Isotope-selective laser excitation and field ionization of the nF5/2 Rydberg states in a thallium beam

The effective isotope-selective excitation and field ionization of the 16F5/2 thallium Rydberg states have been studied experimentally. The 16F5/2 states were excited by the two-step scheme 6P1/2→6D3/2→nF5/2 in a dense collimated atomic beam by means of monochromatic radiation from two frequency tunable lasers (λ1 = 276.9 nm, λ2 = 773–808 nm) with a mean power density of more than 1 W. The largest selectivity of excitation in this scheme takes place in the first step 6P1/2→6D3/2. The experiments showed that the main reason for the limiting selectivity excitation of the Rydberg states is the field broadening of the absorption resonances at the first and second steps of the excitation scheme. The excitation efficiency of this scheme is considerably governed by the parameters of the laser radiation at the second step and an electric field pulse. (paper)