Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE
Two-Photon Resonant Four-Wave Mixing And Multiphoton Ionization Of Cesium In A Heat Pipe Oven
S. M. Hamadani, John A. D. Stockdale, R. N. Compton
Abstract
Optical pumping of cesium vapor in a heat pipe oven in which the energy of two near-infrared photons is close to the 6D states results in high conversion efficiency (up to 1.7%) of the near-infrared pump light to intense blue, forward-propagating radiation. The blue light corresponds to the 7P-6S transition. The dependence of conversion efficiency upon focusing conditions, cell length, and pump intensity is presented. Absorption and gain coefficients are measured in a second heat pipe. The results are discussed in terms of optically pumped stimulated emission (OPSE), stimulated electronic Raman scattering (SERS), and subsequent nonlinear four-wave mixing of two pump-laser photons and one SERS or OPSE infrared photon leading to parametric generation at w = 2WL -wiR.