Laser-induced absorption line narrowing for ions in crystals: Application to the hyperfine structure of the 6011-Å Pr3+ : LaCl3 line

Abstract

We report on the observation of absorption line narrowing in a crystal. A saturating cw single-mode dye laser leads to hole burning over a homogeneous width according to the site selection, while a second tunable cw single-mode dye laser probes the perturbed profile. Two-level and three-level resonances corresponding to the Pr3+ : LaCl3 6011-Å line hyperfine structure are obtained with very high spectral resolution (σ/Δσ≃6×107).