State purification of a fast neon metastable beam by collinear optical pumping
T. Dean Gaily, M. J. Coggiola, James R. Peterson +1 more
An apparatus has been constructed to produce well-characterized fast beams of rare gas metastable atoms for subsequent scattering experiments. Optical pumping by a collinear laser beam can be used to selectively remove either of the two metastable components from the beam. Laser-induced-fluorescence (LIF) techniques can be used to determine the original beam composition and to monitor composition changes resulting from optical absorption. These techniques have been successfully applied to a metastable neon beam produced by near-resonant charge transfer of Ne+ in Na. A simple model has been developed which accurately reproduces the observed LIF lineshape generated by tuning the laser throught the optical transition frequency.
Review of Scientific Instruments•Sep 1, 1980•17 citations