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Journal of Physics B Atomic and Molecular Physics

Double-resonance Stark spectroscopy as a probe of hydrogen substate production in fast atomic collisions

Patrick M. Koch, David R. Mariani

Published Nov 28, 1980• 12 citations
Publisher

Abstract

With a new laser method the authors have directly observed highly excited hydrogen atoms with large values of the magnetic quantum number mod m mod . They emphasise the importance of studying substate production in atomic collision processes and outline a procedure for measuring ratios of substate production cross sections with their method.

DOI
10.1088/0022-3700/13/22/001

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With a new laser method the authors have directly observed highly excited hydrogen atoms with large values of the magnetic quantum number mod m mod . They emphasise the importance of studying substate production in atomic collision processes and outline a procedure for measuring ratios of substate production cross sections with their method.
Two synchronised pulsed single-mode tunable laser systems are used to excite atomic hydrogen in an atomic beam. A vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) laser populates first the 2p 2 P 3/2 sublevel from the ground 1s 2 S 1/2 state. A second-step UV laser selects substates of the n=33 manifold in the presence of a weak electric field (23.6 V cm -1 ). Stark patterns of this manifold are recorded for different polarisation configurations of the exciting light beams. The n=44 substates are detected by the standard field ionisation technique. The measured relative intensities of the Stark components agree with the theoretical excitation probabilities in the two-step process, calculated to the first order of perturbation theory.
Hydrogen atoms are excited into high Rydberg states following fast proton impact on a thin carbon foil. The effects of various electromagnetic fields on these atoms are observed by measuring the integral ionization yield in an additional constant electric field. These experiments reveal oscillations in that yield, regularly spaced as a function of electric field. A model is outlined that quantitatively describes the observed field dependence. This new phenomenon indicates selective excitation of the Stark substates.
Within the limits set by our experimental apparatus, large-amplitude zero-field oscillations of H fine-structure amplitudes treated in a recent letter of Macek were not observed in polarization---versus---flight-path measurements on ${\mathrm{H}}_{\ensuremath{\beta}}$, ${\mathrm{H}}_{\ensuremath{\gamma}}$, and ${\mathrm{Ly}}_{\ensuremath{\alpha}}$ emissions from suddenly excited H atoms (50- and 150-keV incident protons). Random initial phases for orbital and magnetic substates and approximately equal magnetic substate populations are indicated, in contrast to binary electron capture in gases. A successful test of the theoretical polarization of 2s2s2s Stark quench radiation was also made.
The authors describe a method for producing a fast atomic hydrogen beam with a large amount of population selected in 3l j, mod mj mod levels. This is realized by a one-step tunable laser excitation of the metastable component of the atomic beam inside a nonhomogeneous static electric field. The linear laser polarization is taken either parallel or perpendicular with respect to the external field. It allows the selective excitation of all the states of the n=3 Stark manifold (with the exception of the mod mj mod =5/2 state). The electric field strength vanishes immediately after the laser excitation. At this point the population of the excited states are better referred to the atomic basis. The shapes of the resonant lines show that two transient effects are leading the excitation process. The first is of an optical kind (i.e. Rabi oscillation and rapid adiabatic passage) and the second is the intra Stark manifold state mixing due to the nonadiabatic time evolution of the external field strength. The internal state of the atoms crossing these fields is completely described by the density matrix evolution calculated independently on two bases (the atomic basis and the Stark instantaneous basis).
The Stark splitting of the second excited level of atomic hydrogen (with principal quantum number n=3n=3n=3) has been measured by pulsed laser spectroscopy in order to determine small electric fields by optical means. Doppler-free excitation with two counterpropagating laser beams at 205nm205\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{nm}205nm allows us to measure the n=3n=3n=3 Stark spectra either by an optogalvanic signal after ionization by a third laser photon or by detection of the Balmer-$\ensuremath{\alpha}$ fluorescence photons emitted by the excited atoms. Three different cases of laser polarization have been investigated in order to evaluate the possibilities and limitations of this one-step laser excitation method for electric field determination, especially at field strengths below 200V∕cm200\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{V}∕\mathrm{cm}200V∕cm. The method provides the best field sensitivity achieved with lower excited levels that can be reached directly by two-photon absorption from the ground state (in contrast to the more sensitive Rydberg levels). For this purpose, an advanced tunable pulsed uv laser with narrow bandwidth almost at the Fourier limit has been used. The high spectral resolution allowed us to deduce electric field strengths as small as 50V∕cm50\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{V}∕\mathrm{cm}50V∕cm from the frequency shift between two selected isolated Stark components. As a main advantage, this simple analysis of the measured spectra does not rely on knowledge of the line intensities which may be strongly affected by the measuring conditions.