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Physical Review A

Separated-beam experiments and transit-time broadening

Ming Chiang Li

Published Jun 1, 1981• 1 citation

Abstract

Separated-beam experiments for both the Doppler-free two-photon and saturated absorptions are under consideration. In the Doppler-free two-photon absorption, the experimental arrangement is important. Such important has not been recognized before. Three different arrangements are discussed here. In the first one, the separated-beam experiment is not coherent and the Ramsey fringe variation cannot be observed. In the second, the transit-time broadening is present and the Ramsey fringe variation depends on the atom's time of flight as well as the transit time. Finally, in the third arrangement, the transit-time broadening is eliminated and the Ramsey fringe variation depends on the atom's time of flight alone. These examples have shown that in the Doppler-free two-photon absorption, the elimination of the transit-time broadening is through a mechanism other than the beam separation. In the saturated absorption the situation is quite different. Even in the presence of transit-time broadening, the Ramsey fringe spacing depends only on the atom's time of flight.

DOI: 10.1103/physreva.23.2995

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We report here the first experimental demonstration of Doppler-free three-photon spectroscopy. The Doppler broadening is eliminated by insuring that the sum of the momenta of the three photons simultaneously exchanged between the atom and the laser beams is equal to 0. This is accomplished by making a proper choice of the angles between the three exciting beams. The observation has been made on the sodium $3{S}_{\frac{1}{2}}\ensuremath{-}3{P}_{\frac{1}{2}}$ transition with absorption of two photons and induced emission of one.

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Using two coherent time-delayed short pulses, we have demonstrated that one can obtain, in the profile of Doppler-free two-photon resonances, interference fringes with a splitting

\frac{1}{2T}

(

T

, delay time between the two pulses) much smaller than the spectral width $\frac{1}{\ensuremath{\tau}}$ of each pulse ($\ensuremath{\tau}$ duration of each pulse). This method should lead to a number of important improvements in the presently available techniques of ultrahigh-resolution laser spectroscopy of atoms and molecules.

The interference fringes of an atomic Ramsey interferometer may be narrowed if the two separated fields have different frequencies and their phase difference is controlled. For spatially separated fields, their width depends inversely on the free flight time of ground state atoms before entering the first field region in addition to the time between the fields. The narrowing effect is stable with respect to velocity fluctuations and for realistic mode functions. We also show that systematic phase shifts and phase fluctuations do not aggravate the frequency offset of the standard (one-frequency) Ramsey method.