Physical Review A
Experimental investigation of the initial-state alignment dependence in the energy pooling process: Ca(4s4p3P1)+Ca(4s4p3P1)→Ca(4s4p1P1)+Ca(4s2)
Harold Parks, Eileen M. Spain, John E. Smedley, Stephen R. Leone
Abstract
A pulsed laser investigation is performed to study the detailed effects of electronic angular-momentum alignment on the cross section for the energy-transfer process $\mathrm{Ca}(4s4p{}^{3}{P}_{1})+\mathrm{Ca}(4s4p{}^{3}{P}_{1})\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\mathrm{Ca}(4s4p{}^{1}{P}_{1})+\mathrm{Ca}{(4s}^{2}).$ A uniform magnetic field imposed by a set of Helmholtz coils is used to systematically precess the initial state orbitals with a well-defined period, allowing different alignments to be sampled at different time delays after the pulsed laser excites and aligns the $\mathrm{Ca}(4s4p{}^{3}{P}_{1})$ states. The polarization effects in this collision process are striking. For example, the cross section for two atoms both in the ${m}_{j}=0$ magnetic substrate is 13 times larger than the cross section for two atoms that are both in the ${m}_{j}=1$ (or -1) substrate, where the quantization axis is taken to be along the relative velocity vector of the collision. The initial m-sublevel dependence of this three-vector correlation process can be completely described with eight fundamental parameters, five of which are accurately obtained. In addition, the coarse energy dependence of these parameters is deduced.