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Optics Express

Excitation of Rydberg states in rubidium with near infrared diode lasers

Donald P. Fahey, Michael W. Noel

Published Aug 16, 2011• 39 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A system of three external cavity diode lasers is used to excite Rydberg states in rubidium. The 5S→5P→5D transitions are driven using lasers with λ = 780 and 776 nm respectively. From the 5D state, atoms fluoresce down to the 6P state. The final transition to Rydberg levels is from the 6P state with laser light near λ = 1016 nm. The nS and nD Rydberg states are accessible directly and with the application of a modest electric field nP states can also be excited. As a test of this system, Stark spectra are collected for nD and nP states.

DOI
10.1364/oe.19.017002

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A system of three external cavity diode lasers is used to excite Rydberg states in rubidium. The 5S→5P→5D transitions are driven using lasers with λ = 780 and 776 nm respectively. From the 5D state, atoms fluoresce down to the 6P state. The final transition to Rydberg levels is from the 6P state with laser light near λ = 1016 nm. The nS and nD Rydberg states are accessible directly and with the application of a modest electric field nP states can also be excited. As a test of this system, Stark spectra are collected for nD and nP states.
An advanced undergraduate experiment to study the 5P3/2→6P3/2 electric quadrupole transition in rubidium atoms is presented. The experiment uses two external cavity diode lasers, one operating at the D2 rubidium resonance line and the other built with commercial parts to emit at 911 nm. The lasers produce the 5s→5p→6p excitation sequence in which the second step is the forbidden transition. Production of atoms in the 6P3/2 state is observed by detection of the 420 nm fluorescence that results from electric dipole decay into the ground state. Lines whose widths are significantly narrower than the Doppler width are used to study the hyperfine structure of the 6P3/2 state in rubidium. The spectra illustrate characteristics unique to electric dipole forbidden transitions, like the electric quadrupole selection rules; they are also used to show general aspects of two-color laser spectroscopy such as velocity selection and hyperfine pumping.
The authors have demonstrated that appropriately time-ordered pulses of diode-laser light can provide efficient population transfer in a three-level cascade system. Laser-trapped Rb atoms are excited from the 5S ground state to the highly-excited 5D level (via the 5P intermediate level) with nearly 100% efficiency. Diode-lasers at 780 nm (5S{yields}5P) and 776 nm (5P{yields}5D) are pulsed with acousto-optic modulators to provide the excitation. The variation of transfer efficiency with relative delay between the two pulses is in good agreement with theoretical expectations. Optimum excitation occurs for the counterintuitive pulse ordering, i.e., when the upper transition is driven first.
We have developed a diode laser apparatus to excite Li from its ground 2S state, through 2P and 3S, to its Rydberg states with three cw diode lasers operating at λ = 671 nm, 813 nm, and 630-635 nm. A He-Ne laser at λ = 633 is sometimes used in place of the 635-nm diode laser for the last step. The output power of each of these lasers was ~1 mW. We describe our technique of locking the first two lasers on Li resonance lines by obtaining a fluorescent signal from the second decay (3S ? 2P) that is normally overpowered by a strong background of fluorescent light from the first decay (2P ? 2S). We used two balanced photodiodes to reject the strong fluorescent light without loss of collection efficiency. A rejection ratio as high as 100 has been obtained.
Abstract We present experiments on two‐photon excitation of 87Rb atoms to Rydberg states. For this purpose, two continuous‐wave (cw)‐laser systems for both 780 nm and 480 nm have been set up. These systems are optimized to a small linewidth (well below 1 MHz) to get both an efficient excitation process and good spectroscopic resolution. To test the performance of our laser system, we investigated the Stark splitting of Rydberg states. We were able to see for both of the n = 41D finestructure states the electrical field dependent |mj| splitting. To show the ability of spatially selective excitation to Rydberg states, we excited rubidium atoms in an electrical field gradient and investigated both linewidths and lineshifts. Furthermore we were able to excite the atoms selectively from the two hyperfine ground states to Rydberg states. Finally, we investigated the Autler‐Townes splitting of the 5S1/2(F = 2)→5P3/2(F = 3) transition coupled to the light field via a Rydberg state to determine the Rabi frequency of this excitation step.