Saturation Broadening by Inhomogeneous Fields
Abstract
According to the standard Karplus-Schwinger theory of saturation broadening, saturated line shapes are Lorentzians with linewidths that increase linearly with the perturbing field strength. This, however, is not what is observed experimentally when the saturating field is inhomogeneous. If the saturating field strength varies significantly over the experimental signal volume, we find that the saturated line shapes are strikingly non-Lorentzian. The sharpness of the experimental lines shapes is quantified by an effective linewidth, which is the half width at half maximum of a Lorentzian that approximates the experimental line shape near line center. For certain classes of inhomogeneous fields, we find that this effective linewidth increases approximately as the square root of the saturating field strength, rather than linearly. We show that this class of inhomogeneous fields is distinguished by the presence of a node in the field geometry, and that the effect arises because the line shape near line center is dominated by the atomic population in the vicinity of the node. These results indicate the importance of understanding and accounting for inhomogeneous field effects when extracting physical information from experimental line shapes.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 31, 1989
- Accession Number
- ADA214544
Entities
People
- James C. Camparo
Organizations
- The Aerospace Corporation