Abstract

Deceleration of neutral atomic beams has become possible because of the experimental realization of resonant-light-pressure and gradient-force schemes. At the same time, selective-reflection spectroscopy has been shown to be sensitive to the slowest atoms moving in the vicinity of the surface of a transparent solid. This means that selective-reflection spectroscopy is well suited for diagnostics of the forces exerted on the atoms. The theory has been derived¹ for the limiting case in which the variation of the resonant frequency is fully taken into account but the velocity of the atom is believed to be constant. In the following we attack another limiting case, the case for which the resonant frequency is believed to be constant but the atom is decelerated in the vicinity of the surface.

© 1994 Optical Society of America