Abstract
The sodium resonance lines have been studied in saturated absorption with a repetitively pulsed tunable dye laser. The hyperfine splitting of the and states of is resolved. Measurements with a delayed probe reveal a remanent hole burning in the velocity distributions of the two ground-state levels, caused by a velocity-selective optical pumping cycle. A time-resolved observation of the collisional-velocity thermalization in the presence of Ar buffer gas is reported.
- Received 19 July 1971
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.27.707
©1971 American Physical Society