Chinese Physics Letters
Reverse Energy-Pooling Collisions: Cs(9 D )+Na(3 S ) Cs(6 P )+Na(3 P )
Shen Yi-Fan, A Pulati, Kang Dai
Abstract
We report the observation of a heteronuclear reverse energy pooling process Cs(9 D )+Na(3 S )→Cs(6 P )+Na(3 P ). The state is populated in a stepwise excitation process by a dye-laser beam. A double-modulation technique is used to select the fluorescence contribution at the Na(3 P J ) exit channels only due to the above reaction. The ground-state sodium atom density was obtained by measuring the wing absorption coefficient. The measured density and fluorescence intensities are used to obtain the reverse energy-pooling rate coefficient. The cross section related to the rate coefficient is (4.3±1.4) × 10 −14 cm 2 .