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Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Saturation spectroscopy for optically thick atomic samples

Sune R. Svanberg, G.-Y. Yan, Thomas P. Duffey, weibiao du, Theodor W. Hänsch, ARTHUR L. SCHAWLOW

Published Apr 1, 1987• 25 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Doppler-free saturation spectroscopy in the regime of strong pumping intensities and optically thick atomic samples is investigated experimentally and theoretically. It is shown that a very high signal-to-background ratio can be obtained and, at the same time, subnatural linewidths can be reached. Further contrast and linewidth improvements can be attained by supplementing the primary depleted pumping beam with a second pumping beam. By using the signal beam from a first setup as the pumping beam for a second identical arrangement, extreme values for contrast and linewidth should be attainable.

DOI
10.1364/josab.4.000462

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Doppler-free saturation spectroscopy in the regime of strong pumping intensities and optically thick atomic samples is investigated experimentally and theoretically. It is shown that a very high signal-to-background ratio can be obtained and, at the same time, subnatural linewidths can be reached. Further contrast and linewidth improvements can be attained by supplementing the primary depleted pumping beam with a second pumping beam. By using the signal beam from a first setup as the pumping beam for a second identical arrangement, extreme values for contrast and linewidth should be attainable.
We experimentally demonstrate two methods that improve the resolution of sub-Doppler spectroscopy using a 1 mm thick vapor cell. The linewidths of the observed spectra are approximately 1 order of magnitude narrower than the Doppler width. The first method involves using a 1 mm thick cell filled with Rb atomic vapor and two spatially separated laser beams. By employing the same principle, we also demonstrate that it is possible to achieve the same resolution by using the pump and probe pulses of a single beam. The latter method enables us to construct a simple and robust optical setup for sub-Doppler spectroscopy.
The relative intensities of the Doppler-free signals of 85Rb and Cs D2 lines in saturation spectroscopy were calculated theoretically, taking into account the optical pumping process in a four-level system. The optical pumping effect in saturation spectroscopy is important when atoms with long-lived lower states are pumped by a weak beam. The theoretical results calculated from a simple analysis without any knowledge of the saturation parameters were found to be in good agreement with the experimental results on Rb and Cs D2 lines previously obtained using semiconductor laser.
Saturated absorption spectroscopy linewidths down to half the natural linewidth have been obtained for the sodium D1{\mathit{D}}_{1}D1​ transition in a strongly absorbing gas cell. The strong-line-narrowing effect is achieved by using an experimental ``tandem'' approach with two absorbing cells in series, where the saturated absorption output from the first cell is used as an input beam for a saturated absorption measurement in the second cell. A physical interpretation of the line-narrowing mechanism in highly absorbing media is presented, which, among other things, explains why the narrowing effects are different for crossover transitions. It is further argued that in these experiments the line-narrowing effect is caused by optical pumping and can be appropriately described by rate equations. This is different from several other recent papers on high-contrast transmission spectroscopy, where full Bloch vector models were necessary to fully describe the line shapes. Here a rate equation model, which includes two spatial dimensions, is developed, and reasonable agreement is obtained between experimental and theoretical data. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
The line shapes of saturation spectroscopy in optically thick two-level media are calculated for atomic and molecular transitions. Line narrowing and distortion effects due to propagation are presented. For Doppler-broadened media it is shown that, due to multiphoton processes, the natural linewidth limits the ultimate narrowing that can be reached. Thus, up to ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{0}L=20,$ only when the rate-equation approximation is valid subhomogeneous linewidths are expected.