Production of Coherent Radiation by Atoms and Molecules

Charles Hard Townes

George N. Gibson

Studies of fluorescence and coherent radiation generated by atoms and molecules in strong laser fields.

A. D. Gazazyan

Peter Pfeifer

If the energy of a molecule coupled to the quantised radiation field is made an extremum with respect to products of arbitrary molecular states and coherent field states, then there results a nonlinear Schrodinger equation for the molecule from which bounds for the energy contribution of the A 2 -term are derived. It is shown in what sense this contribution can be expected to be small under rather general circumstances.

Vladilen S Letokhov, B. D. Pavlik

David P. DeMille, Jeremy Sage, S. Sainis +1 more

We present recent work resulting in the production of ultracold, polar RbCs molecules in their absolute vibronic ground state. The production process consists of several steps: photoassociation of laser‐cooled atoms; radiative stabilization of the resulting molecules; identification of the resulting population distribution; and laser‐stimulated stale transfer lo the vibrational ground state. We discuss the properties of the resulting sample of of X1Σ+(ν = 0) molecules, with a view to the future directions of these experiments.