Determination of cross sections of excitation transfer between the fine-structure components of Cs(72P), Rb(62P) and Rb(72P) induced by collisions with rare-gas atoms

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Abstract
Cross sections of excitation transfer between the fine-structure sublevels of Cs(72P), Rb(62P) and Rb(72P) induced by collisions with rare-gas atoms have been determined from the time dependence of the sensitised fluorescence. The Cs and Rb atoms, contained in absorption cells filled with inert gases at different pressures, were excited using a pulsed dye laser pumped by a nitrogen laser. The fluorescence was observed time resolved employing a photon counting technique. The use of a two-level approximation allowed the Maxwellian (velocity) averaged transfer cross sections to be calculated. Comparison of the cross section values determined in this work with the values quoted by other authors shows good consistency in the case of Rb 62P inert-gas collisions while in the case of Cs 72P inert-gas collisions there are some discrepancies. Rb 72P excitation transfer has not been dealt with before.