Selective reflection from a Potassium atomic layer with a thickness as small as $\lambda /13$

Abstract

We demonstrate that a method using the derivative of the selective reflection signal from a nanocell is a convenient and robust tool for atomic laser spectroscopy, achieving a nearly Doppler-free spectral resolution. The recorded linewidth of the signal from a potassium-filled cell, whose thickness $\ell$ lies in the range $350-500$ nm, is 18 times smaller than the Doppler linewidth ($\sim 900$ MHz full width at half maximum) of potassium atoms. We also show experimentally a sign oscillation of the reflected signal's derivative with a periodicity of $\lambda /2$ when $\ell$ varies from 190 to 1200~nm confirming the theoretical prediction. We report the first measurement of the van der Waals atom-surface interaction coefficient $C_3=1.9\pm 0.3$ kHz$\cdot \mu$m${}^3$ of potassium $4S_{1/2}\to 4P_{3/2}$ transitions with the nanocell's sapphire windows, demonstrating the usefulness and convenience of the derivative of selective reflection technique for cell thicknesses in the range $60-120$nm.

10 pages, 6 figures

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Cited by in corpus (1)

• Features of Magnetically-induced atomic transitions of Rb D${}_1$ line studied by Doppler-free method based on the second derivative of the absorption spectra