Optical Pumping and Dissociation of Rubidium Molecules by a Laser Pulse

Clifford V. Sulham, Glen P. Perram, Michael P. Wilkinson +1 more

Zhangyou Du

V. R. Nagibarov, A. V. Pirozhkov, В. В. Самарцев +1 more

Kai‐Jun Yuan, Senming Wang, Shu‐Lin Cong

A scheme used for controlling the population transfer and the dissociation rate of Na 2 molecules is described by using the quantum wavepacket dynamical method. It is theoretically shown that the population transfer and the dissociation rate of Na 2 molecules can be controlled by pump and probe laser pulses with appropriate widths of pulses, sequence and intensities.

Wooddy S. Miller, Clifford V. Sulham, Jeremy C. Holtgrave +2 more

A pulsed, optically pumped rubidium laser operating in analogy to the diode pumped alkali laser (DPAL) system at pump intensities as high as 750 kW/cm2 has been demonstrated with output energies of up to 13 μJ/pulse. Output energy is dramatically limited by spin‐orbit relaxation rates under these high intensity pump conditions. More than 250 photons are available for every rubidium atom in the pumped volume, requiring a high number of cycles per atom during the 2–8 ns duration of the pump pulse. At 550 Torr of ethane, the spin‐orbit relaxation rate is too slow to effectively utilize all the incident pump photons. Indeed, a linear dependence of output energy on pump pulse duration for fixed pump energy is demonstrated.

Igor M. Beterov, A. Dudnikov, I. I. Ryabtsev