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Physical Review Letters

Optical Detection of Narrow Rb87 Hyperfine Absorption Lines

Peter Bender, Earl C. Beaty, A. R.

Published Nov 1, 1958• 147 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Optical detection of the ground state hyperfine transition has been reported for sodium vapor and for cesium vapor. The collisional narrowing technique suggested by Dicke was used to reduce the Doppler width, Results are reported for Rb/sup 87/ vapor using a different optical pumping method. Absorption lines narrower, by a factor 300, than the normal Doppler width were achieved. The experimental arrangement is described. (W.D.M.)

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.1.311

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Quantum Electronics and Laser Science Conference•May 12, 2000•0 citations
Optical detection of the ground state hyperfine transition has been reported for sodium vapor and for cesium vapor. The collisional narrowing technique suggested by Dicke was used to reduce the Doppler width, Results are reported for Rb/sup 87/ vapor using a different optical pumping method. Absorption lines narrower, by a factor 300, than the normal Doppler width were achieved. The experimental arrangement is described. (W.D.M.)
The ground electronic state of even such simple atoms as those of alkali elements has the set of sublevels. These sublevels are hyperfine (HF) components and magnetic sublevels. The collisions with particles of nonmagnetic buffer gas or even with walls (when walls have proper coating) do not mix practically the populations of ground state HF sublevels, if the orbital moment of electrons in the ground state is equal to zero. Due to this reason these sublevels may be extremely long lived. Because of this, for instance, the so-called effects of optical orientation and optical pumping are apparent in atoms of alkali metals. The radiation can pump practically all the atoms (with which there is effective interaction) to a single HF component. In a situation in which optical pumping is a minor effect, the monochromatic absorption line consists of separate lines corresponding to intra-atomic transitions. The optical pumping is not significant, for example, if the radiation intensity is so low that now pumping between HF sublevels occurs in the time it takes the atom to traverse the light beam. Under the conditions of optical pumping and when other nonlinear effects are present, the absorption line profile can undergo considerable alteration. Many theoretical and experimental investigations have been done in the laser spectroscopy of resonant transitions of atoms (atoms of alkali metals) under the conditions of optical pumping within ground state HF structure. A characteristic feature of all such investigations is the velocity-selective excitation of absorbing atoms. Also, as a rule, the value of HF splitting is not very big in comparison to Doppler broadening in these experiments. Under such conditions, the absorption spectra consists of Doppler- broadened lines with nonlinear resonances, which emerge when two fields of different frequencies or different propagation directions are employed. When only one monochromatic traveling wave is employed, optical pumping leads to formation of a single smooth absorption line occupying a position between the resonant transitions frequencies associated with HF components. As HF splitting grows, the line profile remains smooth, its width is approximately equal to the size of the HF splitting. The strength of the optical pumping from one ground state HF component to another is greater for greater HF splitting in comparison to the Doppler width. In this regard, Cs and Rb are the most typical of the alkali atoms (the HF splitting exceeds the Doppler width by a factor close to 20). This is the qualitative picture of the absorption line profile (particularly for a monochromatic radiation) under the conditions of optical pumping between the HF sublevels of the electronic ground state, this qualitative picture had formed by now.
Abstract The coherent Dicke narrowing (CDN) of the absorption spectrum in an Rb, Cs, K, or Na atomic vapor column of thickness L = (2n + 1)λ/2 (when n is an integer) and its collapse (absence of narrowing), which occurs at an atomic vapor column thickness L = nλ (where λ is the wavelength of the laser radiation in resonance with an atomic transition), are experimentally and theoretically studied. The application of second-derivative (SD) processing is shown give additional important information about CDN and its collapse. Optical nanocells with a wedge gap thickness of 30—3000 nm between the windows inner surfaces are used in experiments. At thicknesses λ/2, 1.5λ, and 2.5λ, all atomic transitions, which are even masked by a large Doppler broadening of 1000–1500 MHz, are fully spectrally resolved in SD spectra, and the frequency spacings (30–50 MHz) between the atomic transitions of a hyperfine structure and the relative probabilities of the atomic transitions are correctly displayed. CDN is shown to be applied in practice. Additional narrow velocity selective optical pumping (VSOP) resonances appear in the SD spectra of the resonance fluorescence of the Rb vapors. A developed theoretical model well describes the experimental results.
We examine a monochromatic absorption line in the velocity-nonselective excitation of atoms when the components of the hyperfine stricture of the electronic ground states are optically pumped. We show that the absorption lines possess unusual substructures for some values of the hyperfine splitting of the ground state (which exceed the Doppler absorption linewidth severalfold). These substructures in the absorption spectrum are most apparent if the hyperfine structure of the excited electronic state is taken into account. We calculate the absorption spectra of monochromatic light near the D 1 and D 2 lines of atomic rubidium 85,87 Rb. With real hyperfine splitting taken into account, the D 1 and D 2 lines are modeled by 4-and 6-level diagrams, respectively. Finally, we show that atomic rubidium vapor can be successfully used to observe the spectral features experimentally.
Saturation effects affecting absorption and fluorescence spectra of an atomic vapor confined in an extremely thin cell (cell thickness $L<1\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{m}$) are investigated experimentally and theoretically. The study is performed on the D2{D}_{2}D2​ line $(\ensuremath{\lambda}=852\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{nm})$ of Cs and concentrates on the two situations $L=\ensuremath{\lambda}∕2$ and $L=\ensuremath{\lambda}$, the most contrasted ones with respect to the length dependence of the coherent Dicke narrowing. For $L=\ensuremath{\lambda}∕2$, the Dicke-narrowed absorption profile simply broadens and saturates in amplitude when increasing the light intensity, while for $L=\ensuremath{\lambda}$, sub-Doppler dips of reduced absorption at the line-center appear on the broad absorption profile. For a fluorescence detection at $L=\ensuremath{\lambda}$, saturation induces narrow dips, but only for hyperfine components undergoing a population loss through optical pumping. These experimental results are interpreted with the help of the various existing models and are compared with numerical calculations based upon a two-level modeling that considers both a closed and an open system.
We report on the investigation of narrow sub-Doppler-width resonances observed at the D2 line of Cs atoms (Fg = 4 → Fe = 3, 4, 5 hyperfine transitions), confined in thin optical cells. These cells have a thickness of L = 6λ (λ = 852 nm) and L = 700 μm, and are irradiated by two narrow-band laser radiations (one with fixed and the other with scanned frequency). We show that for zero frequency detuning of the fixed-frequency laser from the Fg = 4 → Fe = 5 hyperfine transition, its absorption spectrum in the thin cell consists of resonances, centered at the respective hyperfine transitions. The spectral widths of these resonances range from 2 to 20 MHz, and they are characterized by a good contrast and extremely small Doppler background. This spectrum is highly sensitive to the frequency offset of the fixedfrequency laser. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the spatial restriction of Cs vapor suppresses the interaction of the light with atoms with significant velocity component along the direction of the laser beam propagation.
Summary form only given. To understand the fundamental properties of an atom, precise measurement of the atomic resonance frequency is important. The main factor that restricts the precision is the spectral broadening. Spectral narrowing by recurrent use of free decay signal in magnetic resonance was proposed and demonstrated in the ground state of Rb atoms. In the present report we apply this technique to the measurement of the hyperfine frequency in the excited state. This is a sublevel spectroscopy with recurrent excitation, where the atomic response is iteratively used as the next excitation. The hyperfine spectra of the excited state /sup 2/P/sub 3/2/ of the D/sub 2/ transition in Rb atoms, whose line width is much narrower than the natural line width, was observed and the hyperfine constants of the excited state were determined precisely.