Photon echo in the ytterbium vapour induced at transition by the relaxation anisotropy of collisions with noble gases

Abstract

A collision-induced photon echo (PE) was formed at the 174Yb (6s2) 1S0—(6s6p) 3P1 transition by two resonant radiation pulses polarized linearly and mutually orthogonally. The noble gases He, Ne, Ar, Kr and Xe were used as collision partners for excited 174Yb atoms. The nonmonotonous decay kinetics of collision-induced PE was detected. The ordinary PE formed by identical linear polarization pulses at the same experimental conditions showed a monotonous decay for the time delays between 80 and 300 ns. The anisotropy parameters for the collisions of 174Yb atoms with Ne, Ar, Kr and Xe atoms increase with the buffer atom mass and are between 15% and 20% of the corresponding homogeneous line broadening values.