metal atoms, which are commonly used, hyperfine
interaction in the excited state introduces several levels which simultaneously
participate in the scattering process. When the Doppler broadening is
comparable with the hyperfine splitting in the upper state, the three-level
Lambda model does not reproduce the experimental results. Here we theoretically
investigate the EIT in a hot vapor of alkali-metal atoms and demonstrate that
it can be strongly reduced due to the presence of multiple excited levels.
Given this model, we also show that a well-designed optical pumping enables to
significantly recover the transparency.
