Measurement of the argon-gas-induced broadening and shifting of the barium Rydberg levels by two-photon resonant nondegenerate four-wave mixing

Abstract

We apply two-photon resonant nondegenerate four-wave mixing with a resonant intermediate state for observing the broadening and the shifting of the barium Rydberg 6snd 1D2 series by collision with argon. The collision broadenings and the collision shifting cross sections are measured for n=1633. This technique is a purely optical means, and can achieve Doppler-free resolution of narrow spectral structures of Rydberg levels when the incident lasers have narrow bandwidths. Different from other experimental methods of studying the pressure dependence of the longitudinal relaxation rate of Rydberg states, our method is to investigate the pressure dependence of the transverse relaxation rate of the transition.