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Journal of Physics B Atomic and Molecular Physics

Observation of the resonant Stark effect at optical frequencies

Felix Schuda, Carlos R. Stroud, Michael Hercher

Published May 11, 1974• 414 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The spectrum of resonantly scattered light at right angles to a sodium atomic beam is reported. The light source was a CW dye laser tuned to resonance with a hyperfine component of the D 2 line, and incident at right angles to the atomic beam. The spectrum, with the Stark effect sidebands, was recorded as a function of both the laser intensity and its detuning from resonance. The overall resolution is better than 20 MHz.

DOI
10.1088/0022-3700/7/7/002

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Review of Scientific Instruments•Aug 1, 1957•5 citations
The spectrum of resonantly scattered light at right angles to a sodium atomic beam is reported. The light source was a CW dye laser tuned to resonance with a hyperfine component of the D 2 line, and incident at right angles to the atomic beam. The spectrum, with the Stark effect sidebands, was recorded as a function of both the laser intensity and its detuning from resonance. The overall resolution is better than 20 MHz.
The subject of this thesis is the construction of a stabilized cw dye laser and its use with a sodium atomic beam to gain information about the range of validity of certain atomic radiation theories. By lengthening the laser cavity, cooling the dye solution and adding many other refinements the bandwidth of a single mode cw dye laser was reduced to 3 MHz over a period of ten seconds. The laser was designed so that by the insertion of three uncoated glass etalons single mode tunable operation was achieved. The purpose of stabilizing the dye laser was to be able to perform experiments on the hyperfine structure of sodium at high enough resolution and intensity to see any possible differences in the theoretical predictions of Quantum Electrodynamics, the optical Bloch equations, and Neoclassical Radiation Theory. The traditional method of eliminating Doppler shifting was used, that is a well-collimated thermal atomic beam of sodium was constructed. By crossing the atomic and laser beams at right angles the natural linewidth of 10 MHz was observable with only one or two MHz residual broadening. Two types of experiments were carried out: those studying the absorption spectrum, and those studying the emission spectrum. In the first experiments Lorentzian lineshapes were observed for all applied field strengths. This proved that if the Lamb shift of Neoclassical Theory exists at all it is small compared with 10 MHz for the sodium D lines. Further, the sharply peaked spectrum predicted by Neoclassical Theory for a certain field strength was not observed. The width of the absorption at high field strengths was not in good agreement with either theory. In the second type of experiment the observed emission spectra were in qualitative, but not good quantitative, agreement with Quantum Electrodynamics when the effects of nearby levels were included. The results are in disagreement with a two-level neoclassical treatment, and we have been unable thus far to obtain better agreement in more sophisticated treatments. Undoubtedly a better multi-level calculation is required in all theories since our system is not really two-level. In addition, we have found that a factor of 2 increase in the critical intensity calibration would bring QED into reasonable agreement with most of the experiments. However, we have been unable to establish the origin of such a factor. While these results were not sufficient to finally and absolutely settle the controversy regarding Quantum Electrodynamics and Neoclassical Theory they did provide a great deal of new information. For the first time the dynamic Stark effect was observed near resonance in the optical region with data that could be compared to theory. Also, the measurements of the absorption spectrum were the most complete and among the highest resolution measurements yet obtained by direct optical techniques. And finally, a number of of optical pumping phenomena were observed.
Analytic expressions are obtained for the spectrum of the light scattered when a collimated atomic beam is illuminated at right angles to its path by a CW monochromatic laser beam tuned to resonance with a two-level transition. The spectra vary depending on the portion of the interaction region from which the scattered light emanates. The spectrum of the light from a finite sub-region of the interaction volume is described as a function of the location and length of the sub-region, and of the intensity and frequency of the laser. Several interesting features related to the turn-on of the interaction as well as to the finite observation interval are found.
Four-wave optical parametric amplification enhanced by the ac Stark effect has been observed, with the use of a dye laser tuned near the D2{D}_{2}D2​ line of sodium. This process leads to the generation of sidebands displaced from the laser frequency by the generalized Rabi frequency. Under certain experimental conditions, the emitted radiation is in the form of a cone surrounding the transmitted laser beam. A theoretical model that describes these effects is presented.
We have used two-photon absorption from counterpropagating laser beams of different frequencies to measure Stark shifts and splittings of the 62S6^{2}S62S, 72S7^{2}S72S, 82S8^{2}S82S, 52D5^{2}D52D, and 62D6^{2}D62D states in sodium. Beams from a fixed-frequency, single-mode Ar+{\mathrm{Ar}}^{+}Ar+ laser and a tunable, single-frequency cw dye laser were focussed into a coarse sodium atomic beam and the fluorescence was monitored. The collimation of the atomic beam reduced the residual Doppler width inherent in using two different frequencies. Using the two lasers allowed two-photon transitions to be observed at frequencies unattainable with the dye laser alone, and enhanced the transition rates due to the near resonance of the dye laser with the strong Na $3^{2}S\ensuremath{\rightarrow}3^{2}P$ transition. Our experimental results for the scalar and tensor polarizabilities, ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{0}$ and ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{2}$, agree with calculations in the Bates and Damgaard Coulomb approximation within 2% for ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{0}$ and 9% for ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{2}$. As a by-product the hyperfine-interaction constants aaa for the SSS states and the fine-structure intervals $\ensuremath{\delta}\ensuremath{\nu}=\frac{({E}_{\frac{3}{2}}\ensuremath{-}{E}_{\frac{5}{2}})}{h}$ for the DDD states were obtained.