Formalism for two-photon ionisation of alkali atoms via a resonant intermediate state

Abstract

A density-matrix formulation is given of two-photon ionisation of alkali atoms, for two incoming light pulses of arbitrary direction, polarisation, pulse duration and time difference. The frequency of one of the pulses coincides with a resonant transition. The emphasis is on separating out angular momentum factors from the basic physics contained in the radial matrix elements of the atomic electric dipole. The bandwidth of the exciting light is assumed large compared to natural and induced linewidths. The polarisation of the photoelectron is calculated with or without saturation of the excitation for various values of the nuclear spin.