Abstract

We study the transverse effects encountered when two relatively strong laser beams propagate in a dense barium vapour. The two beams come from a single tunable dye laser pumped by a pulsed Nd:YAG laser and have the following characteristics: pulse duration 10 ns, spectral width 5 GHz, and energy up to 100 μJ. The laser is tuned to the vicinity of the 6s^{2 1}S₀ - 6s6p ¹P₁ (λ = 553.548 nm) transition in Ba. The barium vapour at 900°C is kept in a cell with some 10 ÷ 15 Torr of argon as a buffer gas. The crossing angle θ between the beams is varied from a few to 100 mrad.

© 1994 IEEE