Hanle effect in Yb with a phase diffusing laser field

The authors experimentally investigated the Hanle resonances for the 1S/sub o/-3P1 transition at 5556 A in Yb174 using a well-characterized phase diffusing laser field. The synthesized spectral density of the phase diffusing laser is nearly Lorentzian with linewidths varying from 0.5 to 4 MHz. The band shape of the synthesizing Gaussian noise is also Lorentzian with a bandwidth of 100 MHz. Thus the correlation function describing the phase fluctuating laser has a simple exponential dependence