English

Doppler-free laser spectroscopy of buffer gas cooled molecular radicals

Atomic Physics 2015-05-14 v2

Abstract

We demonstrate Doppler-free saturated absorption spectroscopy of cold molecular radicals formed by laser ablation inside a cryogenic buffer gas cell. By lowering the temperature, congested regions of the spectrum can be simplified, and by using different temperatures for different regions of the spectrum a wide range of rotational states can be studied optimally. We use the technique to study the optical spectrum of YbF radicals with a resolution of 30 MHz, measuring the magnetic hyperfine parameters of the electronic ground state. The method is suitable for high resolution spectroscopy of a great variety of molecules at controlled temperature and pressure, and is particularly well-suited to those that are difficult to produce in the gas phase.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0909.5534,
  title  = {Doppler-free laser spectroscopy of buffer gas cooled molecular radicals},
  author = {S. M. Skoff and R. J. Hendricks and C. D. J. Sinclair and M. R. Tarbutt and J. J. Hudson and D. M. Segal and B. E. Sauer and E. A. Hinds},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0909.5534},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

11 pages, 4 figures