Lifetime and hyperfine splitting measurements on the 7s and 6p levels in rubidium

Abstract

We present lifetime measurements of the 7S1/2 level and the 6p manifold of rubidium. We use a timecorrelated single-photon counting technique on a sample of 85Rb atoms confined and cooled in a magneto-optic trap. The upper state of the 5P1/2 repumping transition serves as the resonant intermediate level for twophoton excitation of the 7s level. A probe laser provides the second step of the excitation, and we detect the decay of atomic fluorescence to the 5P3/2 level at 741 nm. The decay process feeds the 6p manifold that decays to the 5s ground state emitting UV photons. We measure lifetimes of 88.07 +- 0.40 and 120.7 +- 1.2 ns for the 7S1/2 level and 6p manifold, respectively; the hyperfine splitting of the 7S1/2 level is 282.6 +- 1.6 MHz. The agreement with theoretical calculations confirms the understanding of the wave functions involved and provides confidence on the possibility of extracting weak interaction constants from a parity nonconservation measurement.

10 pages, 14 figures, to be published in Jour. Opt. Soc. Am. B (November 2004)

References in corpus (4)

• Violations of fundamental symmetries in atoms and tests of unification theories of elementary particles
• Relativistic many-body calculations of electric-dipole matrix elements, lifetimes and polarizabilities in rubidium
• Correlated many-body treatment of Breit interaction with application to cesium atomic properties and parity violation
• Combined effect of coherent Z exchange and the hyperfine interaction in atomic PNC

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