Multipole relaxation in52P potassium atoms by collisions with He, Ne, and Ar

Abstract

Potassium vapor, contained together with a buffer gas in a fluorescence cell located in a 7-T magnetic field, was irradiated with light from a pulsed dye laser producing selective excitation of the $5^2$ $P_{1/2}$,-1/2 or the $5^2$ $P_{3/2}$,-3/2 Zeeman substate. Collisions of the excited and polarized atoms and the resulting Zeeman mixing produced a population of the whole Zeeman manifold and resulted in the emission of a fluorescent Zeeman spectrum which was resolved with a Fabry-Perot interferometer and registered with a photomultiplier and multichannel scaler. Measurements of the relative intensities of the fluorescence components yielded the absolute (thermally averaged) multipole-relaxation cross sections and cross sections for Zeeman mixing by collisions with He, Ne, and Ar atoms.