High-resolution laser spectroscopy of hot Cs and Rb vapor confined in a thin optical cell

Abstract

We propose a novel use of an optical cell of micrometer thickness filled with Cs vapor in view of studying the collisions between two different alkali atoms of strongly different densities. We demonstrate narrow and good-contrast sub-Doppler resonances at the Rb D2 line for a mean-free-path of the Cs atoms comparable to the optical cell longitudinal dimension; the resonances are completely destroyed when the mean-free-path of the Cs atoms is more than two orders of magnitude shorter than the longitudinal dimension of the thin cell.