The spherical Fabry—Perot interferometer as an instrument of high resolving power for use with external or with internal atomic beams

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Abstract
The spherical Fabry-Perot interferometer was designed by P. Connes as an instrument capable of realizing higher resolving power than the normal Fabry-Perot interferometer, by virtue of its greater light power at high resolution, and the much lower requirement with regard to accuracy of adjustment. The instrument has now been used successfully in the resolution of structure in the resonance line of the arc spectrum of barium; components with a separation of 2.0 x 10$^{-3}$ cm$^{-1}$ have been resolved; they were observed in the absorption produced by a Jackson-Kuhn atomic beam, of high collimation. The instrument has also been used for observing line structure with an absorbing atomic beam traversing the interior of the interferometer; by this means the amount of material required for observing hyperfine structure using an atomic beam, even with very high collimation, can be reduced to a few milligrams, or approximately 100 times less than that required with an atomic beam external to the interferometer, so that enriched isotopes, available in small quantities, can be used: alternatively, adequate absorption can be obtained with much higher collimations of the beam, and correspondingly improved limits of resolution.

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