We consider pump-probe spectroscopy of a single ion with a highly metastable (probe) clock transition which is monitored by using the quantum jump technique. For a weak clock laser we obtain the well known Autler-Townes splitting. For stronger powers of the clock laser we demonstrate the transition to a new regime. The two regimes are distinguished by the transition of two complex eigenvalues t...

We report on work directed toward the systematic evaluation of an optical frequency standard based on the 2 1 25 2 transition of a single, laser-cooled, trapped Hg + ion, whose resonance frequency is 1.06 10Hz. For the purpose of the evaluation, a second 199Hg standard has been constructed. In the cooling-laser system built for the second standard, an injection-locking scheme has been applied t...

By optical injection of an 852-nm extended-cavity diode laser (master laser) to lock the + 1-order sideband of a ~9-GHz-current-modulated diode laser (slave laser), we generate a pair of phase-locked lasers with a frequency difference up to ~9-GHz for a cesium (Cs) magneto-optical trap (MOT) with convenient tuning capability. For a cesium MOT, the master laser acts as repumping laser, locked to...

We excite the 717-nm electric quadrupole 6D3/2 ↔ 7S1/2 transition in a laser-cooled 232Th3+ ion crystal. The transition frequency and the lifetime of the metastable 7S1/2 level are measured to be 417 845 964(30) MHz and 0.60(7) s, respectively. We subsequently employ the 7S1/2 level to drive the ions with nanosecond-long 269-nm laser pulses into the 7P1/2 level. The latter is connected to the 7...

Using the S1/2Fg = 2 −→ P3/2Fe = 3 transition in Rb, we analyzed the interaction between the arbitrarily polarized laser light and Zeeman sublevels in the Hanle configuration. We studied theoretically and confirmed experimentally that the effect of the laser light polarization on the electromagnetically induced absorption strongly depends on the laser light power. For the same atomic transition...

Abstract A coincidence between the 2 S1/2–3 S1/2 two-photon transition in the atomic spectrum of 6Li and the X 1 + g → E 1 + g two-photon ro-vibrational series of Li2 was observed near 735 nm in a heat pipe oven using a tunable laser and thermionic diode detection scheme. The molecular transition obscures one component of the 6Li atomic transition. Selective detection of the atomic transition w...

The absorption of a resonant coupling laser driving a closed degenerate two-level system in an atomic cesium beam was investigated as a function of the detuning of a second laser probing the same transition. The measurements were performed for four different polarization combinations of the two laser beams. Except for the beams of counterrotating polarizations all coupling-laser absorption prof...

A compact optical clock and frequency comb system is presented, based on a 1 GHz octave-spanning Ti:sapphire laser referenced to the F2(2)(P(7),v3) optical transition in methane at 3.39 microm. The reference methane transition is accessed by a stabilized HeNe laser in a compact transportable format. The output from the octave-spanning Ti:sapphire laser is used to generate a mid-IR comb at the r...

The direct interaction of nuclei with superintense laser fields is studied. We show that present and upcoming high-frequency laser facilities, especially together with a moderate acceleration of the target nuclei to match photon and transition frequency, do allow for resonant laser-nucleus interaction. These direct interactions may be utilized for the model-independent optical measurement of nu...