Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE
Level-crossing spectroscopy of the 7, 9, and 10D states of Cs in an external electric field
Marcis P. Auzinsh, Kaspars Blushs, R. Ferber, F. Gahbauer, Andrey Jarmola, M. Tamanis
Abstract
We discuss experimental and theoretical studies of coherent excitation of magnetic sublevels in nD states of cesium that cross in an external electric field. Crossings of mF magnetic sublevels of hyperfine F levels with &Dgr;mF = ±2 lead to resonances in the linearly polarized laser induced fluorescence, while crossings with &Dgr;mF = ±1 lead to resonances in the circularly polarized laser induced fluorescence. These resonances can be exploited to observe alignment to orientation conversion. From the level crossing signals it is possible to measure atomic properties, such as the tensor polarizability &agr;2 and the hyperfine constant A. Alignment to orientation conversion involves the deformation of the spatial distribution of an atom's angular momentum.