Measurement of the recoil shift of saturation resonances ofI2127at 5145 Å: A test of accuracy for high-resolution saturation spectroscopy

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Abstract
We report the first observation of the recoil shift of an optical resonance in the visible part of the spectrum. The method rests on the fact that the recoil shifts have opposite signs for Doppler-generated level crossings with a common upper level and for those having a common lower level. The experiment has been performed with the argon laser at 5145 Å as the source and iodine as the absorber. The measured values are within 12% of the theoretical recoil shift. We give a detailed discussion of the possible influence of shifts of various origins and especially light shifts on the measured frequency differences. We display saturated absorption and saturated dispersion spectra and give formulas for the intensities of the various resonances derived from the corresponding density-matrix diagrams.