Physical Review
Interaction of Optical and Infrared Radiation with Metastable Hydrogen Atoms
Wolfgang Zernik
Abstract
This paper is an extension of a previous one and discusses the theory of the quenching of the metastable $2S$ state of atomic hydrogen by means of optical radiation, for example by the light from a ruby laser. The case discussed is that for which the incident intensity is sufficiently weak for the usual quantum-electrodynamical perturbation theory to be valid. A procedure developed by Schwartz and others is used to carry out the sum over intermediate states without explicit enumeration. The results are given for a range of incident wavelengths from 5000 \AA{} to 5\ensuremath{\mu}. For unpolarized light from a ruby laser (6934 \AA{}), the total cross section for quenching is found to be ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{Q}=1.27\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}22}$ ${\mathrm{cm}}^{2}$. The cross section for coherent scattering has also been calculated for the same range of wavelengths; for ruby laser light, the total cross section for scattering is found to be ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{S}=1.03\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}23}$ ${\mathrm{cm}}^{2}$.