Transition Strengths of Alkali-Metal Atoms

Initializing live version
Download to Desktop

Requires a Wolfram Notebook System

Interact on desktop, mobile and cloud with the free Wolfram Player or other Wolfram Language products.

This Demonstration presents diagrams showing the relative line strengths of the optical transitions between hyperfine-Zeeman states of the D1 and D2 lines in the most common isotopes of alkali-metal atoms (H, Li, Na, K, Rb, Cs). The total atomic angular momentum obeys , where is the electronic angular momentum and is the nuclear angular momentum.

Contributed by: Gianni Di Domenico (Université de Neuchâtel) and Antoine Weis (Université de Fribourg) (March 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA


Snapshots


Details

The strength of the transition is proportional to the square of the electric dipole matrix element .

By successive application of the Wigner–Eckart theorem and angular momentum decoupling rules, it can be written in terms of Wigner 3j and Racah 6j symbols:

In the graphs the relative transition strengths are normalized such that the D2 line transition has a unit strength.



Feedback (field required)
Email (field required) Name
Occupation Organization
Note: Your message & contact information may be shared with the author of any specific Demonstration for which you give feedback.
Send