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Physical Review Letters

Observation of Oscillations in Resonance Absorption from a Coherent Superposition of Atomic States

Theodore W. Ducas, Michael G. Littman, Myron L. Zimmerman

Published Dec 29, 1975• 52 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A technique is described for high-resolution spectroscopy using resonance absorption from a laser to monitor the time evolution of a coherently excited superposition of atomic states. As a demonstration a measurement was made of the $3^{2}P_{\frac{1}{2}}$ hyperfine splitting in sodium.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.35.1752

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A technique is described for high-resolution spectroscopy using resonance absorption from a laser to monitor the time evolution of a coherently excited superposition of atomic states. As a demonstration a measurement was made of the 32P123^{2}P_{\frac{1}{2}}32P21​​ hyperfine splitting in sodium.
A novel technique is described for high-resolution spectroscopy. The time evolution of a coherent superposition of atomic substates created by a short resonant laser pulse is monitored via changes in polarization of a delayed probe pulse due to stimulated emission. As a demonstration the method was applied to the Zeeman splitting of the 63P16^{3}P_{1}63P1​ state of ytterbium.
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