Electric Polarizabilities of the4p2Level of Potassium

Abstract

The atomic-beam technique has been used to study the Stark effect in the 4p level of potassium. The results, expressed in terms of three polarizabilities, are found to be in good agreement with the Bates and Daamgard calculation of oscillator strengths.The study of the Stark effect of atomic levels is important in that the Stark shifts are directly determined by the oscillator strengths connecting the level under study to near-lying levels of opposite parity. Hence the measurement of these shifts serves as a direct test of theoretical calculations of oscillator strengths. Perhaps the simplest of the available theoretical methods for predicting oscillator strengths is the Coulomb approximation of Bates and Daamgard, 1 which is easily made to yield numerical values. Recently we have begun a program for checking the applicability of the Bates and Daamgard oscillator strengths to the Stark effect of the first excited p level of the alkalis by studying the Stark effect in the D lines of cesium and rubidium. 2 In this paper we report the extension of these measurements to the 4p level of potassium.The basic method employed is the atomic-beam method for studying the Stark effect that was used in cesium and rubidium. 2 ? 3 However, because of the small hyperfine structure (hf s) of the potassium ground state, it is necessary to employ an absorption cell to obtain narrow absorption lines in the broad lamp emission line. 4 This modification can be understood with reference to Fig.

Precise measurement of the Stark shift of the rubidium and potassiumD1 lines

“…For Rb The scalar polarizability differences observed for rubidium and potassium are in good agreement, respectively, with the previously measured values [6,7] of 72(16)X 10 cm and 50(12)X 10 cm . Our new results are more than 1000 times more precise than these earlier values.…”

Trapped condensates of atoms with dipole interactions

“…[42] fields of upto 2 × 10 5 (V/cm) were used to slow a molecular beam. Gould [43] used fields upto 4.6 × 10 5 (V/cm) in the measurement of atomic tensor polarizability, while Marrus et al [44] reported fields upto 10 6 (V/cm). What is perhaps most encouraging is a recent experiment for cooling molecule beams with time-dependent (adiabatic from the view point of atomic internal dynamics) fields of upto 10 7 (V/cm) [45].…”

“…Once the equilibrium widths are found from numerically solving Eqs. (44), small amplitude oscillations can be studied by evaluating the matrix of the second order derivatives of the equivalent potential U (v x , v y , v z ) Eq. (39).…”

Atomic Beam Measurement of the Potassium 39-41-42 Isotope Shift

“….. 1 We believe that the 41 K impurity in the absorption beam is by itself negligible because of the fact that the absorption line due to component b of Fig. l(b where A is the mass number, oA the mass difference between a pair of isotopes, A the mean mass number for two isotopes, E the energy separation .…”