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Chinese Optics Letters

Polarization spectroscopy of the 1S0-3P1 transition of mercury isotopes at 253.7 nm

Xiaohu Fu, Kangkang Liu Kangkang Liu, Ru-Chen Zhao, Wei Gou Wei Gou, Jianfang Sun, Zhen Xu Zhen Xu, Yuzhu Wang Yuzhu Wang

Published Jan 1, 2015• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

We experimentally observe polarization spectroscopy (PS) of the S01-P31 transition of mercury atom gases at 253.7 nm. The PS signal can be observed in all six richly abundant isotopes and the PS signal of six transitions for laser cooling are all clear and of a dispersive line shape. The optimized pump power and probe power are found for the PS of Hg202. We find the linearly polarized component in the pump beam will distort the original PS signal due to the use of linear PS. Consequently, the purity of the pump beam is crucial to laser frequency stabilization by PS.

DOI
10.3788/col201513.073001

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We experimentally observe polarization spectroscopy (PS) of the S01-P31 transition of mercury atom gases at 253.7 nm. The PS signal can be observed in all six richly abundant isotopes and the PS signal of six transitions for laser cooling are all clear and of a dispersive line shape. The optimized pump power and probe power are found for the PS of Hg202. We find the linearly polarized component in the pump beam will distort the original PS signal due to the use of linear PS. Consequently, the purity of the pump beam is crucial to laser frequency stabilization by PS.
We analyze the polarization spectrum of S10−P11 transition in atomic ytterbium with bosonic and fermionic isotopes in a hollow cathode lamp. Bosonic signals are created by saturation effects because of their only nondegenerate ground state, whereas fermionic counterparts are generated by optical pumping. The dependence of spectral signals on the cathode lamp current as well as the powers of the pump and probe beams are systematically investigated. Optimized parameters for future frequency-locking applications are suggested. The effects of pump beam polarization are determined by comparing results obtained from a circularly polarized pump beam to those obtained from an elliptically polarized one; here, enhanced signals were achieved by the former compared with the latter.
Isotopically selective resonance ionization of mercury atoms has been accomplished by three-step excitation via the 6 3P1 and 8 1S0 excited states. Three collinear beams, respectively 254, 286, and 532 nm, from two dye lasers and a pulsed neodymium:yttrium aluminum garnet (ND:YAG) pump laser, were passed through a closed mercury vapor cell containing electrodes to which the ions were drawn by an electric field. The ion current and the 254-nm fluorescence radiation were measured as a function of laser wavelengths. Hyperfine structures for the 254- and 286-nm transitions were observed.
We report direct laser spectroscopy of the $^{1}S_{0}\mathrm{\text{\ensuremath{-}}}^{3}P_{0}$ transition at 265.6 nm in fermionic isotopes of neutral mercury in a magneto-optical trap. Measurements of the frequency against the LNE-SYRTE primary reference using an optical frequency comb yield $1\text{ }128\text{ }575\text{ }290\text{ }808.4\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}5.6\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{kHz}$ in 199Hg^{199}\mathrm{Hg}199Hg and $1\text{ }128\text{ }569\text{ }561\text{ }139.6\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}5.3\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{kHz}$ in 201Hg^{201}\mathrm{Hg}201Hg. The uncertainty, allowed by the observation of the Doppler-free recoil doublet, is 4 orders of magnitude lower than previous indirect determinations. Mercury is a promising candidate for future optical lattice clocks due to its low sensitivity to blackbody radiation.
Mercury is the heaviest stable atom that could be laser cooled, and have a large nuclear charge number. So it has a distinct advantage in quantum precision measurement such as fine-structure constant α and permanent electric dipole moment. Due to its insensitivity of black body radiation, atomic mercury is a good candidate of optical clock. Here we report our recent development of laser cooling of neutral mercury atom. By cooling the mercury source to about -70°C, an ultra-high vacuum system was realized to produce ultracold mercury atoms. The commercial frequency quadrupled semiconductor laser is locked on the cooling transition (1S0-3P1 transition, wavelength of 253.7 nm) by sub-Doppler frequency modulation spectroscopy. By the modification with feed-forward method, the UV laser becomes faster tunable and more stable. A folded beam configuration was used to realize the magneto-optical trap (MOT) because of the shortage of cooling laser power, and the ultracold mercury atoms were observed by fluorescence detection. All of six rich abundant isotopes have been observed, and the atom number is about 1.5×106 with density of 3.5×109 /cm3 for 202Hg. With optical shutter and the programmable system to control the time sequence, the temperature of ultracold atoms can be measured by time of flight method. To enhance the laser power, a 1014.8 nm fiber laser amplifier was developed, which can work at room temperature. After two stages of frequency doubling, about 75 mW of 253.7 nm UV laser were generated, and the saturated absorption spectroscopy of mercury atom was also observed. More power of UV laser could help to trap more atoms in the future. These works laid a good foundation to realize the mercury lattice clock.
We demonstrate polarization spectroscopy of an excited state transition in room-temperature cesium vapor. An anisotropy induced by a circularly polarized pump beam on the D2 transition is observed using a weak probe on the 6P(3/2)→7S(1/2) transition. At high pump power, a subfeature due to Autler-Townes splitting is observed that theoretical modeling shows is enhanced by Doppler averaging. Polarization spectroscopy provides a simple modulation-free signal suitable for laser frequency stabilization to excited state transitions.