Measurement of the Transition Moment by the Optical Transient Nutation Effect

The observation of the optical transient nutation effect in S${\mathrm{F}}_6$ is found to be greatly facilitated by cooling the gas to dry-ice temperature; similar improvement is also expected in the observation of the self-induced transparency effect and the photon-echo effect in this gas. The improved experimental results demonstrate that it is possible to determine the transition moment of optical transitions directly on the basis of the optical nutation effect without the need of estimating any population densities which is required in the usual method based on the measurement of the absorption coefficient.